Ok so this week, the first one, I'll keep quiet short. Mainly because I'm tired but also because it's a rant, a bit of a rant anyway and unless you start with the intention of being brief, they go on and on.

As people who work with me know, I have the terrible habit of coming up with great ideas for films and projects only to find out that either that's it's currently being done or I leave it too long and someone does it... often badly.

Like many kids growing up in the 80s the idea of an A-Team movie seemed great... beaten to the punch there. Or Star Wars prequels or Lord of the Rings epics. The production of those films didn't hurt so much as so many other kids had the same idea.

What did hurt quiet recently was being turned down for script development funds for an film idea centring around Robin Hood. The story of a man who was a rich kid brat who goes to war and comes home to become the hero of the common man.

It always struck me about every version of Robin Hood that the most important period, the most interesting, was his time in the crusades. Research into the period proved that I was right and the crusades and the political history of the time were ripe with content.

Image my hurt when after the local film authority (I'm sure you know which one) turned it on the basis that the script wasn't developed enough to get development funding and that characters such as Little John and Maid Marion weren't featured enough.... "fine" I thought, maybe Nottinghamshire council will be more interested in a new angle on their favourite son.

Alas, no; and by the time we'd had feed back and yet another rejection, news of Ridley Scott's version emerged and so the idea was irrelevant.

What really made me feel sore though was a conversation a friend of mine was having with one evening whilst we were sat in the pub. He was on the phone to a colleague of his he had worked with a while back who was currently on the Robin Hood shoot. At the end of the call we were enlightened as to the content of the conversation, which said that the project was struggling to get going because they didn't have a script ready.

Now, not getting fund to get a script ready is a blow. Finding out one the best directors in the world is a disappointment you can accept. Finding out that the film you wanted to make is being directed by a man you admire but that he has no script, when the only reason you don't have one is because the film council said it wasn't worth the effort... ouch!

How accurate the crewmember's report on the situation was is still to be clarified, but either way the pain runs deep.

Sadly this story of missed opportunities, or as I've come to see it "stealing the great ideas from my mind with some sort of brain scanning device", is not rare to me. So many ideas that I've had or wanted to make have been taken away from me one way or another... I could list them but you'd never believe me (I actually researched and wrote a script for Troy, a year before it was announced... I even wanted Brad Pitt and Saffron Burrows in it. OK, lots of people want Brad Pitt, but very few people instantly think of Saffron Burrows, even though I thinks she's great... they must be reading my mind.

Anyway the reason I tell this story in this long-winded blog is because it's happened again, only 24 hours ago. I finally got on DVD (though the Spanish import version) The Last Star Fighter. I loved this film as a kid. What an adventure: the outcast, downtrodden boy from humble surroundings goes off to save the galaxy... classic.

Sitting there looking at it and thinking how much it impressed me as a kid I thought "hey, you know what would work? A sequel, where he comes back and the whole war has finally come to earth's door... blah blah blah... You don't need to know what I thought, other than that it was good.

Out of pure interest I jumped straight to IMDb to see what director (Nick Castle) was up to, or had done since. What should my wondrous eyes see... Starfighter (2010): a true sequel, not a reboot or remake, and the same director. All seemed right with the world, even though yet again an idea has been snatched from me.

Maybe this is a good thing though, maybe it proves I'm coming up with ideas that Hollywood wants.

Maybe in the next few years I can upset some young aspiring film maker by making a poor version of something he or she dreamed about.

Until next time, that was me being brief.