Fake Pitch Meeting: "My Little Pony: The Movie" · 3:23am Apr 11th, 2018

Just recently on Youtube I stumbled upon a relatively-still-unknown series put out by Screen Rant called "Pitch Meeting", in which one guy plays both a movie producer and a screenwriter trying to pitch a movie to him with hilarious (and truthful) results. And since I figure he'll never get around to doing this one, I figured I might as well. Please go watch it on Youtube. It's very funny and surprisingly clean (for the most part).

(Scene shows the outside of "Lionsgate" on a busy business day. Cut to the inside to show a smiling movie executive.)

EXECUTIVE: So, I hear you got a new animated children's movie to pitch to me.

(Scene shows an equally smiling screenwriter.)

SCREENWRITER: Yes sir, I do! You know what's the most popular thing among both very young little girls and adult single college males today?

EXECUTIVE: ...No, and I'm honestly kind of freaked-out to know there is such a thing.

SCREENWRITER: "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic", that's what! So I figured we could make a full length movie about it.

EXECUTIVE: Really? You want to make a movie that appeals to adult single college males that have very particular tastes in programming?

SCREENWRITER: Correction: adult single college males that have very particular tastes in programming that also spend a lot of money on those particular tastes.

EXECUTIVE: I do love money.

SCREENWRITER: I'm quite fond of it myself.

EXECUTIVE: Ok, let's hear it.

SCREENWRITER: Alright, so there's this big bad villain who kind of looks like a cross between a monkey and a yeti called the 'Storm King' who's out to conquer the world.

EXECUTIVE: Oh, is he called the Storm King because he has power over weather and uses 'storms' to conquer his enemies?

SCREENWRITER: No, he has no supernatural powers whatsoever.

EXECUTIVE: Why is he called the Storm King then?

SCREENWRITER: I got his name from a random villain name generator. You take the name of something dangerous and natural and pair it with the name of some form of ruler. I got 'Fire Emperor' first but that was already taken. Then I got 'Lightning McQueen' but that was a bust too. Finally I ended up with 'Storm King'.

EXECUTIVE: Gotcha.

SCREENWRITER: So the Storm King decides, "hey, if I'm going to take over the world, I'm going to need magic". So he decides to steal it from the ponies of Equestria which is a country completely run by cartoon horses.

EXECUTIVE: Cartoon horses have magic?

SCREENWRITER: Yeah, you see...they kind of naturally produce it. You know, how bees make honey, and how whales make perfume barf.

EXECUTIVE: Wow. And so they have magic?

SCREENWRITER: Oh yeah, and it's pretty awesome. All the horses with wings can manipulate weather, all the horses with unicorn horns can shoot death beams and use telekinesis, and all the horses that have neither of those can, uh, farm. Anyway-

EXECUTIVE: Wait, farm?

SCREENWRITER: Uh...yeah.

EXECUTIVE: Farming is a magic power?

SCREENWRITER: Well, uh...have you ever tried growing corn?

EXECUTIVE: (Long pause) ...Go on.

SCREENWRITER: And above all of these are these things called alicorns, who are, like, really big on magic. They're overloaded with it. They can do all sorts of cool things like make Northern Lights...

EXECUTIVE: That's pretty impressive. Earth's ionosphere lighting up with radiation.

SCREENWRITER: Raising the moon...

EXECUTIVE: Wow! The moon is heavy.

SCREENWRITER: Even making the sun rise.

EXECUTIVE: They make the sun rise. So...ponies are essentially gods.

SCREENWRITER: These ponies are.

EXECUTIVE: Wow. So what kind of things do they do with their power?

SCREENWRITER: As it turns out, not much. You see, they are living in utopia. Literally the worst problem any of the pony gods ever have to deal with is throwing a party other ponies might not like.

EXECUTIVE: That's amazing. It sounds a lot like "Trolls".

SCREENWRITER: Yes it does.

EXECUTIVE: Could we start out that movie like "Trolls"?

SCREENWRITER: Beg your pardon?

EXECUTIVE: Have it start like "Trolls". Have all the happy, colorful ponies having a big party while a pop song plays.

SCREENWRITER: Uh, that's not what I...

EXECUTIVE: "Trolls" made a lot of money.

SCREENWRITER: Yes, but I had this whole...

EXECUTIVE: "Trolls" made a lot of money.

SCREENWRITER: Well, I...kind of had this stain glass opening already written that would have kind of explained the situation with the alicorns so that the people not familiar with My Little Pony in the audience wouldn't be totally lost, but...

