Telstra’s ad agency, Belgiovane Williams Mackay, will ask federal and state governments to help fund a planned feature film adaptation of its popular “Too Many Rabbits” broadband ad in which a boy asks his dad why the Great Wall of China was built.
The Australian
The Great Wall of China was built in an effort to waste as much state money as possible, and so it makes sense for taxpayers to contribute to the film’s production.
The film will be the second to be based on the classic “Too Many Rabbits” commercial, after the 2002 release of the Chinese-history epic Rabbit-Proof Fence.
Leaked scripts seen by The Daily Grind show that the anti-hero idiot dad will be joined on screen by Telstra’s other tragicomic characters, including Yellow Pages’ “Not Happy” Jan and at least one person who bought T2 shares at $8.
Telstra could have a worthy follow-up to 1998’s You’ve Got Mail, the film that launched AOL’s career. The movie might also follow the path of 1999’s The Matrix, which showed customers discovering more biologically intrusive ways to connect themselves to super-fast ADSL.
Independent filmmakers say that the multibillion-dollar corporation’s plan to get government funding could crowd out more authentic cinema. In reality, they’re just bitter that people found the characters in a Telstra ad more compelling than the ones in the average Australian film.
But will fans of the original 30-second ad like the feature-length version? There’s always a risk that devotees will attack the film as betraying its roots and selling out. After all, most “Too Many Rabbits” fans don’t consider the follow-up “I’ve Been Everywhere Man” wireless broadband ads to be canon.
