Redbeard's Curse: A Musical Pirate Fantasy :: SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board

The script is actually 96 pages.
I was quite intrigued with the first few pages of this script, showed quite a lot of imagination, Heaven, the giant baby counsellors, George Harrison as a spirit, like a strange Terry Gilliam fantasy, or a Monty Python film. What is set up is a Blues Brothers mission for God type plot that will take us into the world of many different rock worlds, I was expecting a rock musical mash up of Tommy, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band and others.
From what I got, the pot is about George Harrison, Robert Plant and Axel Rose trying to reach Avalon. Once they enter the good ship SS South Park, I got really lost. I know there was a ship battle in the third act with antagonists Yoko Ono and Valerie Bertanelli, who are on a mission to destroy rock and roll, they were defeated, but I am not sure if Harrison, Plan and Rose reached their goal.
It seemed to me that the story was supposed to be a satire on rock and roll artists, and there are amusing moments, and interesting use of songs in some scenes (some I played while reading this, like Marwa Blues).
The script became increasingly hard to follow because of the heavy overuse of pop culture icons and celebrities, everything from Southpark, American Idol, Beavis and Butthead, (Gollum from LOTR is an actual character here that comes along for the ride). The pop culture characters seriously change the tone of the story, and it no longer seem to be a rock satire. Especially in the second half of the script, this constant introduction of characters and celebrities really made the plot unclear. And diluted the investment I did have in the main characters that was built in those first few pages. The constant costume changes of our main characters got tiring very quickly and distracted from the main plot.
There are some very interesting visuals, an airship powered by music, the security coded gates of heaven, an airship parked in disabled bay, a zeppelin made of lead, but even if it was all CGI, I cannot see this film costing less than $250 million. I was wondering if these would be the actual celebrities or actors playing them. You’ve got Oprah Winfrey, Johnny Depp, not to mention a whole host of famous rock musicians. How are you going to get all these people? The film is now looking at a $300 million price tag.
The scene the most imaginative for me was the musical ships with the different bands. There’s no indication when the Pixar Cars characters come in, if it is going to be animation, CGI. And Gollum, it cost a fortune to turn Andy Serkis into Gollum, and you have Gollum in quite a few scenes. I would take Bill Cosby out of the script all together. Maybe this would work better as an animated film, like the Yellow Submarine.
The protagonists repeat the exposition a lot in the script. We know that the trio is trying to find Avalon, we do not need to see George and co telling into to other characters.
Some scenes I think some people would find offensive, like the ship with Bill Cosby, Barak Obama and Colin Powell.
As the story goes on it gets more elaborate and more bloated, and then out of nowhere, we go 4th wall with a scene with some studio execs talking about how this very script “would probably be the most expensive movie ever made!” expensive and will have too much licensing, the things I spelled out. There are scenes with Beavis and Butthead watching this film and commenting on it, makes me think that you copied or were influence by those similar scenes in Blazing Saddles. I am not sure if you are writing this as an actual spec script, or something to just practice your writing.