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Animal Cloning Comes to Hollywood

Posted by samzenpus on from the ever-lasting-lassie dept.

Kate Thompson writes "A week after San Francisco's Genetic Savings and Clone revealed the sale of their first cat to a customer, the Boston Phoenix reports that GS & C acknowledges it has been hired by anonymous buyers in Hollywood to bank genes of show business animals."

8 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Yawn... by Black+Parrot · · Score: 5, Funny


    They're already cloning all their scripts.

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    1. Re:Yawn... by b0r0din · · Score: 4, Funny

      Thank God that George Lucas rebelled against Hollywood, not only by creating a biting satire of their business (title of Star Wars II anyone?) but by doing what no one in Hollywood has ever done - continue to add more and more to his original movies.

      Let's examine, shall we? "Star Wars" obviously refers to movie stars and the battles they fight for supremacy of the movie industry. Obviously the Empire is Hollywood.

      Luke Skywalker - George "Luke"-as? He wrote himself into his own film. Also he walks on the sky, ie. he's better than everyone else. Something tells me George never got past this one. Insert cliched Greedo whine.

      Han Solo - Solo, as in "primadonna" - movie actors in general. Selfish assholes who would pretend to know what a parsec is.

      Princess Leia - Princess "lay ya"? The porn industry.

      R2D2 - Robots who make no sense, ie. movie producers.

      C3PO - Robots who act all pretentious and annoy the fuck out of you with english accents, ie. movie directors.

      Obi Wan Kenobi - Umm, best boy grip?

      Darth Vader - wears a big black mask, is evil. This is the producer Lucas couldn't sell his original script to.

      I could go on, but you get the point. Does this post have anything to do with cloning animals? Not really. But who cares about cloning animals when you can make up some random shit about Star Wars?

    2. Re:Yawn... by Vampyre_Dark · · Score: 4, Funny

      I would think C3PO would be the FCC?

      R2D2 - *beep beep bloop* (Make with the naked wookie chicks!)

      C3PO - My word, we can't do that now can we! We might offend those midwesterners! How un-american!

      Chewie - OOOWAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! (Hey, I AM a wookie CHICK, you insensitve clod!)

  2. Nature versus nurture by beders · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just because the cloned animal has exactly the same genes, doesn't mean that it will exhibit the same behaviour.

    The dog that played Benji might have had an ideal temperament for filming, but it's clone, brought up slightly differently might be a right little ankle biter.

    --
    Brocklesby Park Cricket Club
  3. Doesn't work that way. by Gordonjcp · · Score: 4, Informative
    Look at identical twins - how many do you know who have *exactly* the same personality, interests, tastes, etc.? Allow for the similarity of upbringing (non-twin siblings are usually pretty similar), of course.


    The other problem is that, as we found with "Dolly the Sheep", cloned animals are inherently pretty unhealthy, because their cells age a lot faster (lies to children explanation). At two years old, Dolly had a lot of problems that would really only crop up in a much older animal, presumably because the cell's genetic "clock" was not "reset" (LTC again).


    Still, nice work if you can get it. Who's going to tell the difference, even if the animals are *not* cloned?

  4. Re:Our hollywood star stunt cat died.. by forgotten_my_nick · · Score: 4, Funny

    Or keep 10 clones on hand for the "Throw the cat in the blender" scene. Then when animal rights people come over to check you can show them the real cat and they will never know the difference.

  5. Glossing over the actual money maker. by will_die · · Score: 4, Interesting

    While selling back a physical looking animal will bring in a fair chunk of change, and really how big can that market be. How much work would they have to do to make a benji next year, the main thing would be the breed and same hair color and pattern ; thoses can be changed by dye and makeup.

    Where the big money will be is selling clones to the public. When a popular show/movie has a animal the sales of that animal almost aways increases. For example when the comedy Fraiser was on the air the Jack Russell terrier rose in popularity in the each year(in 2000 along by 21%). Now instead of purchasing any Jack Russell terrier you can purchase a clone of the actual one on the show. How much do you think people would pay for that?
    Granted costs will have to come down ALOT, but if you are thinking for the future this is the way to go.

  6. Clone my wife! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now, if Peter Jackson had been able to clone 100,000 copies of my wife he'd have had his Orc army without needing special effects.