A post full of questions?

[adiva_calandia]

Waaaaait wait wait.

Are Sherlock fans getting up in arms about Elementary just because they think it's a rip off?

. . . Did nobody notice Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes coming out before Sherlock and making beaucoup money and no doubt paving the way for Moffat and Gatiss pitching a Sherlock Holmes adaptation?

Has nobody noticed that this is how Hollywood, and indeed most creative media, works? You know, that thing where execs are really leery of spending money on something that's not a sure thing and so once a concept proves it can make money a whole bunch of similar things will inevitably pop up? Does no one remember that time we had all the zombie movies possible because things like Shaun of the Dead started to become hits? Or that time Law & Order hopped over the pond and gave Freema Agyeman a wig?

I mean, is that what's going on here? Or are people ticked off about Elementary for other reasons? Like Watson being a WoC. Please tell me it's not that?

Comments

[campkilkare]

The thing is that they didn't just get the idea from the BBC series; they specifically approached Moffat and the BBC about making an American version of their show. When they got turned down, Elementary popped up shortly after, and has been retooled constantly ever since in response to threats from the BBC.

It doesn't really say anything about whether it's going to suck or not, but the fact that it is literally as ripped off as they could get away without being sued, which range they determined experimentally by changing the show until the BBC stopped threatening to sue them, has created a lot of sight-unseen ill will. As it is now, I'm sure the show only bears a passing "they're both modern updates" resemblance; but that doesn't I want to support creators or a network who had to be forced at the business end of a lawsuit to do the right thing.

[aberration]

I'm aware of the history. I still don't care. I don't blame people for not liking it sight-unseen on that basis (unlike the Watson thing), but I personally just don't have much sympathy on the issue. I've seen a whole lot of actual IP theft (including the just-as-recently CBS attempt to create a rip off of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which actually has been cancelled), but in this case, the bottom line is there was a different source that they're both stealing from, though in that case the stealing is completely legal (as, don't get me wrong, I think it should be). I just don't have as much sympathy for creators who complain when someone else steals from the same thing they did.

[campkilkare]

In turn, I think there is a pretty huge difference between a) complaining that someone stole from the same thing as you did (even as a cash-in on the publicity you've created) and b) complaining that someone stole specifics of your interpretation and tried to pass it off as their own re-working of the same source material. The former happens all the time--witness the two Snow Whites coming out this year--while the second is actionable and pretty sleazy. I don't have sympathy for Moffat in particular--his bank account is orders of magnitude bigger than mine, he doesn't need my heart to break for him--but I do think the people behind this show are being pretty duplicitous.

[aberration]

I guess, to be 100% honest, I'm seeing what you're characterizing as "pretty duplicitous" as "how this often works." If I were to boycott the producers of any media that engaged in sleazy practices to basically avoid having to pay for rights or royalties, well, I don't think I'd have a lot of corporate media sources left. My personal favorite at the moment is Sony/Columbia Pictures stealing the story of a movie they'll be releasing in the coming months from a novel, relying on the fact that copyright claims by individual authors against distributors/studios are almost never successful due to the comparative resources each has.

So, yeah, it's shady. And I get why people wouldn't like it or want to want to watch it on that basis. I guess I just don't find it particularly shadier than what generally goes on with these kinds of transactions (or surprising that CBS would be all "hey is there a way we could do this without having to pay money"). And given my disinclination against treating BBC as a wholly original corporate author, those particular facts still don't really sway me very much.