Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. This is certainly one way to shut up a hater, I guess. Borys Kit has a story up on Hollywood Reporter about Don Murphy's Angryfilms picking up the rights to a novel called THE FLOCK written by James Robert Smith. It's apparently about some pterodactyls or other type of prehistoric bird species found in the Florida Everglades who become hellbent on protecting their land.

What's really interesting to me is the origin of this option. Apparently while reading Eddie Campbell's blog Murphy stumbled across this one guy talking shit about the FROM HELL movie Murphy produced. If you know anything about Don Murphy you know he couldn't let things lie and found out this poster, James Robert Smith, had a book out, so he got a copy expecting to hate it and, I guess, humiliate the guy on the forum. Turns out he loved it and instead optioned it.

How bizarre, right? I hope the movie happens just so that story is cemented in infamy. This is like old Hollywood craziness.

I myself have only ever had one personal encounter with Murphy in which I got an email from him after posting something on TRANSFORMERS while it was in production. I think it was a story that another director was being considered right after Bay came on board (which was true). I don't think it was even a negative piece, in fact I probably defended Bay as a good match for the material (which I still think he is). But I got a fortune cookie email from Murphy that seemed to be written in haiku saying that my agenda will soon be revealed. Needless to say, I was surprised as I wasn't aware I had any other agenda other than wanting to see a fun movie made.

Unfortunately I lost that email in a harddrive failure (or I would have posted the whole thing), but I'll always have the memory.

I know that Murphy does troll the message boards of the nets and have seen his fury unleashed at full force first hand when he went after Moriarty pretty hardcore. So this story really makes me laugh. This Smith fellow was in Murphy's crosshairs, but ended up writing something so good that Murphy had to put that aside and make this work. He's apparently angling the project for a tentpole studio release.

Love him or hate him, you can't deny Murphy's got good taste in material. He has a talent for discovering new things and getting in on the ground floor with a lot of great properties. I look forward to hearing how this one turns out.

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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