A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 24

This is the third year in a row I’ve run this series in April. Today’s story: A heated wax museum war takes shape in Hollywood:

Dissing Angelina Jolie normally isn’t the best way to get ahead in this town.

But tough times call for tough tactics in the war of the Hollywood wax museums.

Madame Tussauds, which considers itself the ne plus ultra of wax artistry — with the $25 ticket price to match — is trying to best its cheaper competitor, the Hollywood Wax Museum, with a new marketing blitz stressing the defects in its rival’s paraffin starlets, singers and comics.

In a wax version of a cola taste test, Madame Tussauds plans to let visitors decide whose figures most closely resemble their glamorous living counterparts. Starting this week, Madame Tussauds will begin placing a celebrity replica in its lobby alongside a life-size cut-out photo of the same figure snapped at the Hollywood Wax Museum. First up is Jolie.

The message: Our Angie is hot. Theirs is not.

Madame Tussauds plans to rotate the figures every few days. It’s also putting up posters in its lobby, citing negative online reviews of the Hollywood Wax Museum next to positive reviews for Madame Tussauds.

“I personally think we are better than the Hollywood Wax Museum,” said Colin Thomas, general manager of Madame Tussauds, which opened its $60-million attraction in a prime location next to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in 2009.

Tej Sundher, whose grandfather opened the Hollywood Wax Museum a block away in 1965, says he isn’t fazed by Madame Tussauds’ sniping. He said his tickets, priced at $15.95, offer visitors good value for their money. And while he admits his museum doesn’t have the cachet of his internationally famous rival, he said his wax figures can hold their own.

“I’ll compare my Hugh Hefner with their Hugh Hefner any day,” he said, pointing to his museum’s wax depiction of the Playboy founder dressed in a satin bathrobe and stretched out on a bed.

In the grand tradition of Tin Men (1987), War of the Roses (1989) and Grumpy Old Men (1993), how about a quirky — there’s that damn word again! — competition comedy? It could be a pair of wax museums. It could be Hollywood.

Or it could be any pair of businesses. Or any sort of rivalry.

There is a movie currently in development originally called “Turkey Bowl,” but renamed “Three Mississippi” with this premise: “A feud exists between two families over an annual Thanksgiving touch football game that has existed for 50 years.”

That is a great comedic premise. The Hatfields and McCoys set in the holiday season involving an activity we all associate with Thanksgiving.

Hijinks and mayhem ensue [Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, and Alec Baldwin are attached].

So what sort of rivalry conceit can you come up with? Or work with the specific one above: Two wax museums going up against each other.

What would you do with this idea?

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