keep getting lower and lower on what is made into movies? Should we not be surprised if "Jack and Jill the Movie" is actually made?

Dude. Your worst nightmare can't keep up with the grim reality. Did you know that Bazooka Joe the movie is in pre-production? I *** you not, look it up on imdb.
Well, that's due to economic bankrupcty, not creative bankrupcty. It's common wisdom that even indies need a recognizable face to get distribution and have a prayer of making the investors' money back. But common wisdom can be wrong. Look at the runaway success of Slumdog Millionaire, and Once.

Sent that too soon. I'm not saying that I like this plan, or that it succeeds in making movies that are either hits (Punisher War Journal) or fun to watch (who else *** hated Spider-Man 2?). But this is probably what they're thinking.
I think, to a lesser extent, this has always happened. The first feature film made in Hollywood, 1924's The Squaw* Man, was based on a hit Broadway play. It's just more ridiculous than it's been before.
Alexei
*Supposedly squaw doesn't actually mean "C word" in Iroquois like Oprah says it does, but holy *** would this movie be funny if it did.

Using some of the many interpretations of common nursery rhymes could make a good core to a film. Certainly could have more depth than most comic books. Add a plot point where the last line is the key to an international secret society plot that the hero figures out at just the last minute the meaning of "With vinegar and brown paper." to gain control of Marie Antoinette's hidden jewel encrusted deadly mechanical spider and you've got a blockbuster!

This is the part that needs to change. Movies used to be disposable entertainment, which is why people could take some risks with them. Now, you're spending a quarter-billion dollars (can that be right?) on something like Avatar so there's no way you can justify doing something, just to see how it might work out.
The other side of that is that is that if you're not trying to build an audience of 300,000 people, you also don't need an earth-shattering marketing plan. If you can make a feature film for $100K - and you can, I've worked on a lot of 'em - then you don't have to sell tickets to the entire world, plus have an earth-shattering DVD release and a HappyMeal® toy tie-in, just to break even. You can't afford stars, but then again you're not beholden to stars.

You're not going through endless development intended to do nothing more than blanderize your writing until it's 'safe' to sell to the entire potential movie-going public. 'Once' didn't succeed in spite of being so inexpensively made, it succeeded BECAUSE it was so inexpensively made. It didn't have to make a lot of money to turn a profit, and if it had tanked completely, the loss wouldn't have been so great - so it was safer to take some creative risks, which resulted in a film that did what other, multi-million dollar films simply couldn't do.
We all spend our days or nights writing spec scripts, that no one's ever going to buy. There's just no real market for them anymore, because the people who'd buy them don't want new or different or interesting; they want bland and predictable and ordinary. Ovum could make one of her scripts into a movie, if she wanted to - raise the money, hire the director and crew, produce the thing herself, and release it as the finished product she wants - not as some watered- down version that's been tweaked according to notes from Jimmy "JJ" "Kid Dy-No-Mite!" Walker and his 'people.' Trouble is, most of the folks who try this approach - and I've worked on a lot of 'em - haven't taken the opportunity to express any kind of personal vision, but have just tried to make cheaper versions of the bland, predictable, and ordinary that H'wood does so well.

If we want better movies, we have to make them, and support them when others make them.

Life Continues, Despite
Evidence to the Contrary
Steven