by John | Oct 26, 2018 | Industry News, Updates
Script Sales from September 2018
Script Pipeline have been reporting on script sales from September 2018 – and although sales might be light this month, there are some interesting projects to take note of.
- Halle Berry will be taking on her directorial debut with BRUISED, in which she will also star. We’ve had countless boxing movies over the years, but apart from WARRIOR, Mixed Martial Arts hasn’t yet had its day at the movies. Perhaps now is the time for it to step into the ring?
- THE WILD BUNCH is getting a remake, and it looks like Mel Gibson will be the man behind it. This will be his first feature since 2016’s HACKSAW RIDGE – and shows the continuing trend of remakes and reboots in Hollywood right now.
- Whatever you thought of Rian Johnson’s efforts with STAR WARS, he’s soldiering on with his next picture. KNIVES OUT is a modern murder-mystery with Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, and, as most recently reported by Variety, Jamie Lee Curtis.
Don’t forget, knowing what’s selling right now is important for any writer who wants the best chance of getting their work produced – so read the full report on script sales from September 2018 by clicking here.
And don’t waste the chance to get our professional feedback on your work either using our script report services. They’re discounted throughout our Winter 2019 Contest, and you get free entry to the competition when you commission one, too!
by John | Oct 22, 2018 | Updates
In readiness for the eventual arrival of the final season, Ian Kennedy subjects himself to the whole thing again. Can anyone endure Ned’s honor, Stannis, the Red Wedding, and – worst of all – Arya’s unending journey from ‘annoying’ to ‘a different kind of annoying’, all over again? Or will the quality of the writing conquer all foes once more? Spoiler central here, if you hadn’t guessed… but in euphemisms that would make Tyrion blush, most of the time.
In honor of Tyrion, it’s hard not to open a bottle of red wine. There will be much hardship ahead to endure. Especially with an hour of reintroductions to get through first.
Now, when I tell you that one of the main characters of a story will be a dwarf, you already know it’s in one of two genres. Which is crazy, since people of that stature can turn up in any other context. Why are you already assuming the story I’m talking about must be a fantasy or comedy? But, such is the power of genre expectations. Or maybe stereotypes.
So yes, Thrones is a fantasy – though the society it reveals plays out like a twisted version of medieval Europe, it has some important extra elements, like ‘bloodmagic’. And, by giving us a character who people could describe as a dwarf (he’s usually given other epithets instead, like Imp and Half-Man), it’s meeting some of our expectations of the fantasy genre. But it’s what the series does with tropes like this which is fascinating. Sure, we’re used to dwarf warriors in Lord of the Rings and dwarf magicians in Harry Potter… I could go on. But how about an alcoholic, wise, witty, rich, womanising one? That’s an individual, not a stereotype. Very quickly, we learn to view Tyrion as an individual – a person, not a type. The result is some powerful stereotype-busting – I’d been told to expect to spot his American accent in the early episodes, but I didn’t, reaffirming my conviction that Peter Dinklage is just a great actor, end of.
Hadrian’s Wall – not quite as big as the one in Game of Thrones…
Anyway, to the series itself. The first sequence, a Night’s Watch foray beyond the Wall, quickly establishes that it’s grim up North, and even worse North of the Wall. (Speaking of which, anyone else think the geography of Westeros in that vast title sequence is just an exaggerated map of medieval Britain, with the Wall standing for Hadrian’s Wall, Winterfell for York (Viking capital of the Danelaw), King’s Landing as London, etc? Sensibly, and vividly, we’re introduced to the series’ monstrous zombies straight away; if the White Walkers were introduced later, it’d feel like a cheap trick to heighten the stakes. Introducing them here – and then saying they haven’t been seen for thousands of years – shows that from the outset, the world of all these characters has taken a decisive change that puts everything in danger. If anything, the rise of the White Walkers across the coming series is too slow and occasional in the show, but we have plenty else to keep us occupied till they finally get to flex their muscles.
Next we’re introduced to the Starks, the family who are initially at the heart of the series, executing their usual dourly dutiful natures from the start, when patriarch Ned executes the deserter who escaped the White Walker before – not much of a reward for surviving the opening sequence, and a tough introduction to the character who is the moral heart of the coming episodes, but this sequence is intended to show the brutal justice of the world we’re entering: even the good guys accept their part in that. “The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword”, Ned tells Bran, his 10-year old son, who he forces to watch the execution. Next, more casual gore and death, as the Starks then discover a dead direwolf, resulting in her brood of orphan cubs being given to the Stark children – a nice motif established for later, when they will come to be closely associated with their adult direwolves (though, as in other respects, they are unsentimentally handled within the story from an early stage – one is already unjustly killed within a few episodes).