EXECUTIVE: "Trolls" made a lot of money.

SCREENWRITER: ...Ok, we can start with that. (Rips a page out of the script) Anyway, all of the Storm King's bad guys show up to attack and steal the alicorn magic. It turns out, in a big surprise, they're being led by an evil pony with a broken unicorn horn.

EXECUTIVE: Oh, but since the evil pony has a broken horn the pony can't use any magic against them.

SCREENWRITER: Actually, her magic is better than any of theirs.

EXECUTIVE: (Blinking) I thought you said the unicorns need their horns to do magic.

SCREENWRITER: Oh yes, they do. Useless without it.

EXECUTIVE: But...the evil pony doesn't have a horn and she does the most powerful magic.

SCREENWRITER: Absolutely. Much better than theirs.

EXECUTIVE: But she's a unicorn without a horn, and they can't do magic.

SCREENWRITER: None whatsoever.

EXECUTIVE: But the evil pony can do really big magic.

SCREENWRITER: You bet.

(A pause)

EXECUTIVE: All unicorns without horns can't do magic.

SCREENWRITER: Yes.

EXECUTIVE: The evil pony does not have a horn.

SCREENWRITER: Yes.

EXECUTIVE: And therefore...?

SCREENWRITER: Her magic is better than any of theirs.

EXECUTIVE: ...Let's just move on.

SCREENWRITER: Right. So, she leads an invasion of pony capital to steal the alicorn magic.

EXECUTIVE: And since they're all pony gods, that's going to be, like, really, really hard to do, isn't it?

SCREENWRITER: Actually, it's super easy. Barely an inconvenience. She's just going to throw these little gems at them and...poof, they're turned into crystal statues.

EXECUTIVE: Really?

SCREENWRITER: The whole thing will take less than a minute.

EXECUTIVE: Huh.

SCREENWRITER: Something wrong?

EXECUTIVE: The Storm King wants alicorn magic.

SCREENWRITER: Yes.

EXECUTIVE: But he can defeat the only sources of it in less than a minute.

SCREENWRITER: Yes.

EXECUTIVE: Oh.

SCREENWRITER: Anyway, one of the alicorns, Twilight Sparkle, manages to escape and she's off to find the Queen of the Hippos.

EXECUTIVE: Ah.

SCREENWRITER: And one of her friends is going to make a joke about how they're hungry. (Grinning) And then the rest of them are going to say... (Points to him)

EXECUTIVE: ...What?

SCREENWRITER: They say...?

EXECUTIVE: What?

SCREENWRITER: Hungry...?

EXECUTIVE: I still have no idea what you're doing.

SCREENWRITER: Hungry...?

EXECUTIVE: I do not get this in the slightest.

SCREENWRITER: Hippos! You know? Because Hasbro makes "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" and "Hungry Hungry Hippos"?

EXECUTIVE: Oh! Ha-ha!

SCREENWRITER: Ha-ha!

EXECUTIVE: Ha-ha-ha-ha!

SCREENWRITER: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! (Deep breath) Anyway, then they find out what they're really looking for is the Queen of the Hippogriffs.

EXECUTIVE: So that misunderstanding is in the movie simply for that one joke, huh?

SCREENWRITER: Yes it is.

EXECUTIVE: It's totally worth it.

SCREENWRITER: I know, right?

EXECUTIVE: That's an Oscar-worthy joke.

SCREENWRITER: It came to me in a dream one night. Or maybe I just accidentally sniffed rubber cement.

EXECUTIVE: Anyway, so what happens after that?

SCREENWRITER: Toy Commercial.

EXECUTIVE: Excuse me?

SCREENWRITER: Yeah, there's nothing for the entire second third of the movie but what basically amounts to product placements for future toys. The ones that are really good enough will go into the next season.

EXECUTIVE: Doesn't that seem a little shameless?

SCREENWRITER: It's all Hasbro did for the original G.I. Joe and Transformers movies. And they're far more popular than the live-action ones.

EXECUTIVE: Good point. What kind of toys, I mean (laughs) characters did you plan to have?

SCREENWRITER: I was thinking there can be some merponies who are living in hiding from the Storm King because he attacked their kingdom and because those used to be a thing in the toy line in the 80s but they haven't appeared on the show yet.

EXECUTIVE: Oh! Merponies! Those are the things Harry Potter flew in the third film!

SCREENWRITER: Uh...no, those are hippogriffs.

EXECUTIVE: You should definitely put those flying, half-eagle merponies into your script.

