I was on the phone yesterday with an assistant of Simon Kinberg, the screenwriter who penned Mr. and Mrs. Smith and X-Men: The Last Stand. His assistant, a former writer for E! Online, is telling me that he's working on a movie plot in which in two brothers attempt to rob a mega-mansion somewhere in the desert. She's asking me about cool technologies that a multi-millionaire might put around their property if money was no object. Oh, man, we could dream up some cool stuff. So I rattle off some technologies like video analytics and fence systems using fiber optics that can identify intruders...definitely not your standard fare for a residential application, but if money was no object...
Now, I'm not much of a movie buff, but I am a web researcher, so I searched for Simon Kinberg's name in the news, and came up with an article from April of this year which appeared in The Hollywood Reporter. Kinberg is apparently writing the script for The Hardy Men, a forthcoming movie about boyhood heroes "The Hardy Boys". I put two and two together and The Hardy Boys definitely fit the "two brothers" profile which Kinberg's assistant mentioned. The Hardy Men are to be played by Tom Cruise and Ben Stiller, as unlikely a pairing as anyone could expect, but one that should give its share of laughs.
My guess? When The Hardy Boys/Hardy Men movie comes out in 2008 (it sounds like a summer blockbuster release), all you security guys will be able to check out how Hollywood sees high-end residential security. I can't wait to stuff my face with popcorn and enjoy high-tech security on the big screen.
-Geoff

Geoff Kohl | Editorial Director/Editor-in-Chief/Associate Publisher
Geoff Kohl is the Marketing Director for the Security Industry Association (SIA). He is the former Editor-in-Chief of SecurityInfoWatch.com