Deadline‘s Mike Fleming is reporting that Judd Apatow has inked to direct Cola Wars. Steven Spielberg is onboard as a producer.
It’ll be a presumably straightforward, dryly humorous account of the intense rivalry between Coca-Cola and Pepsi during the mid 20th Century but mainly, I’m gathering from Fleming’s article, during the mid ’80s. The script is being written by Jason Shuman and Ben Queen.
I’m sorry but what’s where’s the fun or fascination in this saga? I’m not intrigued by the idea of watching soft-drink marketing guys try to out-hustle each other.
The only hook I can think of is the strategy of Pepsi Cola execs to focus on the African American market, starting in the 1940s.
According to a 1.18.13 N.Y. Times op-ed piece, Coke’s recipe was heavily influenced by white supremacy and it was marketed mainly to the white middle class. Throughout the 1920’s and 1930’s, the company “studiously” and purposely ignored the African-American market.
What was the first major commercial film to dig into the Coke-vs.Pepsi thing? Obviously Billy Wilder‘s One Two Three (’61). It contains two scenes that riff on the rivalry.
The second most noteworthy acknowledgment of Pepsi branding was that Pulp Fiction scene when drug dealer Eric Stoltz says that when it comes to the quality of Cholo, the Harz mountain heroin that he’s trying to sell to John Travolta, he’ll “take the Pepsi challenge” alongside any other heroin on the market.
What other cinematic references?