SCREENWRITER: Those are hippogriffs. I mentioned them earlier.

EXECUTIVE: In fact, why not make it the queen of the merponies instead? They'd be much cooler.

SCREENWRITER: But...they're already...

EXECUTIVE: Merponies should be the focus.

SCREENWRITER: ...Ok, fine. We'll make the merponies turn into hippogriffs.

EXECUTIVE: You mean the hippogriffs into merponies.

SCREENWRITER: ...Ok.

EXECUTIVE: What else?

SCREENWRITER: We have bird pirates.

EXECUTIVE: Pirates are tight. So long as they're not real pirates who do the whole, you know, pillaging and murdering thing.

SCREENWRITER: Oh no, these will be purely kid-film-pirates. All they'll do is go around yelling "Arr!", waving around swords while wearing pirate clothes, and while they'll have booty they'll never explain who they killed or how they got it.

EXECUTIVE: Awesome.

SCREENWRITER: And we have an anthropomorphic talking cat.

EXECUTIVE: Kids love their anthropomorphic talking cats.

SCREENWRITER: (Smiling) So I've assumed.

EXECUTIVE: What does this one do?

SCREENWRITER: He tricks young ponies into coming to his place and then he sells them into mob slavery.

EXECUTIVE: ...That's actually really dark.

SCREENWRITER: I know.

EXECUTIVE: Like, if these young ponies were young girls, this movie probably would not be recommended for children.

SCREENWRITER: I thought the same thing, but then I remember "Pinocchio" did the same thing. And that was Disney.

EXECUTIVE: Good point. But shouldn't there be ponies in this script?

SCREENWRITER: Come again?

EXECUTIVE: The film is "My Little Pony: The Movie", right?

SCREENWRITER: Yes.

EXECUTIVE: So shouldn't it have actual ponies in it?

SCREENWRITER: (Dumbfounded a moment) Uh...er...well... (Gets out a magic marker and flips to a page in the script) I, uh, guess so. I mean, Twilight Sparkle does have friends that I guess could come along.

EXECUTIVE: Great! What are they going to do?

SCREENWRITER: Hmm?

EXECUTIVE: What'll they do?

SCREENWRITER: Oh, uh... (Starting to write) Well, there's one called Rainbow Dash. She can help when they run into the pirates. All of the pirates will be sad and depressed because they had to give up being pirates because the Storm King beat them up and forced them to do menial slave labor for the rest of their lives.

EXECUTIVE: So what happens?

SCREENWRITER: Rainbow Dash will say: "Why don't you guys go back to being pirates?" And they'll say: "Ok", and...they'll be pirates again.

EXECUTIVE: Hmm...that seems a bit simplistic.

SCREENWRITER: It'll happen through a song.

EXECUTIVE: Oh. (Grinning) Gotcha. Who else?

SCREENWRITER: There's this one called Rarity. She'll get the cat to help them escape.

EXECUTIVE: Oh, she gets him to give up his life of pony trafficking? How does she do that?

SCREENWRITER: She'll, uh... (Writes something) I dunno...fix his coat.

EXECUTIVE: ...He'll give up doing something incredibly morally depraved as a lifestyle because she fixed his coat.

SCREENWRITER: (Still writing) I guess we could go with that it was really bothering him so much that he couldn't think straight...? And then there's this one called Fluttershy who will...I dunno...um...be cute. And this one with a hat who will, uh...wear a hat...

EXECUTIVE: Are you just making up random reasons for them to be in the movie while I'm talking to you?

SCREENWRITER: Uh...no.

EXECUTIVE: Can you name me one pony besides Twilight Sparkle who is there to do anything in this movie?

SCREENWRITER: Um... (Flips through the script a bit) Oh! Here! There's Pinkie Pie! She's this pink pony who's always happy, bouncing around, has fluffy hair, and this really perky voice!

EXECUTIVE: Oh! So she's there to just be this lighthearted, energetic ball of joy?

SCREENWRITER: No, she's actually completely insane.

EXECUTIVE: Come again?

SCREENWRITER: Yes, she's happy because she's utterly psychotic. During the movie she'll talk to skeletons as if they're talking back to her, let bugs crawl over her face... There's one scene where she'll laugh hysterically and uncontrollably while she's throwing one cupcake after another at this one Storm King soldier. If she was throwing anything else that was even remotely hazardous or painful, like rocks or sharp pieces of metal, it would be disturbing to watch. Also, she giggles in glee when she fires herself and her friends out of a cannon right into a tornado.

EXECUTIVE: The peaceful ponies have cannons.

