1 Ophelia: We need an idea for something else to film.
1 Shakespeare: What about a sequel?
2 Ophelia: No… too derivative.
2 Shakespeare: A prequel!
2 Ophelia: Too predictable.
3 Shakespeare: Ooh! What about a remake of an old TV show? Like… I Dream of Jeannie?
4 Ophelia: No. We want something truly new and original.
4 Shakespeare: But... everyone does that!

I initially wrote this comic script using a TV show which I remembered fondly from my childhood*: Mister Ed. For a long time I've been joking that with the recent trend of recycling old TV shows into new movies, it was only a matter of time before they revived the somewhat silly concept of a talking horse embodied in Mister Ed. I figured that this show was too contrived and old to be the subject of a successful movie revival, and so the fitting subject of a joke about that concept.

Only I discovered when double checking that:

• There was a direct to TV movie made of Mister Ed in 2004! It was meant to be the pilot of a revived TV series, but the series wasn't picked up and in fact the pilot movie never aired.
• Waterman Entertainment has in fact announced that they are planning to develop Mister Ed into a feature film! This announcement was made in 2012, but there has been no further news since, and it's possible they've quietly dropped the idea. But still, a studio was serious enough about it to make an announcement.

So, my idea that this was a TV show too crazy to be made into a movie now seems naïve and unsustainable. So I went searching for something else, dredging through the other TV shows I grew up watching. The Brady Bunch? No. Bewitched? No. The Addams Family? No. Get Smart? No. Lost in Space? No. I Dream of Jeannie? Wait...

They haven't made, or even announced, a remake movie of I Dream of Jeannie yet??

(There is a TV movie, but it wasn't a remake, it was a cast reunion movie, which doesn't count.)

Anyway, thus the TV show in the comic got duly changed.

* It was in reruns even back then. I'm not that old.