Whoa, was this before our time? Or at least, beyond our blogosphere A.D.D. recollection and retention time? Buried within the news article that Alex Winter, most famously known as Bill from “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” was penning a remake of “Rock N’ Roll Highschool” for Howard Stern was a tidbit that he had written a movie about Napster and its creator Shawn Fanning.
The Variety quote from Winter makes it seem like old news. Like he’d been there and done that and, you know, written that great Napster script that everyone loved. “I’ve now done so much stuff in music videos, and the Napster movie, that the chance to bridge music and comedy was something that intrigued me,” Winter told the movie trade magazine. “[‘High School’] seemed so ripe for a remake.”
So Winter was writing the film for MTV films and a some easy Googling traces back the story to 2002, great, sure, we have some vague recollection of this. But where is the movie? Did it come and go, pretty much the same way Napster did? Did MTV Films have someone in mind to play Metallica’s Lars Ulrich? Can someone at least send us the script? Man, if there were ever a place for dated, time and place unintentional comedy, this screenplay would probably be the one.
The best part of this old Znet article? At the time, MTV hadn’t determined who would play the young Napster founder, but Fanning himself was reportedly considering the role! Genius. Sheer genius. Bring that shit back, yo.
