Snakes on a Plane was made in 2006, 14 years ago. For some reason we still don’t have a sequel. We have Fuller House on Netflix but no Snakes on a Plane 2. This is a serious problem requiring a creative solution. I decided it was my duty to suggest a few ideas to turn this cinematic masterpiece into a franchise. Ideas include: Ants in a Car, Scorpions on a Bus, Hornets on a Train, Spiders in a Hot Air Balloon, Bats on a Submarine, and Honey Badgers on the International Space Station.
However, I believe the real Hollywood money maker would be Bears on a Cruise Ship. A cruise ship backdrop lets us have all sorts of characters and situations that aren’t possible in smaller vehicles. Here’s a synopsis: Start with a gay and lesbian cruise because we need at least a few big hairy gay men so we can do all the “bear” gags. But we need a wide variety of characters so lets say they have to share the ship with a church youth group. Let’s make this more interesting by making it a group for at-risk and delinquent youth. The ship’s crew is also there. Without labor laws the crew on cruise ships are practically slaves, except they are required to smile all the time. This opens up even more story options.
Meanwhile the ship is supposed to be receiving 3 koala bears for a show but instead receive 30 genetically enhanced, ultra-aggressive black bears. It can be a mix-up or it can be like in the first movie where some criminal put them there deliberately. It doesn’t matter. Viewers won’t care how the bears got on board as long as they’re deadly.
Then we just take the ship out to sea, release the bears, and the story writes itself. We could even set it on April 1st so many passengers think it’s a joke.
There is a story of a cruise ship that crashed on a reef. The captain was so traumatized by his mistake that he went crazy, denied that anything was wrong, refused to inform the passengers, and told the crew to ignore their concerns and just leave. A professional folk singer who had spent the last decade riding around performing on cruise ships, noticed something was weird and wandered up to the bridge to ask about it. He saw the bridge was empty so he broke in, took command of the billion dollar cruise ship, organized an evacuation, and wound up saving the majority of the passengers. This is a true story.
This is certainly an optional part, but it would be fun to recreate this but with a bear attack instead of a reef collision (or both). Even better would be to get the actual folk singer to play himself. We could still make the whole thing the captain’s fault, like he thinks the bears are just a joke and kicks people off the bridge for telling him about them.
So that was a glimpse into my story-outlining process. I probably won’t write this myself just because I have too many other projects, but I hope someone in Hollywood steals this and makes it extra gory.