The Internet is generally a place to discuss movies once they've already been made, but every now and then it can go in reverse. After a Reddit thread inspired writer James Erwin to write a spec screenplay called Rome, Sweet Rome, Warner Bros. picked up the rights to the film-- and now another screenwriter has been hired to help turn it into an actual film, where inevitably, it will be discussed at length on Reddit.
According to Variety the studio has brought in Brian Miller, who is credited with the critically abhorred Apollo 18, to take another crack at Rome Sweet Rome. The story spurs from the simple question posed on Reddit: "What if a unit of U.S. Marines are transported back in time and forced to do battle with Roman legions?" But given that Miller is reportedly writing a brand new draft, without ever looking at Erwin's original, there's no telling just how much he may depart from that original idea.
In a way Miller's hiring kind of ruins the up-from-your-bootstraps nature of the story-- Erwin was working in Des Moines, writing software manuals, when he cooked up the Rome Sweet Rome script, and his story was so unlikely and inspiring that Wired wrote an entire feature on him. There's no lack of stories out there about the incredible power of Reddit, but this one has now been robbed of that luster, put through the far-more-typical Hollywood meat grinder of endless rewrites.
