What do you know today that you didn't know yesterday?

[Rev. Rye]

This is a thing:





This aired on Turner Classic Movies in the middle of the night one night in 2010, and it exists solely so Warren Beatty can extend his rights to Dick Tracy. And apparently, it worked, to the point where, when the Tribune Media Services sued him over it, the judge ruled "Beatty's commencement of principal photography of his television special on November 8, 2008 was sufficient for him to retain the Dick Tracy rights." 

Okay, full disclosure, I knew this for a while. What I didn't know until today, however, was that the Atlas Shrugged trilogy was actually made for much the same reasons. An investor in, of all things, health and fitness machines, decided to buy the film rights to the film, and, after 18 years of trying and failing to make it into a proper film, decided to make this trilogy of shit. It's honestly enough to make me grateful that it's taken so long to get to these films because I think this might be a crucial through-point in examining it when the time comes.