In King’s Landing, we briefly meet Lannisters Cersei and her brother Jaime discussing the suspiciously-deceased ‘Hand of the King’, but this is just setup for the arrival of the King – Robert Baratheon – to Winterfell, where he will ask his old pal Ned to take over as ‘Hand’ in the capital. Ned’s been avoiding King’s Landing for 9 years – and probably since his best friend Robert took the throne – and I’m keen to explore my theory that if Ned had accepted or taken the throne back when he and Robert deposed the ‘Mad King’, all of the turmoil and decimation we see in the series might have been avoided. Now, Robert (hardly as good as king as he was as soldier) tells Ned to rule so that he can continue to drink and whore himself to an early grave.
Another character on the same track is Cersei and Jaime’s undersized brother Tyrion. We’re used to seeing dwarves in this genre – but not as playboys. With Tyrion we meet the first naked woman of the series – must be some kind of distinction – and the next follows moments later when we meet Daenerys, a vital powerful character, yet who is stripped naked in her very first scene as her brother (the heir of the previous, murdered king of Westeros) readies her for a strategic marriage to a ‘savage’ king across the English Channel (sorry, Narrow Sea). Game of Thrones likes to get its women naked first, and give them their dignity later. Dany’s brother renders this starkly (no pun intended – oh, who am I kidding), stating that he’d let the entire Dothraki army and their horses violate her in order for him to return to Westeros as king. She is powerless at this point is – sorry, I’m trying to avoid saying ‘stark’ again – and this sets up her journey to the top well by placing her firmly in the opposite situation and ensuring that she is the person within this savage realm who we empathize with from the start.
Back in Winterfell, Jon Snow trains to go to the Wall rather than join the revels, proving that in spite of his ‘bastard’ origins, he’s inherited the Starks’ sense of duty and honor, and Tyrion tells him in solidarity that ‘dwarves are all bastards in their father’s eyes’ too. Ned gets news that the last Hand may have been murdered by the Lannisters, amplifying his dilemma about Robert’s request.
Dany’s wedding goes to plan, in that being stripped again and subjected by her new husband was definitely part of the plan, from the men’s point of view. Her reward is that she is presented with dragon’s eggs, which are thought to be petrified but will nonetheless come to define her later. All in all I’m impressed with the amount of information and motifs that are embedded in the first episode – as ever, the series juggles a big cast of characters while giving you just enough to recognize them all by. (See my Mini-Masterclass with the Game of Thrones personal identities challenge, to find out how this works.)
Finally, Bran stumbles upon a scene of you-know-what between siblings Cersei and Jaime (a queen, no less, shown robbed of her dignity, clothes and honor this time), bringing about Bran’s fateful accident. Finally we have a moment of action, and a good surprise plot twist to explain the rest of the intrigues we’ve discovered in the episode. This is also the first moment of action since the first sequence, just when I was just thinking this must be the only episode where none of the main characters have any.
The binding agent, the central question, that joins all the characters and storylines in THRONES is ‘who rules Westeros’. We’re not following the farmers or hilltribes. The series knows its central question, and sticks to it throughout, in spite of the huge cast, and never falls more than one or two removes away.
All in all, I wasn’t totally hooked by this episode second time round, but I felt the same about the first Harry Potter movie, even though both do a great job of introducing the fantasy worlds of their stories. Once you’re beyond that world-building, HP1 doesn’t have much more to offer you – but with its pincer-like moments of dialogue and brutalism, GoT’s first episode still does.
Playback rating: 4/5
by John | Oct 19, 2018 | Highlights, Interviews, Updates
In Part One of our exclusive article in conversation with Steven Knight, the writer-director spoke about how he began his career and about the rise of TV drama. Now, in Part Two, we find out about some of his influences and future plans…
Steven explained that PEAKY BLINDERS is based on stories of his parents and uncles, many of which he heard while around his blacksmith father while he was young. Once the BBC took an interest, things moved quickly. With series 1 complete, Steven was looking at potentially making 4 or 5 series of PEAKY BLINDERS.
PEAKY BLINDERS uses some CGI, but mostly uses derelict locations that aren’t about to be knocked down (one key location is the street where Ringo Starr was born!). There was resistance to setting PEAKY BLINDERS in Birmingham (UK) because of the unglamorous accent, but Knight insisted on retaining that authenticity – he believed that we should be telling our own stories of places like Birmingham.
The basic premise of LOCKE (starring Tom Hardy) was a journey from Birmingham to London, where someone starts out with everything and ends up with nothing – exploring how that could happen. If the cost is low enough, you can get creative freedom to run a project your way. LOCKE knocked CAPTAIN AMERICA off number 1 in terms of revenue per screen! It was on vastly less screens of course, but that was still very promising. Knight was determined that the character in that film should be the most ordinary person possible.