SCREENWRITER: Yes, but they only use them to shoot cakes at each other.

EXECUTIVE: That makes absolutely no sense. It would be ineffective as a cannon and would ruin the cake.

SCREENWRITER: Yes, it would. But kids love cake and Pinkie Pie.

EXECUTIVE: Ok, so after you finish promoting all the toys, then what happens?

SCREENWRITER: Well, the evil pony ends up capturing Twilight and takes her aboard her big scary doom ship. And it's going to look just like the Carbon Freezing Platform from "The Empire Strikes Back" on the inside.

EXECUTIVE: Really? That's cool. Does that mean they're going to have an epic duel?

SCREENWRITER: No, she's going to sing to her while she's in a cage.

EXECUTIVE: ...I thought this was one of those pony gods.

SCREENWRITER: Yeah, but she's in a cage that's made of...(shrug) anti-pony magic stuff.

EXECUTIVE: So the Storm King can make stuff that's invulnerable to pony magic yet he thinks he needs pony magic to take over the world.

SCREENWRITER: Well, you see, he doesn't really want it to conquer anyone with it. He wants it more to look trendy.

EXECUTIVE: Trendy?

SCREENWRITER: Yeah, like...using pony magic is like being gluten-free or having the latest Apple product in this world. Anyway, it's during this time that the evil pony makes the big reveal.

EXECUTIVE: Big reveal?

SCREENWRITER: She tells Twilight why she became so evil and was willing to completely betray and enslave her own species and destroy her own country even though it's filled with nothing but innocent creatures who never hurt anyone.

EXECUTIVE: Oh! That sounds interesting. What happened to her?

SCREENWRITER: As it turns out...her friends were jerks to her.

EXECUTIVE: And?

SCREENWRITER: And what?

EXECUTIVE: And what else?

SCREENWRITER: That's it. Her friends were jerks to her.

EXECUTIVE: She went from being a happy, cheerful pony to a heartless conqueror because her friends were jerks to her.

SCREENWRITER: Yeah.

EXECUTIVE: I've had friends who were jerks to me and I'm not a heartless conqueror. I'm sure so has most of the audience.

SCREENWRITER: Well, you see, the thing is no one in Equestria ever becomes evil because they're greedy for power or selfish or cruel or hate people. They do it because they don't have any friends.

EXECUTIVE: So the movie is saying if you run into a heartless dictator, someone who is trying to pillage and murder you, or someone who is a human trafficker, you only need to make friends with them and everything will be fine?

SCREENWRITER: It will if you're a cartoon horse.

EXECUTIVE: Fair enough. So then what happens?

SCREENWRITER: The rest of the girls decide to go rescue Twilight but they're afraid they can't do it alone, but it turns out the anthropomorphic cat, the bird pirates, and one of the hippogr-I mean, merponies decides to help them out since they're all friends now.

EXECUTIVE: Oh! Because they helped them all in their own unique way along the journey?

SCREENWRITER: No. As a matter of fact, all of their lives are worse for having met them. The anthropomorphic cat ended up getting arrested by the evil pony, the bird pirates had their ship blown up, and Twilight plain up tried to steal from the merponies.

EXECUTIVE: And...that made them friends.

SCREENWRITER: Yes it did.

EXECUTIVE: As opposed to, I don't know, enemies.

SCREENWRITER: Yes.

EXECUTIVE: Ok, then what?

SCREENWRITER: They all make it back to Pony Washington D.C. and they have to fight through all of the Storm King's army.

EXECUTIVE: Just by themselves? That sounds like it's going to be a tough fight.

SCREENWRITER: No, it'll be super easy. Barely an inconvenience. They'll just kind of go in there and beat them up. Very one-sided. The merpony alone is going to pick one up and throw them into four others.

EXECUTIVE: Didn't you say they were living in hiding from the Storm King, but one of them is strong enough to pick up a single one of his minions and use him as a weapon to defeat four others?

SCREENWRITER: Yes.

EXECUTIVE: So why didn't they beat up the Storm King years ago?

SCREENWRITER: If they did that, there would be no movie except for a really big pony party.

EXECUTIVE: A third of the ponies can use weather as a weapon and the other third can use magic and they lost to these guys in one minute, but this little group defeats them all. How do they manage that?

SCREENWRITER: Well, there will be this one scene where the anthropomorphic cat will pick up the baby dragon that Twilight keeps as a pet and use him as a flame thrower to incinerate several Storm King minions.

