I’ve thought for a while one of the great untapped goldmines for Hollywood is the Greek Gods. This is because they have a built in brand and name power. Say a Hercules film broke out like 2002’s Spiderman. Like the following comic book movies boom, movies about gods like Zeus, Poseidon, Hades and company built in the same vein, would be as easy a sell as the comic boom’s have been. If they perfected the formula to somehow make the Greek gods work - the combination of name power, suitability for big budget action plots and easy to make sequels, would have enormous potential.


But of course making Greek God movies work is far easier said than done. Setting a movie in a foreign time and place is too hard a sell for a blockbuster. With 2 Hercules movies coming in 2014, one with the Rock/Brett Ratner and one directed by Renny Harlin, they’re still trying - but expect a hard sell.

Here’s my idea of how to sell the immense brand potential of Greek Gods to modern audiences - Set it in modern day. Say instead of ancient Greece, we are given a timeline where in familiar 2013 New York City or Los Angeles, the citizens interact with the Greek Gods on a regular basis - who are still around 2000 years after the Greeks’ stories. Their real home is still a mountain in Greece, but they can appear in USA or a place like New York whenever they want.

After introducing the idea of the humans’ relationship with their supergods (Biggest.celebrities.ever.), setting up a plot for the movie is quite simple. Just follow the Transformers formula. Make the main characters of the film and center of the plot a few humans who start the film living a normal life. Following Transformers or Spider-man, a young college age male who dreams of getting the too hot for him girl.

Then drama starts on Greek God mountain. Either Hades comes up from the underworld to start shit, or he was living up on Earth behaving and something makes him figuratively hit Zeus and his homies with a steel chair. The gods split into Team Hades and Team Zeus. Add in rising conflicts that involve our little Shia LeBouef and Megan Fox - err, unnamed young male and hot young female, possibly involving a search for a McGuffin trinket that gives Hades ultimate power - yada yada yada - and eventually the climax in the 3rd act involves two teams of gods fighting each other in visually bombastic a way as possible and destroying a lot of buildings in New York/LA, destroying the Statue of Liberty and you know. They have ways of building these plots.

The point is, Greek Gods at war + cool superpowers that plays well in an action blockbuster + modern day cities and society + attractive human protagonists = 300 million domestic, 1 billion worldwide and multiple sequels and spinoffs. It's gold Jerry, gold.

*Drops mic, walks away*