Noting the recent trend of Ben Affleck’s “Air,” Matt Johnson’s “Blackberry,” Eva Longoria’s “Flamin’ Hot,” and, though perhaps a bit on the silly side, Jerry Seinfeld’s “Unfrosted,” there seems to be an increasing market for stories about consumer goods and marketing. Deadline announced Wednesday that the latest to get in the act are Judd Apatow and Steven Spielberg with a picture called “Cola Wars,” all about the rivalry between Coca-Cola and Pepsi. (P.S., it’s only a matter of time before someone makes a movie about some cul-du-sac of Spielberg’s career. The recent Broadway hit “The Shark is Broken,” about the production woes on “Jaws” makes this inevitable.)
“Cola Wars,” which Spielberg will produce and Apatow will direct, is written by Jason Shuman and Ben Queen. Shuman is best known for co-creating the series “Acapulco” on Apple TV + and was an executive producer on “Winning Time,” another nostalgia-soaked based-on-reality project about the peak years of the Los Angeles Lakers. Queen’s credits include “Cars 2” and “Cars 3.” The project is set up at Sony.
The story of “Cola Wars,” much like “Air,” will focus on 1980s consumerism, when Pepsi initiated “the Pepsi Challenge” against Coke, a pyrotechnics-heavy television commercial set Michael Jackson’s hair on fire, and one of the greatest boondoggles in marketing, the creation of “New Coke.” (This does imply that someone will be playing Bill Cosby in this movie, as he was, indeed, a pitchman for this doomed product.)
No cast announcements have been made.
Many of Apatow’s greatest hits have been as either a writer or producer, but when he has sat in the director’s chair his titles have included “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up,” and “This is 40.” He has won three Primetime Emmy Awards. The first was as a writer on “The Ben Stiller Show,” and two more recently have been for documentaries about comedy legends Garry Shandling and George Carlin. Spielberg has 23 Oscar nominations and three wins, Best Director trophies for “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan,” and a producer win for “Schindler’s List”’s Best Picture win.
As a reminder, there was a stretch in history when actress Joan Crawford was on the board of directors at Pepsi. This scene from the legendary film “Mommie Dearest” perhaps didn’t create, but it certainly popularized, the phrase “this isn’t my first rodeo.”