EXECUTIVE: That's...pretty graphic. Burning to death is not very child appropriate.

SCREENWRITER: Don't worry; it's all going to happen from a really distant shot so it'll still be PG.

EXECUTIVE: It's that easy to get a PG?

SCREENWRITER: You bet.

EXECUTIVE: (Smiling) Rating systems mean nothing, do they?

SCREENWRITER: (Smiling and shaking his head) Not a single thing.

EXECUTIVE: And then what happens?

SCREENWRITER: Well, Twilight goes up to evil pony just as she's going to be sucked into a tornado, saves her, and says, more or less, "I'll be a friend that won't be a jerk to you". And so she turns good.

EXECUTIVE: Just like that, huh?

SCREENWRITER: Well, I thought it would make a good lesson. That you can't really take people who are "bad" at face value. Everyone was good at some point in their lives, but we all have a deep, unresolved hurt. If you learn to heal someone's hurt instead of just outright hating them, you can find there's a good individual underneath all of that. So with evil pony, anthropomorphic cat, bird pirates, and merponies, that's kind of the overall lesson.

EXECUTIVE: Huh, that's actually a pretty nice lesson. So how do they make friends with the Storm King?

SCREENWRITER: They don't. He gets killed.

EXECUTIVE: Hmm.

SCREENWRITER: And that's pretty much it. I figured there's a lot of new characters in it, so if we could get some A-list celebrities to voice them-

EXECUTIVE: Actually, we're Lionsgate. We don't have the kind of money Disney or Dreamworks has to pull in that kind of talent.

SCREENWRITER: Oh. In that case, maybe we could settle for some B and C-list celebrities.

EXECUTIVE: That's more like it. Who did you have in mind?

SCREENWRITER: I was thinking Charlize Theron for the evil pony.

EXECUTIVE: Too A-list. How about her co-star in that Huntsman sequel?

SCREENWRITER: Emily Blunt?

EXECUTIVE: Perfect. What about the bird pirate leader?

SCREENWRITER: How about Zoe Saldana?

EXECUTIVE: That'll be great. I bet she fantasizes about the day she gets to play a human in a movie.

SCREENWRITER: Now for the merpony, I was thinking we can get someone who no one ever knows by name but they say "oh, I know her!" the moment they mention anything she's been in. Like Kristen Chenowith.

EXECUTIVE: Who's she?

SCREENWRITER: She was Maleficent in "Descendants" and Glinda in "Wicked" alongside Idina Menzel.

EXECUTIVE: Oh, I know her!

SCREENWRITER: There you go. And since we're on the topic of Idina Menzel, since we can't get her, let's bring in her ex to round out the cast and have Taye Diggs play the anthropomorphic cat.

EXECUTIVE: Great. But who can play the villain?

SCREENWRITER: Would it be too much to ask if we could get...oh, I dunno...someone big and imposing like Liev Schrieber?

EXECUTIVE: Not a problem at all. He'll be on it today.

SCREENWRITER: Really?

EXECUTIVE: Absolutely. We'll invoke the Richard Harris Technique.

SCREENWRITER: Richard Harris Technique?

EXECUTIVE: Yeah, the only reason Richard Harris played Dumbledore in Harry Potter was because his granddaughter told him he had to because she was a fan of the books. So all we have to do is get Liev Schrieber's daughter to say she wants to see him in a kid's film and he'll be sold.

SCREENWRITER: Fantastic. So that means you'll make it?

EXECUTIVE: Hmm...I don't know. The show is still running, isn't it? What if this movie takes a long time to come out and not only does the fanbase drop off severely but they introduce new characters who won't be in the film so the animators will have to, I don't know, just throw in a few shots of them in the background?

SCREENWRITER: Don't be silly. Nerds never give up their fandoms. That's why they're both crazy and pathetic.

EXECUTIVE: Besides, animated movies are a huge deal and take a lot of money to make, and we're catering to an audience that's going to be very little girls whose parents probably won't want to take them to it and adult single college males that won't want to be caught in the theater seeing it.

SCREENWRITER: That's not a problem. I guarantee this movie will make money.

EXECUTIVE: Really?

SCREENWRITER: You see, this movie won't be in 3D. It'll be in 2D. 2D animation is so cheap and computerized nowadays that we could have 100 people go to see this movie and between the merchandising and product tie-ins we'd still make money. Enough to actually do this again in a couple years even if it does pitifully in the box office.

EXECUTIVE: I don't know... You think that'll work?

POSSIBLE 2ND MY LITTLE PONY MOVIE ON THE WAY!

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