Film Pitch Time – More Monkey-Fighting Snakes on More Monday-to-Friday Planes

Anyone who was some semblance of alive and could use the internet in 2006 knew of Snakes on a Plane, a balls-out ridiculous concept from a Pittsburgh university administrator which somehow became an actual movie. A gangster tries to kill one witness by unleashing a crate of highly aggressive venomous snakes onboard a plane, where Samuel L. Jackson is a foul-mouthed FBI agent who has to deal with all of this. It was huge on the internet in 2006 (despite ending up a box-office dud), and when researching it, I found this quote from Sam Jackson;

And I thought I should raise myself to the challenge of Mr. Jackson.

Alright, I wanna make a great B-Movie extravaganza. There’s gonna be no people-of-the-month in this movie like how Busta Rhymes was in Halloween: Resurrection, there’s going to be no attempt to make a serious plot, but there’s going to be a ton of stupid deaths and dark comedy. As I am naturally too cash-strapped for Sam Jackson, I might have to relegate him to a cameo as a snake handler or something.

So, let’s begin. A box of venomous snakes is being sent from an Australian research facility to the San Diego Zoo on a commercial flight. Because of the nuclear testing that was done in Australia in the 1950’s, these snakes have become much larger and deadlier than regular snakes, and so are more attractive to the administrators at San Diego Zoo, who are starved for new attractions. But during the flight, the snakes smell a cat in the cargo bay, break out of their box through sheer willpower, and start slithering throughout the plane…

I haven’t really created detailed characters yet, but here’s the ones I would consider; a Guy Ritchie-esque London backpacker, a girl writing an essay on the radio discussions in Deadly Premonition because she feels like it, a charming treasure hunter, a Doctor Who fan, someone who tries a comedy routine on the snakes to get them to stop…I hope you’re getting the impression of a cast of really random people, all of whom are open to raceblind and sexblind casting.

Here’s the death/snake scenes I wanna see…

- A guy reaching for a sandwich on a trolley but grabbing a rattlesnake tale, at which point the snake whiplashes back to him

- Someone swinging for a snake with a hammer and smashing the window, getting sucked out Alien: Resurrection style.

- A snake biting someone so hard they rip out their spine and skull before coiling up with it

- A dog playing with a snake and biting its head, using it like a whip against the other snakes

- A first-person view of someone getting swarmed by snakes as they crawl through the cabin

- Maybe a James Bond style opening involving a spitting snake? I mean, Friday the 13th Part IV did it, so it’s not copyrighted…

Anyway, you get the point. I need more suggestions, so leave me some in the comments.

How would I make this movie? Good question. I may need to go to some airfield and beg really, really hard while promising eternal servitude to Etihad and its subsidiaries. In terms of snakes, I’ll go the Northern Territory and ask someone for some as “pets”, then drive back really, really fast. In terms of money…is living on an apple a day, walking the 3 hours to work and selling all of Dad’s comics really that hard? I don’t think so. Kevin Smith did it.

Anyway, this was something I created in an afternoon while I was feverish with dread and stress. This felt really good. If you can add anything, that would great.

And if you’re wondering about the title of the article, that is what they replaced the MF word with when Snakes on a Plane was aired on TV. Similarly, Bruce Willis’s iconic line from Die Hard 2 is “Yippee-Kiy-Yay, Mister Falcon”, according to HBO.

What film pitches do you have? Leave them in the comments below.