He explained that you have to write a three page outline for studios, however unlikely the script was to end up that way. Knight prefers not knowing where a story is gonna go. He writes, then goes back to the start every day and works through from there.
Knight has accidentally become the poster-boy for Birmingham’s drives to move to the next level in its drive to become a major player in global culture. He intends to build a major sound stage in Birmingham as London’s major studios are fully booked, with a ‘halo effect’ of businesses based around it, and from this to also create a scene where live theatre can lead to movies being made.
Ian Kennedy’s conversation with Steven Knight turned out lots of interesting information about the inner working of the industry. If you haven’t read it yet, why not take a look at Part One by clicking here?
by John | Oct 12, 2018 | Highlights, Interviews, Updates
Our Ian Kennedy was lucky enough to share a table for an evening with Steven Knight, the writer of SERENITY, PEAKY BLINDERS, TABOO, DIRTY PRETTY THINGS, LOCKE, and much more…
Steven Knight says that we’re entering a golden age of TV and film. He explained that the US system is great for writers – it’s unionized and you can make a proper living just from writing. He actually felt that there seems to be a good mystery to you if you DON’T live in LA, as long as you’re prepared to fly out every 6 weeks and do late-night conference calls.
But he explained that the Hollywood system is slow! It takes many years of gestation most of the time. If you persuade a star to be in your project, the studios know they’ll make back a certain many million dollars from it – his film HUMMINGBIRD (with Jason Statham) was in profit before it even got to the cinema. He felt that distributors often underestimate their audience and focus on young males.
Screens are better nowadays so TV drama has risen a lot. Actors like TV and it’s a writer’s medium – writers have control there, unlike other formats. Too many people are involved in making films, telling you something’s not good enough in order to justify their presence and pay. But getting actors to commit beyond series 1 of your TV series is hard because they may get film offers.
Show runners write episode 1 in the US and their team of writers – who’ve developed it with them – do other episodes. Writers rise up through the ranks in the US. British TV writing is more eccentric and individualistic – the US system is more corporate. Theatre writers are good for TV due to their ability with dialogue and are often overlooked.
Steven Knight explained that he had begun his career in the UK by writing plenty for radio, and for comedians including particularly Jasper Carrott, and writing 31 episodes of Carrott’s sitcom with Robert Powell, THE DETECTIVES. Steven was one of the 3 founders of WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE. He also wrote novels for Penguin, and presented DIRTY PRETTY THINGS to the BBC which led to that commission.
Then came AMAZING GRACE, for the 200th anniversary of the end of the slave trade, and EASTERN PROMISES which led from DIRTY PRETTY THINGS. The award nominations that came as a result of these put him into the US system, which he found to be great for writers. He got to direct HUMMINGBIRD which he had also written, and after that wanted to get total control of a project – and he feels that LOCKE vindicated him becoming a director.
Click HERE to check out Part 2 of our conversation with Steven Knight, in which he discusses the influences behind PEAKY BLINDERS, his writing process, and his plans for the future…
by John | Oct 8, 2018 | Our Winners, Results, Updates
The desert takes care of its own… A hard-bitten oil explorer and a desperate group of orphans led by two unorthodox nuns are forced into a hellish desert confrontation to escape the Nazis and help ensure an Allied victory.
From the fierce competition of our most recent contest, one script emerged victorious. We are proud to introduce the WriteMovies Spring 2018 Contest Winner: DESERT RUN by Christopher Thomas!
A wartime action-adventure script set in Egypt, 1942, DESERT RUN is a thrilling script that rejuvenates the classic era of adventure. Full of excitement and romance, it kept us on the edge of our seats from the first page to the last, and deservedly took the top spot in our contest. Chris wins a cash prize of $2000, a year of script development worth up to $3200, and more!
Here’s a summary of the WriteMovies Spring 2018 Contest winner…
Michael Quinn, a man haunted by memories of a war-scarred childhood, grows into the roughshod desert explorer who discovers the enormous oil reserves in Saudi Arabia. By 1942, his company is the most important source of oil in the world – a world that craves his product – a world at war.
As Quinn tries to keep the oilfields out of Hitler’s hands, he discovers that the lives of a young nun and her crew of streetwise orphans are pawns in a deadly deal. And as the Nazis brutalize North Africa, Quinn and the boys devise their escape.
With Nazis at their back and the Sahara desert before them, a monster sandstorm offers them refuge. It’s said that the desert takes care of its own but the price is high, and when the survivors are finally confronted with a real hell-on-earth, they find their bonds irrevocably forged and their mettle tested.
