MovieChat Forums > Collateral Beauty (2016) Discussion > So, an obvious riff on Piers Anthony's I...

So, an obvious riff on Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality?


Seems like, at least from the trailer, this could be a movie set in Anthony's Incarnation's novel universe. The Incarnation of Death gets letters from people all the time. He can and does appear to mortals and does explain his position and his responsibilities.

It would be cool if the people behind the movie actually admitted they were inspired by Anthony's work (assuming they were). Kinda like how the Tv series Dead Like Me was inspired by Anthony's Incarnation series (specifically that of Death in On a Pale Horse).

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I believe you are correct. The novels were unique and made a lasting impression, particularly involving death and the collection of souls (remember the darkening effect on the soul's appearance by sin?) Hollywood is a collection of amazing talent, but it is also a collection of absolutely reprobate thieves, the worst being the writers and producers. I personally have been ripped off blatantly but being outside California and not connected, I had little recourse. It was amazing and instructive to have my manager read to me almost verbatim a screenplay synopsis I wrote that was being circulated in a minutely modified form as representative of a competing screenplay. In other words, a synopsis filched for someone else's screenplay which, it turned out, hadn't even been written yet--unlike mine that was complete and an authorized novel adaptation to boot. My manager stopped answering my calls and a certain big Prodco financed a deal based on a stolen synopsis and the buddy system they have. Screenwriter experts love telling rubes that, accurately, an idea can not--the same applies to a title--be copyrighted. But the synopsis had been carefully presented to several seemingly legit producers and...so on. What hurts is that the motion picture that resulted was a pale shade and a hokey modernization of what should have been: the true-to-character death struggle between a classic literary cult hero and a notoriously infamous villain.

But what can you expect from the state that plans to legislate cow farts in order to save the planet from global warming?

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