Hello everyone.
I did not expect to be posting so soon, but I have a good story to tell. Someone sent me a private message asking me to tell a more recent story, as most of the things I have been posting hail back to the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Okay, fair point. Since this is a fraud alert site, I would like to tell you about a pretty egregious fraud that occurred in Hollywood and Hollywood adjacent a few years ago.
Most of you are familiar with the epic miniseries called V. It was released in 1983, and was a huge hit. They quickly commissioned a sequel, entitled V: The Final Battle. The creator of V was Kenneth Johnson, who was best known in the 70s for creating The Bionic Woman and The Incredible Hulk TV shows. Johnson is a smart guy, but is somewhat eccentric and set in his ways.
What most of you probably don't know is that Johnson left his own miniseries, and had little to do with V: The Final Battle. Johnson conceived V as a fairly obvious allegory to the Nazi occupation of Europe. In fact, he originally conceived V as an anti-fascist miniseries involving a dictator in the US rising to power, entitled Storm Warnings. NBC rejected this, with executives stating it was too highbrow, and wouldn't appeal to the average viewer. He then kept the same general theme, but changed the dictator to lizard-like aliens arriving in huge motherships. NBC loved this idea, and greenlit the project. So what happened?
The cerebral Johnson finished the original miniseries on a cliffhanger, with the small, battered human resistance force barely winning one battle, and frantically sending out a transmission to outer space asking for help. While Johnson had not completely fleshed out the full story for The Final Battle, he did write an initial script, which had a similar tone and pace to the first miniseries. Unfortunately, NBC broke the news to him that they wanted some things changed. They felt the initial miniseries was too expensive, and took too long to complete. This time around, they wanted it done $5 million cheaper (a significant budget cut), and cranked out quickly. Furthermore, they demanded more action and drama between the characters, including on the alien side. Johnson was insulted. He had delivered gold just a year prior, and now he was being under-budgeted, rushed, and second-guessed. After NBC wouldn't budge, Johnson walked away.
V: The Final Battle was then produced as a 6-hour miniseries, and while it was not nearly as sophsiticated or well-written as its predecessor, the public ate it up. It was a huge success. Johnson felt it was such crap that he demanded his name be taken off as a writer, and listed under a female pseudonym. NBC went on to produce a terrible weekly V series airing just a few months after The Final Battle aired. It flopped badly, and that seemed to be that for V. Johnson was somewhat vindicated, but depressed.
Fast forward over 20 years. Johnson, whose career took a huge downturn after the events above, wasn't quite done with V. In 2007, he completed a novel called V: The Second Generation, which completely disregarded the events of The Final Battle miniseries, and took place 20 years after the original miniseries ended. In this story, the enemy of the invading aliens, contacted at the end of that 1983 miniseries, finally show up, and help humanity fight the war. However, by this point, interest in V had understandably waned. There was an entire generation of teens and young adults who hadn't seen or heard of V, and nobody was looking to make a sequel to a 1983 miniseries, let alone a replacement sequel which disregarded the previous sequel!
However, there was still moderate interest in the project, as it was believed that the 80s-era nostalgia for V could still drive instant ratings. Warner Bros, which owned rights to V, made a decision. They'd indeed bring back V, and do it as a series, but not in the way Johnson had envisioned. They opted to reboot it completely, and to leave the talented-but-stubborn Johnson out of the mix. It aired on ABC, starting in late 2009. Once again, Johnson found himself watching his creation go on without him. And once again, he was vindicated. The new series limped along for two seasons, never really had any cohesive energy or direction, and folded.
Johnson did release the novel in 2008, and there was moderate interest in it, but it was no best seller.
That seemed to be it for both V and Johnson's career. When the V reboot left the air in early 2011, Johnson was 69 years old. It's hard enough for congenial, well-liked writers to get work in Hollywood at that age. A difficult guy like Johnson had no shot.
Or did he?
In 2017, Johnson was approached by the famed Desliu Studios, which was founded by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. It had produced I Love Lucy, Mission: Impossible, and Star Trek, among others. Now the more modern version of Desliu, acquired by a new billionaire owner, was going to produce Johnson's novel into a movie, with Johnson once again at the helm as head writer. On February 6, 2018, Desliu put out a press release, announcing the project.
Kenneth Johnson's original V was about human-looking aliens coming to earth in 1983, feigning helpfulness and offering a mutually beneficial agreement. As the story wore on, we learned that the aliens were actually evil reptilian beings, hiding their scales and agenda behind fake human skin.
Ironically, the same story played out in real life. Desliu Studios arrived in 2017, feigning helpfulness and offering a mutually beneficial agreement for the 75-year-old Johnson to finally make the sequel he always wanted, with full creative control. Like the aliens in the story, they had sinister motives, and were hiding behind a mask.
Continued in next post.
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