And a short bio of Chris…
As a little girl growing up in Saudi Arabia, I was aware that I was surrounded by stories of epic proportions. History was happening everywhere and it gave me a particularly urgent perspective on humans, their conditions and their resilience that continues to feed my screenwriting. When I’m not mired in some dark and dire world I’ve created, I’m a creative writing instructor and a writer/designer of educational material based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I’m also the Director and Lead Instructor for the Boulder Writing Studio’s Summer Creative Writing Camp series in Boulder, Colorado and serve on the Board of Directors. Prior to that I spent over 20 years as a senior level creative in the fields of animation, broadcast advertising, media design and film/video production. I have an MA in Educational Design E-learning from the University of Colorado Denver.
Want to follow Chris and become a Grand Prize Winner? Our Winter 2019 contest is now open – final deadline January 2019! Enter today and take your first steps towards writing success with WriteMovies!
by John | Oct 1, 2018 | Our Winners, Updates, WMC
We’ve got another great script to present to you! Our Spring 2018 contest 2nd place script is KLONDIKE MIKE by Thomas Zmiarovich!
This hilarious family comedy has an unusual Alaskan setting, lovable characters, and brilliant set pieces that will have you roaring with laughter. A big congratulations to Tom for his win; he receives Development Notes, previews of our Virtual Film School, exclusive prizes from InkTip, and more! Read on to find out more about this script…
Here’s the logline for KLONDIKE MIKE:
A family start a new life in Alaska where they encounter extreme wildlife and an eccentric local prospector with a talent for finding gold…
And the writer’s summary of his script:
In this adventurous family comedy, Sam McCord inherits a gold claim and decides to put his dead-end job with a corporate mega-store chain on hold and move his dysfunctional family to Alaska for the summer in hopes to strike it rich and solve all his problems.
Virtually dragging his wife, 16-year-old son and 9-year old genius daughter to the wilds of Alaska, he soon realizes that he knows nothing about working a gold claim. At a local saloon, Sam meets Klondike Mike, a rustic, flamboyant, vagabond lady’s man prospector, who convinces Sam he’d make the perfect straw boss to run the claim. With no other options, Sam hires him, and under Klondike’s direction the claim is soon running like clockwork. So, what could go wrong?
For Sam, everything – from pesky Yellow Jacket attacks, feisty raccoon encounters, cell phone-outhouse mishaps, Magic Mushroom trips with a cookie eating Grizzly bear, and the underhanded dealings with the Bible thumping claim jumpers trying to steal Sam’s claim back. Not to mention, Sam’s worries that his children admire Klondike more than him.
Thomas Zmiarovich Bio:
Born in Seattle, in the shadow of the aerospace giant, Boeing, my love for movies began as far back as I can remember. From the age of 10, much of my paper route money found its way to the cheap, week-day, matinees in summer at the Columbia City theater, a mile walk from my home on Beacon Hill. Sci-fi, comedy, action, you name it, I could have lived there if I could.
As an adult, I never lost that love of the big screen. Even as I raised a family and worked as a Tool Design Engineer, for Boeing. I always dreamed that I had something to contribute to the craft I loved so much.
Through the years, I wrote my stories and scripts, developing and learning the craft of writing and story-telling from names like Stanley Kramer, Abby Mann, Michael Hauge, Richard Walter, and others. I’ve had scripts finish in the quarter and semi-finals at Nichol, Austin, and others; am a finalist with Script Pipeline and the Washington State Screenplay Competition; and have had numerous Top Ten finishers.
My love of story telling will never allow me to stop trying to get those stories to the big screen for all to see.
by John | Sep 21, 2018 | Industry News, Updates
After a lull over the summer, script sales start to pick up again with plenty of interesting news as reported in Script Pipeline’s August 2018 Script Sales. Find out what’s hot at the moment, and where the opportunities are for screenwriters at the moment…
- As diversity continues to be an important issue in the industry, projects with Asian-American and Polynesian leads are proving to be popular. Leading the way is Dwayne Johnson, set to star in a biopic of the Hawaiian King Kamehameha directed by Robert Zemeckis.
- Having earned a worldwide gross more than six times its $30 million production budget, Crazy Rich Asians has earned itself a sequel, with both the writers and director set to return.
- Will Wile E. Coyote finally get the Road Runner? Coyote Vs. Acme is set to be produced by Chris McKay, director of The Lego Batman Movie; here’s hoping it has the same wacky sense of humor!
- Plus a directorial opportunity for Natalie Portman and a Supergirl film for DC – and more!
Check out the other script sale news for August from Script Pipeline here.
