Take That / Screen Rant Pitch Meetings

The pitch meetings in Screen Rant Pitch Meetings not only take shots at the movies being covered, but frequently give the same treatment to other movies, creators and various unrelated targets.

---

• The episode for The Emoji Movie starts out strong with the revelation that the Screenwriter never bothered to actually write a plot.
  Producer: So, what's the story?
  Screenwriter: The what?
  Producer: The story, like, what's the movie about?
  Screenwriter: (unsure) Oh, yeah, uh, (flips through papers) yeah, no, I-I've got a bit of that in here...
  • And then, later on, it's revealed that the reason why the movie is laden with Product Placement (with the characters going through the apps on the phone) is because the Screenwriter more or less gave up after the first act.
    Screenwriter: Do you think people will be bothered by the product placement?
    Producer: No, people love product placement!
    Screenwriter: Oh, well, that's great, 'cause I literally have nothing planned for the second act of the film.
• In the episode for Season 8 of Game of Thrones, the Screenwriter's comment that Daenerys "forgot about the Iron Fleet" in "The Last of the Starks," is frequently mocked by way of bringing forgetfulness up as an excuse for various plot holes.
  • Similarly, when the Screenwriter talkes about compressing various plot points into 6 episodes in order to finish the series sooner, the Producer is all but ''begging'' him to consider extending the season, but to no avail.
• In The Last Jedi pitch meeting, the Screenwriter defend his decision to discard the plot threads set up in The Force Awakens by saying that J. J. Abrams didn't know the answers himself. When asked why he thinks that, he brings up Lost as an example.
• Not only does the Suicide Squad (2016) pitch meeting make fun of Jared Leto's Joker, the Joker (2019) pitch meeting has the Producer assume the film is a follow-up to Suicide Squad and ask if the Screenwriter's going to add a "very" to the "damaged" tattoo on the Joker's head. Notice that the Screenwriter, of all people, seems to think this is a terrible idea.
  • The pitch meeting for The Suicide Squad returns to this point, with the Screenwriter saying that the main characters all have sad backstories and the Producer thinking that they'll all have forehead tattoos to make that clear.
• The pitch meeting for the Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer doesn't waste any time getting to the Take That, describing the film as "an obligatory sequel to a moderately successful superhero movie." It's never a good sign when even the Producer is less than enthusiastic from the get-go.
• In the Artemis Fowl pitch meeting, the Screenwriter admits that he only has a vague idea what the books are about, and it's revealed that the only reason Judi Dench's agent got her into both this film and Cats is because the agent hates her.
• The Batman Begins pitch meeting doesn't shy away from making fun of the Darker and Edgier approach to a superhero who dresses as a bat, but the biggest Take That! is saved for the article at the end. At the end, when the Producer cautions the Screenwriter against going too dark, the Screenwriter asks, "What could go wrong with that, though?" Cue Answer Cut to an article about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice being critically panned, with the implication being that the film being even more dark and edgy than the Dark Knight trilogy was one of its flaws.
• In the Dark Phoenix meeting, Sophie Turner is cast as Jean Grey because she's popular due to playing Sansa Stark on Game of Thrones, a series that the Screenwriter says is associated with good writing. The Producer says that will always be true, and he can't wait for the last season.
• The Iron Man 3 pitch meeting mocks the idea of "subverting expectations," which the Screenwriter sets out to do by having Tony not use his Iron Man suits for most of the film, and have the Mandarin turn out to be an actor.
  Screenwriter: It doesn't matter if they enjoyed it. What matters is that I subverted their expectations.
  • The Wandavision pitch does something similar once the Producer immediately figures out the Agatha Harkness twist the moment Screenwriter mentions Agnes, implying that certain subversions the series took^note namely Pietro turning out to be someone else entirely were done out of spite for the audience theorizing things.
    Producer: Well, listen, if you give people some downtime, they're gonna theorize, that's just how that works.
    Screenwriter: Mmmm. (glances at notes; quietly) I'm gonna make you pay for that.
• The Transformers: The Last Knight pitch meeting has the Screenwriter admit that he consulted his five-year-old nephew for ideas on the story. The Producer then says that the Russians taught him how to use "Kompromat" to get famous actors to star in bad movies, then lists a lot of bad movies, most involving Robert De Niro.
• The Fifty Shades of Grey video covers the entire trilogy in only four minutes and especially takes shots at second and third movies, stating the former is like a Rom Com but without any romance, comedy, or likable characters. The summary of the third movie is simply "They're married now so they go on a honeymoon... and... yeah."
• The Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen movie is described as "a bunch of explosive action scenes with some dialogue in between that kind of explains why they're happening."
• The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales pitch meting, not even the Producer thinks much of the Screenwriter's plan to have Carina turn out to be Barbossa's daughter, disdainfully noting that he seems rather enamored with that plot element and asking him about it at the end. The news article at the end brings up how Rey turns out to be Palpatine's granddaughter in The Rise of Skywalker.
• During The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers pitch someone off-screen is heard saying "That's perfect, I love it!" It turns out this is M. Night Shyamalan, who routinely eavesdrops on the pitch meetings looking for story ideas. The scene being described is the Ents assault on Isengard, so Shyamalan's idea is for a movie where trees start attacking people, which both the Screenwriter and the Producer agree is going to be terrible.
• In the Batman Forever pitch meeting, the Producer claims to have gotten affected by an intelligence-draining ray like the one the Riddler used, and says he likes cartoons more now.
• The Squid Game pitch meeting has the Screenwriter represent the South Korean team who's working on the show, likely to explain why the Caucasian Ryan George is pitching a Korean show. When the Producer remarks that the Screenwriter looks like someone he'd cast to play an Asian character in a movie, the Screenwriter replies, "...Yeah. And please stop doing that kind of thing."
• Upon hearing that Super Sonic seemingly kills Robotnik, the Producer responds with this gem.

  Producer: Sonic just straight up kills a guy? Even Batman pretends to not do that.

• After the Producer repeatedly points out how characters in Morbius (2022) keep making decisions only to immediately contradict said decisions, the Screenwriter insists that those don't matter because they were in different scenes.

  Screenwriter: You keep referencing things characters said or did earlier in the movie. ... Pretty much every scene is a clean slate here.

• In the The Rings of Power pitch meeting, the Producer hates hearing how the show pronounces names like Galadriel, Numenor and Valinor.
• In the The Little Mermaid (2023) pitch meeting, the Producer decides to stop pretending to be creative after hearing yet another pitch for a live-action remake and acting like it's the first time.
• In the Attack of the Clones pitch meeting, the Producer takes a dig at the movie's poor and extensive CGI and proposes that they won't be aging horribly with technology.
• In the Tenet pitch meeting, after the movie gets too convoluted with its Infodump (not unlike some of Nolan's other movies), the Producer just gives up after some time.
  • In the same meeting, some of the Screenwriter's pitch gets drowned out by the improperly done background audio.
• The The Last Airbender pitch meeting mercilessly makes fun of the movie skipping many events in the original animated series and just narrating them to save time by enacting the "incident" where the Producer and Screenwriter save the world and become co-presidents without even showing their deeds.

---