by John | Sep 1, 2017 | Industry News, Updates
Summer Box-Office flopbusters – Notice the trends of Summer flops to avoid the same pitfalls.
A Summer to forget for Hollywood… the worst grossing Summer in the last ten years, but just why has this happened?
The content has been there. WONDER WOMAN, SPIDERMAN: HOMECOMING, BABY DRIVER, THE DARK TOWER, DUNKIRK, WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES. Of course, they’re different in quality and appeal, but these belong to some big franchises and film companies. But, this Summer has not been so hot.
It’s hard to remember many other films beyond these. If I asked you to name 15 films released since the start of June you’d probably struggle – hell, we’d struggle!
One of the issues is the ease which moviegoers can check a review and decide on whether it’s worth going to see and spend their hard-earned cash on. It takes less than 30 seconds to open up the IMDB app on my phone to check the Dunkirk rating (8.4/10, not bad, Nolan). And this is no doubt how a lot of people are choosing to see films now.
And so many of those low scoring films will just be forgotten. Remember how the BAYWATCH movie was released this Summer, or PIRATES 5 at the end of May? No, me neither. It seems that Hollywood films are becoming more polarizing each year – we’re losing middle ground and average, yet enjoyable, rom-coms and now receiving either complete trash or filmmaking brilliance. We think that script development professionals deserve a bigger voice in the studios’ choice of projects and scriptwriting – and our founder Alex is compiling the research that’ll prove it, we’ve already had a look!
The lack of comedy seems apparent this Summer. Summer action films are always likely going to be a hit, but there’s very little engaging or original comedies or rom-coms out there. Which is just sad for the Summer. Now, we have to settle for things like THE EMOJI MOVIE… We used to get much better quality and ideas…
Maybe this represents a need for better and more original comedies, but there’s also a sign that Winter is becoming the time to release films. The Oscar bait is usually released around Autumn and Winter time, plus the STAR WARS franchise (and before it THE HOBBIT trilogy) was released around Christmas to increase revenue… and it worked.
It’s worth looking more deeply into what films have flopped and why. Try and spot any trends that occur in the failures and do your best to avoid them.
Read more on Hollywood’s horrible Summer here; https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-11/hollywood-s-summer-from-hell
You can also see what sort of scripts are selling recently with Script Pipeline: https://scriptpipeline.com/category/script-sales
Exclusive to WriteMovies – To syndicate this content for your own publication, contact ian (at) writemovies dot-com.
© WriteMovies 2017
by John | Aug 25, 2017 | Elite Consulting, Highlights, Pitching, WriteMovies News, Writing Insights
Our new Elite Consultant, multi-produced screenwriter Bobby Lee Darby, shares his pitching tips on how you should approach pitching to Hollywood, how to plan for it, and how to ace it! (more…)
by John | Aug 21, 2017 | WMC, WriteMovies News
As we’ve done with our book entries, creating the award for “Book with the Best Screen Potential”, we are doing the same for our television script entries to the Summer 2017 Contest.
The “Best Teleplay or Pilot” award will be given out to the best television script submission we receive. The winner of this award will receive free Development Notes to help make their teleplay or pilot break through. With on-demand bringing the best shows into our homes whenever we want them, the appetite for scripted TV shows is massive and so are the range of new ways to get them made – we want to give you the best chance possible. We will even pitch your script ourselves to the top of the industry if you finish in our top 3 for the main contest.
We support all writers, of all scripted formats, and we want them all to flourish. We’ve opened up these specific prizes for books and television script to reward these writers and their scripts, just as much as we would for a feature length screenplay.
You can win these new special “Best Teleplay or Pilot” or “Book with the Best Screen Potential” awards by entering the Summer 2017 Contest now.
by John | Aug 18, 2017 | Industry News, WriteMovies News, Writing Insights
Why Hollywood loves book adaptations… and how we can help with yours! (more…)
by John | Aug 15, 2017 | WMC, WriteMovies News
Book your place in the industry with our Summer writing contest, for a special prize!
Our Summer 2017 Writing Contest isn’t just the place for your feature scripts, shorts, and pilots.
We also accept entries from all of you novelists – and we’re creating a special category in our Summer writing contest, for the “Book with the Best Screen Potential”. The winner will get FREE Development Notes to help them adapt it to a screenplay or documentary, or to help them find a screenwriter who can. This could be a great breakthrough for you.
We love comparing our book entries to the screenplays to find new angles and stories that the world’s gonna be looking for. So we thought we’d dedicate our social media this week to books!
- Enter a book of your own for a flat fee of $69!
- We’ll assess your book based on its own merits and its screen potential.
- We’ve had successful book writer in the past. Cornelia Kempf, a previous WriteMovies winner, has had many novels published thanks to us!
- Don’t forget, that up to August 21st, we are offering a free copy of the Confidential Studio Manual, to be given away at random, for free! And we’ve got special discounts on ALL consultancy reports in August… CLICK HERE.
So, book your place in our Summer Writing Contest with your book, or novel, or novella. We love receiving book entries just as much as scripts and assess their screen potential exactly like we do the screenplays and teleplays we receive.
by John | Aug 11, 2017 | Industry News, Our pick of the web for writers and producers, WriteMovies News
Our pick of the web for July 2017 – From the @WriteMovies Twitter Feed!
Our @WriteMovies Twitter feed has been sharing lots of exciting things giving our tips of the best new articles, insights and offers for screenwriters and producers on the web. And in case you’ve missed anything there, here is our pick for July 2017…
