You can make almost anything into a movie today. LEGOs? Okay. Peeps? Sure, why not? Highly popular websites of indeterminate content? Well, uh, it's an idea, right? When it comes down to studios making movies, if they don't have to spend a lot of money, they won't, and a low budget World Star Hip Hop movie has now found a home at Paramount Insurge.
Deadline reports that the studio has purchased a pitch from Ian Edelman to turn World Star Hip Hop into a movie. Edelman's idea is being kept "under wraps" (usually that means it doesn't really exist!) but its said to be based on Ferris Bueller's Day Off. This is a hilarious proposition considering Edelman's most popular credit, HBO's ethnic, low-budget Entourage analogue How To Make It In America. It's also kind of hilarious comparing Matthew Broderick's Sunday afternoon classic with World Star Hip Hop itself.
The site bills itself as a multicultural look at the world of arts and entertainment, focusing specifically on material aimed at young black and Hispanic audiences. But the site has also earned it's exclusive status from it's endless, and endlessly sickening homemade videos of brawls and slapfights, usually between young men and women - usually minorities. Sitting through these clips is soul-deadening: frequently, they involve a fight between two participants fueled by anger, as they are surrounded by cheering participants who only want to treat the degradation and humiliation of others as their own personal entertainment. The site has built its odious reputation on these videos, so the idea of them becoming a "brand" with access to 2,000-3,000 theaters nationwide is a bit stomach-turning. If that sort of material were to gain worldwide fame (it's one of the top 1,000 sites in the WORLD), it's best if we kept it in the safety of our living rooms.
Or maybe this is an attempt at rebranding. Maybe World Star Hip Hop wants to rededicate itself to something a bit more specific, a bit more family-friendly. They can claim to be some sort of "lifestyle" website, but beyond the fights, that url only takes you to a disaster zone with a lack of a focus on content or tone. Russell Simmons is producing this absolutely insane idea, so considering his interests maybe he'll gear this film and the site itself in a direction that feeds the culture, and doesn't denigrate it. Given that Edelman's next project is a movie questionably titled Puerto Ricans In Paris, that might not be the case.
