It’s a business of fear. That’s why it’s so easy to say no.
Based on the WGA Writers Education Committee’s panel Studio Development: from Script to Greenlight. The interview was made by Michael Tabb (screenwriter, WGA). The panelists included: the screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh (Armageddon, The Punisher, The Rock); JC Spink from BenderSpink management; development executive Navid McIlhargey (Sr. VP of Production at New Regency; previously of Silver Pictures); producer Derek Dauchy (President of Davis Entertainment); and studio executive David Beaubaire (VP of Production at Paramount; previously studio executive of DreamWorks and Warner Brothers).
Michael Tabb: During the Great depression the entertainment industry grew. When times were rough, people wanted to escape reality. In the 80''s, when the market crashed once again, studios spent more money on movies, and they had a tendency to be better. What is the economic model nowadays? Is the business shrinking?
The business model is changing constantly. You are developing an idea for a movie, and eight years later the world has changed, and that idea is no longer precious.
Yes, the development is shrinking. It used to be $200-to-$250 million in development. Now it’s a half of that. Literally, for “A” writers there is half the money available compared to last year.
Another change is that studios are willing to walk on deals, which never was the case.
We are in a horrible economic climate. It’s going to be very marketing-driven. The marketing divisions, which are huge multimillion-dollar corporations, are going to be interested only in things that they can sell. Hollywood was always the mainstream-making engine, and was always interested mostly in a big idea.
The studios prefer to use pre-branded material. Many movies are getting remade, like Bond or Batman.
The situation is depressive. I’m (Jonathan Hensleigh) now in the position when I''ve got original material. I’m going to approach the comic book companies and the graphic novel companies to get a comic book or a graphic novel of my original idea made, so some idiot in the studio has a pre-branded thing to look at it.
How much weight do you give the script? When do you start talking to marketing people directly about the project? And how early is the marketing involved with the developing?
The marketing people are not involved in the developing process. They are involved in the green lighting process.
Isn’t it harder for an unproduced writer to make his/her way in?
It is, from selling an initial script. If the script has a very strong original voice, it might not have been sold maybe five or six years ago, and it won’t sell now. But it will make the rounds. The studio can sit on the project for years.
If you are an unproduced writer, you are lucky to get a turn around, because it’s not about buying your script, it’s about future hiring.
There’s another thing. The unproduced writers that we deal with are 25-30 years old. It’s very rare to get a relevant script from somebody over 40.
The studios are looking for something good, entertaining and marketable. Like the Slumdog Millionaire. It’s based on book, it has pre-existing material. Fox could do better than anybody else to market something more interesting than a tentpole. Little Miss Sunshine, Juno and Slumdog Millionaire – were three Best Picture nominees the last three years.
What about writer’s competitions? Festivals? Awards?
The festival awards could matter maybe five years ago, but not anymore.
Don’t you think the fact that studios are focusing on marketing angles and on chasing franchising, the tentpoles and blockbusters has affected the quality?
Of course it has. But people go to see those movies. As long as people go to see it, we can’t change the way we are doing business. The Godfather wouldn’t be made today.
The movies aren’t clearly and totally getting worse. There are some good ones. But when you spend 80 million dollars, you can’t take the same risk. You can’t protect the integrity of the creative process without realizing that you are spending somebody else’s money.
In terms of just an economic factor, there is more and more pressure on the studios to take things into their own hands. Even if people are going to see movies in theaters, it doesn''t necessarily mean that studios are still making tons of money.
Also, the international market fills back. There are certain movies that travel overseas and certain ones that don’t. The big blockbuster movies do a lot of international business as well.
Do you give notes on a script because of what you think will help to sell it, or what’s good for the story?
It depends on the studio. If it is the concern of the studio that the movie is going to perform and not just be a domestic property, absolutely. It’s the part of the process.
It’s not always going to be about the story, right?
It’s not just about making a better script, it’s about making a better movie, that performs well.
These are two different things – a good movie and movie that performs well. There are great movies that do not perform well.
If the performance helps to make films better, we work on it. So we can produce more films. Because we can’t keep making movies if our movies don’t make money.
What’s the magic page number when you put the script down? I know a lot of people just read the coverage.
The coverage is a waste of time. Some people put down things on page 2 or 3. It depends. If it’s just a writing sample, we would read till the point when we think it’s a good writer or not.
If you are trying to sell it for a million dollars, it supposes to be very good at page 1. We should open the script and be like “wow, this is awesome!” four paragraphs in. It shouldn’t be something that “gets better in the second half.” The script never gets better, only worse.
By page 10, Dorothy has not left Kansas, Bergman has not showed up in Casablanca and Newman hasn’t made his first appearance in the Sting. Nowadays those great movies might never get made.
Those scripts were page-turners. And if you read a page-turner, it’s gone pretty quick.
What are you looking for in a writer when you are reading the script? You are looking for personality, right? Twelve other guys that you read that day said “he shoots a gun” and this guy’s “he shoots a gun” got you off.
It takes a long time for writers to realize that making a film is cooperative process. It’s going to be a lot of rewrites and polishing. You have to say “yes” to studio executives.
The great writers can do everything: character development, structure, dialogues, etc. Once you feel that you can’t improve the project, you have to let it go and make somebody else do it.
Very few pictures deal with somebody’s entire vision. If you want complete control, become a stage writer or a novelist.
Jonathan Hensleigh: What can happen is that a script can die the death of a thousand cuts. I’m an executive producer myself, I completely understand that. It’s a rock and a hard place. But I do need to add that I wish that there were not as many cooks in the kitchen. I wish that these huge multinational corporations could somehow organize themselves, so that there was a more streamlined and less executive-intensive process. When I started in this business, the creative department at Paramount was on one floor. It really sounds like I’m talking about the Jurassic era. And now the script development executives, it’s like a hundred of the f****rs. They are everywhere. At every meeting you take. They are all 28 years old, they all went to the good schools and they all took Shakespeare classes and they all have a commentary on your script. It’s a serious problem. By the way, it’s not the executives'' fault. They are hired by these corporations.
Unfortunately, the system is not going to change any time soon, until this way doesn’t work financially for studios. As long as they are making better money this way, there’s absolutely no reason for any change. We don’t know what’s going to happen in five years. Until something really gets broken in this system, which isn’t happening, it’s going to be like this.
The situation is not good for writers. This is where we are. What can writers in this system do to get their projects greenlight? When you read a script, what’s the first thing that turns you on?
The original concept. If it’s really well executed and it lacks an original concept, we would meet those people to figure out if they can write something else. But mostly what we look for is an original concept.
We have to be able to pitch it to our supervisors, and they have to pitch it to theirs. If the concept can be sold in the trailer, the poster or in the tagline, it’s wonderful. If the concept is in the title, then you got something gigantic!
Some movies get the greenlight just out of the concept. For example, we faxed a script to Joe Ross, Eddie Murphy’s lawyer. The script needed a lot of work. But they loved the concept so much that they wanted to do this movie next. I was like “Do you wanna read it first?” He said: “No, we’ll fix the script.” That’s how Daddy Day Care was greenlighted.
Look, it can be as quickly as you pitch the script to a manager or an agent: “Look, it’s about this” and they start reading it. They say: “We know the concept, the writing is engaging, we believe in these characters and we want to get into this.” Because if they got something that is well written and it has some potential, even if it’s not well written, but it has really good concept, they have to act quickly to get on top of it.
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