Giving hope to anyone who’s scrawled their fan-fiction across the Internet—which, arguably, is not a good thing—Warner Bros. has purchased a pitch that began life as a thread on Reddit.com, the web’s finest source for determining in a democratic fashion whether a video of your cat is OMG adorbz or lame what is this I don’t even. But it’s also occasionally good for brainstorming, as two-time Jeopardy! champion and author James Erwin found out when he began developing Rome, Sweet Rome, a bit of speculative science-fiction on what might happen if a modern-day Marine unit suddenly found itself in ancient Rome and was forced to battle Augustus’ legions—and then somehow put everything back the way it was before they exploded it, all in order to fix the course of history they’ve altered.


Erwin began writing an outline of his story after another user posed an initial “what if?” inspired by concurrent viewings of HBO’s Rome and Generation Kill, and before long his efforts were noticed not only by his up-voting fellow members of the Reddit community, but a producer from Madhouse Entertainment, who saw the story when it finally made its way to the vaunted Reddit front page. And for studios looking for similar inspiration, that front page is currently swarming with other titles just crying out to be developed: “Fuck Yeah, Dad Is Awesome”? CBS sitcom. “GOD DAMNIT GET THAT DUMB BITCH OFF THE SCREEN”? Katherine Heigl movie. Get acquirin'.