Olympus has fallen and White House Down...

is this year's Deep Impact/Armageddon or Dante's Peak/Volcano. Once again Hollywood has been struck with two movies that are about pretty much the same thing coming out in the same year. Any duders here care to share another pair or a number of movies with a very similar premise coming out within 12 months of one another? Also I'm not talking about something like say "The Dark Knight and Iron Man are movies about comic book super hero/heroes with no superpowers who use gadgets", etc.

This example is less of a coincidence, and more of a production nightmare, but look up Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist and the movie that came out less than a year later Exorcist: The Beginning

They had damn near the same cast, even.

Well there was Transformers and Transmorphers. But that was mainly a F-movie trying to lure ignorant consumers in buying the wrong movie I feel. I always wonder how these things happen, is it really coincidence?

@nictel: Not coincidence. That's exactly The Asylum's MO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asylum

As for the topic, I can't think of any others off the top of my head.

Actually there's a reason for that. Dominion was made before Exorcist: The Beginning but the production company didn't think it would be successful so they shelved Dominion, hired a new director and retooled it into Exorcist: The Beginning. After Exorcist: The Beginning came out and was TERRIBLE (not to mention a commercial flop, if I remember correctly), the production company gave the Dominion director some money to finish his version. It ended up being better than Exorcist: The Beginning but still not very good.

I've only seen the trailer for Olympus Has Fallen and it looks like COD: The Movie. It looks fucking terrible.

Yeah, that's kind of what I was getting at, it was a production nightmare. Still worth reading about.

It's a really fascinating story. The vitriol it caused among horror fans was also really entertaining to witness. God, both movies are just so...so bad.

@krataur: Oh that's just one of the worst things ever.

Also unlike Transformers, it has cheap special effects and a subplot involving lesbians

Wikipedia

Wel.. That actually sounds better than Transformers. I did not like that movie.

@mariachimacabre:@psylah: @nictel: @krataur: Thanks for the info dump guys. Now this is going to lead me down a rabbit's hole of movie production screw-ups.

With the case of Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down, I wonder if the writer of the script must have shopped this around and one studio initially rejected his idea but then studio later on decided to make a movie out of the same premise around the same time the original script/idea was being accepted in a different studio.

They should have turned this into a porn movie and also released an R-rated version like Pirates and Pirates II

Yeah the Olympus Has Fallen/White House Down thing is really odd. The plotpoints they have on Wikipedia are virtually identical. Roland Emmerich directed WHD so maybe we'll get an appearance by Godzilla.

Exactly, they're pretty much the same thing if you take out every possible subplot in both movies.

Olympus Has Falling looks fantastic.

I hear Dredd and The Raid are very similar

Ants and A Bug's Life. Pro tip: Ants was kinda bad. 2nd pro tip: A Bug's Life is one of Pixar's weakest movies.

Also Megamind and Despicable Me are close enough.

@jasonr86 said:

Pro-tip: If Gerard Butler stars in a movie then it's probably not very good.

Here's another production-nightmare one, Skyline and Battle: Los Angeles came out a few months apart. The special effects house that made B:LA were working on Skyline at the same time, which was also about aliens attacking Los Angeles. Sony sued them saying they used Sony's resources to develop their own film.

lol