Yesterday, America held its collective breath and watched, via any number of basic cable and internet video feeds, as a balloon reportedly carrying six-year-old Falcon Heene hurtled through the air 7,000 feet over Colorado. As we all know by now, the unmanned balloon eventually landed in a field, and it turned out that young Falcon had been safely hiding in a box in his attic the entire time (yay!), even as millions of people spent four hours praying for his safety. Today, Hollywood is undoubtedly in hot pursuit of the rights to the Heene family's incredible -- and possibly entirely orchestrated for publicity (boo!) -- story. Movieline now takes you inside a high-level meeting at Balloon Boy's natural landing spot to see one studio's strategy for winning the Balloon Boy sweepstakes:
Disney Development Office. This morning.
"So. Balloon Boy."
"Motherf*cking Ballon Boy. I'm harder for this than a tree-f*cker at a knothole convention."
"That's what I love to hear. That crazy family's already on the plane here. Now what's the movie? We need a take to sell them, so they feel comfortable with us giving them a big f*cking bag of money."
"It's Flight of the Navigator meets Up meets Where The Wild Things Are meets The Diary of Anne Frank meets that girl in the well meets Hoax. Never heard of half of those, but they were all over the Twitter trends--"
"Slow down, slow down. These are simple people. They've been on Wife Swap, for Christ's sake. They didn't even have the sense to do Supernanny."
"Right."
"So catch me up real quick. Did the kid, um, make it?"
"Make the balloon?"
"No no no. You know, live?"
"He did."
"He did?"
"He did."
(Uncomfortable silence.)
"Didn't see that coming. That changes things."
"He lied about being in the balloon. Did you not get the coverage I had Mandi do of the CNN video feed?"
"I glanced at it, thought I knew where it was going. Why the hell do I have you if I have to read the whole thing myself?"
"Sorry."
"So he lived."
"He lived. He was hiding in a box in the attic the whole time because his parents yelled at him or something."
"I like it. More."
"And the whole deal might've been a hoax set up by the nutty storm-chasing dad."
"Like that less. We'll throw that out."
"Throw it out? Everyone knows that's how--"
"'Based on actual events' buys us a lot of leeway. We could put a talking panda in the balloon with him if we want."
"But he wasn't in the balloon."
"Says Wolf Blitzer. But maybe he's in our balloon. Maybe his mean parents shout at him, and he runs up into the attic, and he crawls into a Kenmore refrigerator box..."
"...Product placement, nice..."
"...and the next thing you know, he's floating away over the Rockies in a magical balloon that looks like a tinfoil chef's hat, to the...Land of the Talking Pandas, who never shout at him."
"Talking pandas? Um, I think DreamWorks has talking giraffes in the pipe."
"Excuse me? This is motherf*cking Disney. We invented talking animals. One phone call to Steven and those long-necked p*ssies are muter than Pluto."
"Right, of course."
"So the talking pandas."
"They teach Balloon Boy lessons. Like how to trust your imagination, which is why they shouted at him, because he finger-painted all over their new refrigerator."
"Mandi, are you f*cking getting this?"
"Meanwhile the whole world is wondering if he's OK in the balloon, they're all worried about him, but they lose it in some clouds, they fear the worst."
"But he's hanging out with the talking pandas, having a great time."
"But eventually he learns enough about love and family and imagination that he's ready to get back into the balloon and fly back to his old life."
"Where his parents realize they maybe should encourage the imagination. And not get all shouty on him for being a kid."
"He's just a kid!"
"And he's telling them all about the talking pandas, and they're all 'Here we go again, with the stories and the imagination and the pandas."
"And they think he made it all up. And maybe then we think maybe he made it all up."
"I mean, talking pandas, he might've made that up. He's got an imagination on him."
"But then they put him to bed. And he pulls out a sprig of eucalyptus the pandas gave him, and he puts it under his pillow."
"Because where the f*ck would he get eucalyptus if it didn't really happen? Is the eucalyptus magic? Like, he can wave it and then a big tinfoil balloon will float up to his window and take him back to the pandas any time he needs them?"
"I think he just puts it under his pillow. So there's a question, even though we know."
"But we shoot him waving the sprig and the balloon coming to his window. We run it after the end credits. So they know we're going back to Talking Panda Island in two summers. After we make 400 mil worldwide."
"Yes, more pandas, 2012."
"Universal can eat my ass. This is ours."
"This is so ours."
"When's the plane landing?"
"An hour."
"Can we send a hot-air balloon to pick them up?"
"I dunno, too much?"
"Fine. But I want this office filled with tinfoil balloons with falcons on them. Now."
"Done."
"And ten stuffed pandas."
"Welcome to Talking Panda Island, Balloon Boy."
"This so ours."