Ten ’80s-Themed Movie Pitches
Looking to cash in on ’80s nostalgia? These ready-to-produce movies are guaranteed box-office gold.
SAFE HOUSE
High school has changed since the 1980s. Juvenile hijinks and swiping a six-pack from your dad has been replaced by a hedonistic haze of designer drugs, EDM and date rape. A pack of moms (played by former 80s movie dream girls) are fed up and band together to train their daughters to take back the night. Their “safe house” becomes a training camp, but are they empowering a new generation of female leaders or creating a slaughter-their-foes lady army? The Expendables meets Bridesmaids. Kill Bill meets Hot Tub Time Machine. Heathers meets Sucker Punch.
HOME ALONE, FOREVER
Kevin McCallister is all grown up. He’s also a paranoid alcoholic (a result of his traumatic childhood, perhaps?) and his wife has had enough. She takes the kids and leaves him. To make ends meet, he AirBNB’s a portion of his house to an immigrant Asian family. A mildly-racist Kevin has no time for the young boy of the family (Rufio) but when the parents leave Rufio alone one night and Asian Vape gangs try to break in (to steal grandma’s secret chai/molly vapor recipe), Kevin teaches him how to thwart the home invaders…and finally puts to rest some of his own demons. Karate Kid meets Panic Room meets Grand Torino. (NOTE: The ending is DOWNBEAT and I WILL NOT CHANGE IT.)
REAGAN AGAIN
It’s 2020 and the Republicans have not won the White House in a long, long time. A group of powerful donors fund a mad scientist’s experiment to bring Ronald Reagan back to life. It goes surprisingly well…until it doesn’t. Re-Animator meets Primary Colors. Jurassic Park meets The Candidate. Bulworth meets Night of the Living Dead.
THE DARKER CRYSTAL
Jen and Kira, the two Gelflings from The Dark Crystal, aren’t Gelflings anymore. They are full-grown Gelfs with Gelf-responsiblities and Gelf-problems. Their kids are sick of stories about “the old days” and just want the latest gadgets, Jen is sick of his VP job at the mining company that ships high-end crystal all over the world, and Kira is worried about growing old (she’s nearing the Big 1,000) and is considering plastic surgery because some of her features are starting to move when she talks. But when their hunky new neighbor moves in next door (Toby, the grown-up baby brother from “Labyrinth”) he and Kira have an affair that spins all of their lives out of control. Unfaithful meets The Hobbit.
#LOVEWINS
Data, the young genius from Goonies grew up and started one of the largest tech firms in the world. He also became a complete asshole. When he’s paralyzed in a car accident, none of his former Goon Dock mates show up to help him. Except one: Sloth. Sloth teaches Data how to live with his disability and helps him train for competitive wheelchair basketball. They also fall deeply in love and marry, which is now legal in all 50 states, so just get over it. The Social Network meets Coming Home meets Murderball.
GALLERIA HIGH SCHOOL
Shopping malls may have been THE place for ’80s teens to hang out, but the changing economics are killing the traditional mall and many are being shuttered all over the United States. When students at one inner city school are told their school is being closed for budget reasons, the students decide to take over the boarded-up local mall, converting the storefronts into classrooms, the food court into the cafeteria, and the movie theater into their assembly hall. That is, until the city decides to shut them down. Lean on Me meets Red Dawn…in a mall.
SON OF A GUN
It’s 2016 and the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program (better known as “Top Gun”) is having a hard time recruiting. Thirty years later, the only thing most young pilots know about the 80s movie is that “Take My Breath Away” was their dad’s go-to song to get mom in the sack. The Navy needs a new recruiting tactic, pronto. So they release a video game, where the best players are actually flying real combat drones over terrorist targets, from the comfort of their suburban living rooms. But replacing the U.S. Military with teenagers has some very, very bad repercussions. The Last Starfighter meets American Sniper. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory meets The Hurt Locker.
PUMP UP THE LITTLE PODCAST OF HORRORS
Hunter Slater is a high school student with a podcast. He dreams of being the voice of his generation…but literally nobody is listening. (“Hunter, it’s not 2013 anymore, nobody gives a shit about podcasts.”) When Hunter accidentally murders his orthodontist, he decides that the only way to get rid of the body is to cook and eat the corpse. On a whim, he uses his phone to make an audio recording of the meal prep and the resulting podcast becomes a huge hit. His fans can’t get enough but with success comes a demand to kill and kill again. American Psycho meets Being Julia meets Good Morning Vietnam. (OK, OK…it’s Little Shop of Horrors meets Pump Up the Volume.)
BULLY
A group of seven men (all played by the grown up teen villains from ’80s movies: James Spader, Thomas F. Wilson, Bill Paxton, etc.) are summoned to an isolated mansion. They are all extremely successful businessmen (tech, oil, insurance, weapons, etc.) who don’t know each other and will not reveal why they accepted the anonymous invitation. We soon learn the common denominator: they were all terrible bullies in high school. Now they must pay for their sins — past and present — as their unseen host pits them against each other in a horrific battle to the death. Clue meets Saw meets Hunger Games.
FINDING GRACELAND
When legendary singer Paul Simon develops Alzheimer’s disease, the members of Lady Smith Black Mambazo move in to take care of him. In the process, everybody learns a lot about different cultures and themselves. Finding Forrester meets Still Alice…but with laughs and songs and stuff. (NOTE: The ending is DOWNBEAT and I WILL NOT CHANGE IT.)
About the Author
John Kovacevich is a writer based in San Francisco. He “came of age” (eww) in the 1980s, went to film school and now works in advertising, where he spends his life pitching ideas that will never be produced, all of which makes him uniquely qualified to come up with this list.
