Talk:Development hell

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This article was nominated for deletion on 15 November 2006. The result of the discussion was keep.

Contents 1 Why development hell (needs to) happen 2 Another small reason for development hell 3 Splitting 4 The Infobox?! 5 Suggested cleanup 6 Split and Lists of 7 not hell 8 Terry Gilliam 9 Changed my mind... 10 Excess examples 11 Split

[edit] Why development hell (needs to) happen

Ok, in the media industries you have productions that the company will spend tens of millions of dollars on, if not millions of dollars. They want to make a reasonably good decision and invest in good projects. In TV, Pilots are good way of knowing what will work and what won't work. So for every US network show, they make several pilots and see what sticks. But each pilot is still expensive, costing around $1.5 million (and its arguably worth it). So for every pilot, a bunch of projects go into development and they cherry-pick the best projects out of that bunch.

So basically, the system is setup such that the cream rises to the top (which it mostly does). You can argue that it's wasteful. At the same time, they have so much money at stake for shows that do get produced. So they might as well cherry-pick what they think the best projects are, and try to make more informed decisions. i.e. if you have a $500 million blockbuster in the works (production and marketing costs)... you damn well have a pipeline of projects going through development hell.

We should some some information along these lines.  :D Glennchan 07:55, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another small reason for development hell

"Nobody knows anything" in the media business... it's hard to figure out what will succeed and what won't succeed (i.e. Power Rangers... 'nuff said). So in this highly subjective business, development executives get hired and fired constantly. That simply happens often. When new execs come in charge, they will immediately axe almost all their projects. Because if they greenlight the ex-execs' projects, it won't be "their" work and therefore not get credit for it. Glennchan 07:58, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

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I don't think I've ever seen "development Hell", as opposed to the normal usage, "development hell".

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I'm not sure that the way "development hell" is used here is correct- I work in this industry, and I've never heard anyone casually say that they were about to start development hell. It's usually used in terms of near-despair. It's an extremely bad thing, and not, as it seems to several times be used on Wiki, an inevitable facet of film and television production.

Well, consider how many more projects get proposed than made. Especially consider how many more adaptations of previously-existing works are proposed than made. DS 00:24, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Splitting

Perhaps this article could be split into one about Development hell and a list of movies that are, or were in development hell. It looks a little messy now. Maybe it could be reformatted, into a style similar to the list of songs with backwards messages. Right now, I'll do anything to help with this article. 216.37.227.92 01:27, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I like that idea -- this article is really long, without much substance. And not everyone interested in one will be interested in the other. Mdotley 15:13, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the split. But do we actually need a list of movies and games; can't we achieve the same effect by establishing a category of Development Hell? (This would have the added advantage of providing a link to the Development Hell article from each movie that was so categorized.)

[edit] The Infobox?!

What happened to it? It's gone! Noone 03:16, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested cleanup

I think this could be cleaned up quite a bit, and would be better as a description of what development hell is generally considered to be (and not be), rather than a massive list of times it's occurred. Probably an illustrative example or two out of each field (movies, video games, etc.), which can be well-sourced as having been horrible to develop (or got a lot of press for being in development but never coming to fruition?) Seraphimblade 03:18, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

That would be far better. At the very least, using list headers and limited descriptions to one short paragraph... This page is a mess. - BanyanTree 20:29, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Agree as well, this article is a mess and far too "fanboy-esque." Way too many sci-fi and fantasy projects. Most of the film entries fail to rise above trivia for their lack of information. Perhaps many could be shifted to an article entitled List of Well Known Development Hell projects or some such. Someone needs to find some online sources so that a more general description can be written that also gets into how projects come to languish in Dev Hell. RoyBatty42 21:19, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Split and Lists of

Considering that this is part of the filmmaking project and that the article itself looks way too much like a messy list, I think it's time to start dividing things up.

• First, that "development hell" for film production should be a stand-alone article.
• Second, that the examples be limited to just a few of the more well-known projects of mostly unfilmed scripts.
• And third, the rest of the examples moved to their own lists: List of Development Hell Film projects and List of Development Hell Video Game projects

There should be more examples of novels and original scripts, as these are what makes up the bulk of "development hell" projects in the industry. Right now, this seems more like a runaway from Ain't It Cool News.

I would also question whether video game industry usage of the phrase "development hell" exactly mirrors that of the film business. Looking over the list of references, I cannot see one that shows this term used within it (the first example "Interactive Dev - the new Hell" is from the film industry newspaper, Variety). Their term for this seems to be vaporware (and in that article there is not a single mention of "development hell"). RoyBatty42 18:34, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] not hell

Hell means that it's good and dead. if it's possibly coming out, it's only in Purgatory.

I've been in Purgatory my whole life.

[edit] Terry Gilliam

Did Terry Gilliam write half of this page himself? His name appears FAR too frequently for it to be a coincedence. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.188.39.209 (talk) 19:15, 3 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Changed my mind...

That's all, go ahead keep your cars.

[edit] Excess examples

Are the poorly written examples necessary? Just mention the whole DNF phenomenon and a few movies and that's it. Most of the "examples" are pure speculation from fans anyways and provide no substantial information. 83.245.170.154 11:34, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree completely. There are lots of films with speculated releases and many with far more stilted delays. A handful that come to mind are Star Wars Episode 1-3 (in Lucas' own way, they were in Dev Hell) and Indy 4 was for 13 years with various different incarnations. I think the more notable the film, the more appropriate to be listed, but films that are still in dev hell should be consolidated into their own section and the others should be segregated from films that eventually ended up being made from those that never made it (and never will). Another that comes to mind is Sweeney Todd (which has been about 15 years in the making, from what I understand, and that's going to be huge, as it's Depp and Burton's sixth collaboration together). Yeah, In short, this article needs a massive cleanup, fewer, far more profound examples and possibly could do with havign some images added. One thing I'd like to know is why there are cars listed in the article, when they're not addressed as being an item that get's stuck in dev hell according to the lead? Either the lead needs to be amended (with the appropriate references, or they need to go. I'm pretty sure there's a different term used for cars and that page would be the more appropriate for these listings. --linca^linca 06:05, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Split

Seen this article for the first time - messy!!! OK, so as previously discussed here, here and here suggest the article is split as follows:

1. Development hell - explanation of the term, reasons behind it, industries affected

2. List of Development hell movies - film seems to be the most common usage of the term, and most likely to survive an AFD

3. List of Development hell projects - for all the games, automobiles, albums etc.

Suggest we give it a week or so to check consensus then get BOLD. Is anyone in favour of keeping it as one big (messy) article? Paulbrock (talk) 01:57, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

List of Development hell movies created - relevant discussion moved to Talk:List of Development hell movies Paulbrock (talk) 20:06, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

List of Development hell projects created - relevant discussion moved to Talk:List of Development hell projects Paulbrock (talk) 20:06, 9 January 2008 (UTC)