HOLLYWOOD, March 12 (UPI) -- There's another inconvenient truth becoming ascendant in Hollywood: Filmmakers are warming up to environmental issues underpinning their plots.
Environmental themes are woven into several films being released in the coming months, including "The Simpsons Movie," "Transformers," a "Creature From the Black Lagoon" remake, "The Ruins," "Avatar" and "The Happening."
Whether Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" is to blame or just the most obvious manifestation of the movie industry's cashing in on concerns about global warming and ecological concerns, studios now are jumping into an area they've shied away from in the past, The New York Times said.
"Good science fiction plays as a metaphor for our current world," said Jon Landau, who with James Cameron produced "Avatar," a 20th Century Fox movie of humans raiding other planets after having used up the Earth's resources. "People who see the theme will get an important message."
"Transformers," a Dreamworks and Paramount Pictures project due July 4, depicts robots from another defiled planet arriving on Earth where similar devastation is imminent.
"With this (environmental) thinking all around, it's obviously leaking into the popcorn movies," Roberto Orci, a co-writer on the film, told the Times.
