So apparently it’s 1993 again, because there are two competing Wyatt Earp movies in development. Upon reading this, we immediately checked to make sure we weren’t perusing the movie news page on Prodigy via dial-up connection. But no, we’ve not entered some kind of wormhole: instead of Tombstone and Wyatt Earp racing each other to theaters, we’ve got Tombstone co-star Val Kilmer signing on to the indie Western The First Ride of Wyatt Earp, while Warner Brothers has picked up the spec script for the fictionalized Earp-and-Holliday adventure tale Wild Guns.

Parallel thinking is nothing new in Hollywood — hell, there’s half a dozen (no exaggeration) Peter Pan-related projects in development now, and nearly as many re-bootings, re-imaginings, and re-whatevers of Wizard of Oz and Snow White in the pipeline. Sometimes executives, writers, and producers just have the same ideas (or the idea to go back to the same ideas) at the same time. Often, competing projects will disappear as one gets into production first — but sometimes that game of Hollywood chicken leads to multiple versions of, basically, the same movie or TV show making it all the way to release (witness Deep Impact and Armageddon, Dante’s Peak and Volcano, 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, and many more). Usually, the better project ultimately wins the respect of critics and audiences — though there have been a few occasions when the second place runner is unfairly overlooked. Join us after the jump for a few unjustly forgotten runners-up. … Read More