I spoke to Danny McBride last week about this Friday’s “30 Minutes or Less” and was surprised when he said it had nothing to do with a similar story that was in the news a few years ago. To refresh your memory, in 2003, a pizza delivery man named Brian Wells was captured by police after robbing in a bank. He then claimed he’d been kidnapped and forced to do the crime by having a bomb strapped to him by criminals. As police tried to figure out what to do next, the bomb exploded, killing Wells.
In “30 Minutes or Less,” Jesse Eisenberg plays a pizza delivery man who has a bomb strapped to him by two criminals (McBride and Nick Swardson) and is forced to rob a bank of $100,000 so McBride can hire a hitman to off his rich father.
In real life, the robbery was also done in an attempt to come up with enough money to hire a hitman to kill a rich father.
“I can’t really speak on behalf of the writers as to what inspired their ideas, but it’s nothing like [the real story],” McBride says.?
The studio, Sony, also issued a statement denying the similarities that read, “Neither the filmmakers nor the stars of ’30 Minutes or Less’ were aware of the crime prior to their involvement in the film. The writers were vaguely aware of what had occurred and wrote an original screenplay that does not mirror the real-life tragedy.”?
Say what now? This all seems very strange. Here seem to be the three possibilities for what’s going on:
A) the filmmakers and studio want to try and avoid any negative publicity for turning a tragic story into a comedy. The family of Brian Wells has already been very critical of the film.
B) someone would be owed money for turning the story of a real person into a film, and it’s cheaper to make a film not inspired by actual events.
C) the movie really and truly isn’t inspired by the actual story and the similarities are just a coincidence
What do you think?