We have a problem.
Cutter?
Borden's performing right across the street.
That's Robert Angier from The Prestige, none
too happy to learn that his arch rival will be doing
the same act that he does at pretty much the same place
and time, which is ironic, because just three
months before The Prestige made its worldwide debut,
audiences were treated to a completely different genre
film about stage magic in the late 19th century,
The Illusionist.
An amused public quickly spotted the suspiciously similar
looking concepts and wondered who ripped off who, because it
couldn't just be a coincidence.
Could it?
Well, before we try and figure out how the trick was done,
why not take a moment to subscribe
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Audiences knew well in advance that there were two magician
movies coming in 2006, and even then it
seemed too oddly specific to be coincidental.
For the average movie fan at the time,
it was probably easy to imagine some studio executive heard
a competitor was making a moody period piece about stage magic
with a big twist ending and ordered some underling to drum
up a similar project.
But both projects looked pretty good,
and it certainly wasn't the first time
the public had seen Hollywood release
two weirdly similar films at the same time.
Moviegoers speculated as to which would be better,
and industry watchers made predictions
about how each would fare.
The Illusionist arrived in theaters first,
dropping on August 18, 2006.
Set in 1889 Vienna, the Neil Burger
directed film tells the story of Eisenheim,
a highly skilled but enigmatic magician played
by Edward Norton.
To save his childhood sweetheart, played
by Jessica Biel, Eisenheim takes on Rufus Sewell's evil Crown
Prince Leopold.
With some help from a police inspector
and self-described amateur conjurer
played by the great Paul Giamatti,
Eisenheim triumphs over his enemy
in an ending that reveals nothing was ever
what it seemed.
A dark class conscious story with a fairy tale atmosphere,
the movie was a hit with critics and audiences,
and everyone waited to see how The Prestige would compare.
Luckily, it wouldn't have to wait long,
because it had a world premiere on August 17, 2006,
and its wide release just a few days later.
Set in 1890s London, the Christopher Nolan
directed film tells the story of two rival stage magicians,
played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale.
Locked in a violent and protracted feud,
they sabotage each other's acts, have romances with the stage
assistant played by Scarlett Johansson,
and pretty effectively destroy each other's lives.
But with some help from a kindly stage engineer played
by the great Michael Caine, something vaguely
resembling justice is done in an ending
that reveals nothing was ever what it seemed.
A steampunk powered meditation on obsession and sacrifice
that included a super cool cameo by David Bowie as Nikola Tesla.
You are familiar with the phrase "man's reach
exceeds his grasp."
The Prestige was also a hit with critics and audiences.
And though no one knew at the time, thanks to their status
as twin films, the two magician movies
would forever remain linked in the public mind.
But was the resemblance between them,
which also included elements like a partial flashback
structure and a twist ending where a dead character seems
to be resurrected, just a coincidence?
Or was there more to it than that?
Well, the record shows that Neil Burger
was the first to discover his source material-- a short story
by Pulitzer prize winner Steven Millhauser called
"Eisenheim the Illusionist."
Apparently, something of an early adapter, Burger
read the tale when it was first released
in a 1990 collection of fantasy short stories
called The Barnum Museum, and he immediately
fell in love with it.
He acquired the rights in 2002, and the film
was shot in the spring of 2005.
Christopher Nolan, on the other hand,
didn't learn of Christopher Priest's 1995 novel
The Prestige until somewhere around 1999 or 2000
when a producer sent the book to him
and suggested it would make a good movie for him to direct.
He acquired the rights in 2001 and was preparing
to shoot the film in 2003 when WB pulled up the Bat Signal
and he was hired to direct what would become Batman Begins.
To work on the movie, Nolan put a pin on the other project.
But as soon as he was done with Batman,
Nolan went back to work on The Prestige,
and cameras rolled in January of 2006.
But if it hadn't been for Batman Begins,
it's hard not to conclude that The Prestige might have reached
theaters as much as two years before The Illusionist, which
is to say that the arrival of these two films
first conceived nearly a decade apart at the box office
at nearly the exact same time was in fact just a coincidence.
And it's a bigger coincidence than it seems,
because The Prestige and The Illusionist
weren't even the only two magician movies
to come out in late 2006.
Scoop, a contemporary crime comedy
directed by Woody Allen, which also revolved around a magician
character, beat both The Prestige and The Illusionist
to theaters by releasing on July 28.
