Snakes on a Plane

Pekelo

Pekelo

The producers of this movie are pure genius. Imagine, had the makers of the movie Titanic titled it "Big boat sinks", then it could have been a real blockbuster...

I have an idea for a sequel. "Mice in a church", where little rodents running around in a congregation are wrecking havoc...
 
They didn't screen it for the critics which usually means the movie is bad, but I will go and see it no matter what the reviews are like.
 
Dude, where's my snake?

You know, "Snakes on a Plane" was originally going to be called... drum roll, please... "Pacific Air 121." No kidding!


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The New York Times
August 13, 2006
Week In Review

Titles That Didn’t Smell as Sweet

By THOMAS VINCIGUERRA

IN late 1924, a young writer sent his new novel, “Trimalchio in West Egg,” to Charles Scribner’s Sons. The publishers hated the title. “Consider as quickly as you can a change,” wrote the editor, Maxwell Perkins.

F. Scott Fitzgerald quickly complied; he substituted “The Great Gatsby.”

What’s in a name?

Plenty, especially if there is big money at stake. Take the Samuel L. Jackson thriller “Snakes on a Plane,” which will be released this week. If the movie has spurred more than the usual amount of summer-blockbuster buzz, it is owing in large part to the scary tell-all title.

Yet at one point, executives at New Line Cinema renamed the release “Pacific Air 121,” because they didn’t want to give away the plot. Mr. Jackson was appalled. “Nobody wants to see ‘Pacific Air 121,’ ’’ he told Entertainment Weekly. “That’s like saying ‘Boat to Heaven.’ ” New Line relented.

The arts and the media are filled with works conceived with different names. Margaret Mitchell thought about calling her novel of the Old South “Tote the Weary Load,” “Not in Our Stars” or “Bugles Sang True” before settling on “Gone With the Wind.” The editor Jann Wenner originally wanted to call Rolling Stone The Electric Newspaper. The creators of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” seriously considered “Owl Stretching Time,” “The Toad Elevating Moment” and “Bunn, Wackett, Buzzard, Stubble and Boot” for their brainchild.

It’s a tricky business, but there are a few rules of thumb.

“Short, simple names like ‘Titanic’ work well,” said Naseem Javed, president of ABC Namebank, a consulting firm based in New York and Toronto that specializes in corporate branding. “A beautiful name that looks great on a movie poster but which you can’t remember doesn’t work,’’ he said. “But unusual names like ‘Jurassic Park’ or dramatic ones like ‘Jaws’ park very well in your mind.”

David Brown, who co-produced “Jaws,” recalled that Peter Benchley, the novel’s author, struggled to come up with another name to suit his publisher. “They thought ‘Jaws’ would sound like a dentistry book,” Mr. Brown said.

Short and simple should not be confused with general or banal in creating a memorable title, according to David Permut, a producer whose credits include “Blind Date” and “Face/Off.” He cited “It Could Happen to You” (1994), which starred Nicolas Cage and Bridget Fonda. The working title was “Cop Gives Waitress $2 Million Tip.”

“I remember when that project was under development,” Mr. Permut said, “and I remember the original title sooner than the other one.”

Frequently, a change is made in the interest of taste. The Oscar-winning 1968 Mel Brooks comedy “Springtime for Hitler” was downgraded to “The Producers.” Similarly, the movie version of Mr. Brooks’s TV series “Get Smart” went to theaters in 1980 as “The Nude Bomb” but was retitled as the less risqué “The Return of Maxwell Smart” when released to network television.

Not infrequently, coming up with a fresh name backfires. The first Godzilla sequel was called “Revenge of Godzilla” for its premiere in Japan in 1955. Its American distributors toyed with the name “Godzilla Raids Again.” But to trick audiences into thinking they were seeing a brand-new behemoth, they settled on “Gigantis: The Fire Monster.” When the movie was dubbed, the characters kept referring to Godzilla as Gigantis. As a result, the movie is largely a forgotten entry in the franchise.

A major consideration is avoiding confusion. Joseph Heller’s World War II novel “Catch-18” was renamed “Catch-22” because Leon Uris was about to publish his own war novel, “Mila 18.” (Arguably, the alliterative and palindromic number made for a better title.)

Some titles are just placeholders until a better idea comes along. Before the Beatles came up with the lyrics to “Yesterday,” they jokingly referred to it as “Scrambled Eggs.” With the climax on Mount Rushmore in “North by Northwest” in mind, Alfred Hitchcock quipped that the film should be called “The Man in Lincoln’s Nose.”

A catchy phrase doesn’t guarantee success. The original title of Adolf Hitler’s 1926 magnum opus was “Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice.” Hitler’s publisher, Max Amann, said that such a turgid title would never sell, so he shortened it to “Mein Kampf,” or “My Struggle.” The change didn’t do much good; the book became a best seller only after Hitler came to power.

Mr. Brown believes that the entertainment industry is currently in a naming slump. “Movie titles baffle me now because they’re watered down,” he said. “A title must be different and even crazy. You can’t mistake ‘Spamalot’ for anything else, even if you don’t know what it means. But ‘Bewitched’? Forget about it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/weekinreview/13basic.html
 
Actually, I read somehwere that although rumours say other titles were also considered, they never really thought of changing Snakes on a Plane.
 
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