View from the North 40: Hollywood itching for rights to super lice story

In an interesting turn of health news this week in Pamville, Hollywood stars are itching for the rights to get lice.

Fox News has reported that Southern Illinois University researchers are saying that 25 states across the country have a case of "super lice."

Researcher’s data shows that this genetic strain of lice is resistant to both over the counter and prescription treatments that traditionally kill lice.

The lice are the size of standard, or traditional, lice but the only thing that seems to be stopping them, the researchers said, is heat therapy with an FDA-approved heat therapy machine that uses a combination of temperature and air flow to kill the nits or eggs of lice.

After word of this strain of super lice hit Hollywood, movie production companies Marvel and Pixar started a bidding war over the movie rights.

An unnamed source at Pixar Animation Studios, which is arguably the hottest computer animated movie maker in history, said that this story has all the “right hot-button points of a great super-hero tale.”

“We have super lice who look like regular guys, but aren’t. We have mad scientists trying to defeat them. And there’s a secret, fatal flaw that makes the super lice very human and relatable, but which the super lice have to overcome,” she said. “This story is begging to hit the big screen.”

Rumors coming out of the Marvel camp is that they want to make this story a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the movie mega-franchise based on Marvel Comics characters and storylines.

Kevin Feige, who has produced all the films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, would only say that the super lice would “certainly blend” with other super heroes in the franchise, like Iron Man, Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant Man.

Feige was seen meeting with writer-director Jon Favreau, who has worked on several Marvel movies, and Southern Illinois University representatives.

“Listen, we understand Marvel’s attraction to this story. Who doesn’t know about and want to root for the lice,” the Pixar representative said. “It’s the same thing that hooked us.

“But how are they going to pull it off in manpower alone,” she added. “Those lice reproduce at the rate of up to 10 eggs a day and in 10 days they become super lice that make more eggs. Every day this story grows bigger. How is Marvel going to come up with that many quality, super-looking actors to fill that need for more super lice?

“No one is making a legion of Hemsworth brothers anymore,” she said. “As a computer-animated film studio, we can design and digitally create as many lice characters as we need. Find super-sounding voice actors and populate an entire super-lice universe with the touch of a few buttons.

“Marvel,” she said, punctuating her point with jabs of her index finger on the reporter’s chest, “cannot do justice to this super-lice super-story. Not like Pixar. Those Illinois researchers will come to understand this and hand over the movie rights to these super-lice to us, and we will animate a whole new level of indestructible superness right into those lice. Heads will turn and never stop itching when we get done with this story.”

(Thank you for reading Pamville News, where our motto is “Take the truth and run with it until it passes out and fiction wins the race” at [email protected].)