And that's not the end of the coincidence,
because Scoop actually stars both Hugh Jackman and Scarlett
Johansson who also appeared in The Prestige.
And while triplet films are relatively rare,
twin films have been a fairly regular phenomenon going back
to at least 1913 when two different adaptations of Walter
Scott's Ivanhoe hit theaters.
In fact, at least two other sets of twin films
came out in 2006 alone, including United 93 and Flight
93, both about United Airlines hijacked flight 93,
and Zzyzx and Zyzzyx Road, both dark thrillers about people
trying to conceal dead bodies at the same location
in California.
Other famous modern examples include Dante's Peak
and Volcano, which both came out in 1997,
Deep Impact and Armageddon, both from 1998,
2005's Capote and 2006's Infamous, 2013's White House
Down and Olympus Has Fallen, and dozens and dozens of others.
Way too many to be explained by coincidence alone.
This is one of the reasons why those
who suspected The Prestige was directly motivated
by the production of The Illusionist or vice versa
weren't entirely unjustified, because that kind of thing
definitely happens too, and in a lot of different ways.
For example, John Lasseter believes
that Dreamworks' Antz was deliberately initiated
as a part of a scheme by Jeffrey Katzenberg
to blackmail Pixar into changing their release date for A Bug's
Life.
And while Katzenberg has denied it,
the fact that Dreamworks brought out an entire animation studio
under the condition it completes Antz before Pixar could release
their bug movie certainly doesn't do
much to defuse the accusation.
But here's where the world that The Prestige and The
Illusionist shed light on comes into full view.
There was a time in Hollywood where
two projects centered on the same subject matter or theme
appeared apparent.
They were a bug in the Matrix.
However, things have evolved.
They've changed and grown.
With the advent of streaming, social media,
and a vast ecosystem of global culture constantly hungry
for new content, this problem is just not a deal breaker
anymore.
In fact, it's viewed as an asset.
These twin films used to be something
that would happen maybe once every five years
when the stars aligned.
Now that's just the film industry.
In fact, more often than not, something getting made
spawns additional copycat media.
Any sort of interest or potential audience
is seen as a signal flare that legitimizes more investment,
even when it's literally the same topic.
Look at the Elizabeth Holmes case.
Multiple major court trials, a bestselling book,
multiple podcasts, a docuseries, and a prestige Hulu
show starring a-list talent.
In times past, this just wouldn't have happened.
It would have all led to either the docuseries or the Hulu
show.
Now you've got multiple Steve Jobs biopics,
the GLOW documentary served as a launchpad for the GLOW TV
series, and everyone and their mother
making a Peter Pan project.
You've got Mowgli and The Jungle Book,
competing Fyre Fest documentaries, Candy on Hulu
and Love and Death on Max.
The media landscape just doesn't care
that something is similar or the exact same story that
was previously told.
And the chief example of this brave new status
quo, the biggest and most crowd pleasing entities
on the block--
Marvel and DC.
They're both telling multiverse stories,
and they're going to be for quite some time.
Over the last few years, we've seen Spider-Verse one and two,
Loki, Multiverse of Madness, Quantumania, and No Way Home.
And that's to say nothing of the fact The Flash
and other projects like Everything Everywhere
All At Once and Mila in the Multiverse.
The idea that films are unique little narrative islands that
exist free of competition is just
non-existent in today's world.
That era is dead.
There's more content being produced now more than ever.
There's no claim to the subject, idea,
or genre that is safe from multiple projects now.
There's just too many people producing works
to keep things the way they were.
Which brings us back to The Prestige and The Illusionist.
Everything comes down to execution now.
One of these films is remembered as a classic from an auteur
filmmaker at the peak of his craft.
The other is the movie that came out at the same time
as The Prestige.
And more and more films are going
to be put in this position due to the inevitability
of competing projects.
Is this a good thing?
Are there enough eyeballs to keep this new streaming
ecosystem alive?
That's still up in the air.
But what is for sure, just like in the case of The Prestige
and The Illusionist, the best idea wins.
So what do you think?
Did you prefer The Prestige or The Illusionist?
And what are your favorite twin films?
Let us know down in the comments below,
and if you enjoyed this video, you'll
definitely find others you'll like if you check out
the rest of the channel.
As always, thank you for subscribing to Nerdstalgic.