First Edit: Okay, not sure if this has sold yet. I thought it sold to Warner Brothers but someone said not true? Can anyone confirm?
Second edit: Wow, just 5 hours after the review was posted, Netflix came in and bought Bright. This is easily going to be their biggest original film yet.
HUUUUUGE spec sale reviewed today folks. And from the most controversial screenwriter working today. Days like this are what Scriptshadow was made for.
Genre: Cop Drama/Fantasy
Premise: In a world where fantasy creatures live alongside humans, a cop and his orc partner stumble upon a magical item so rare, everyone in the city comes after them to get it.
About: This is that super big spec sale that just occurred a few days ago. And yup, you’re correct, it was written by Max Landis. Although this time, Landis has teamed up with David Ayer (who wrote one of my favorite cop movies of all time – Training Day), and his revised draft is the draft I’ll be reading today. Ayer is also planning on directing the film. Lots of folks wanted this one. Let’s see if it lives up to the hype.
Writers: Max Landis – Current Revisions by David Ayer
Details: 96 pages – 2/29/16 draft
Here’s a brief through-the-years synopsis of how to sell a spec script:
1990 – Come up with any idea that resembles a movie that could conceivably make money, don’t have to write the actual script, get a million dollars for it.
1996 – Come up with a cool hip indy script with tons of dialogue (note: dialogue does not have to be story-relevant).
1998 – Come up with a “high concept” summer blockbuster idea that likely involves the end of the world.
2003 – Write high-concept horror. Bonus points if there’s a big twist at the end.
2008 – Come up with a cool contained thriller. Anybody trapped in a small location will earn you a sale.
2009 – Anything found-footage. ANYTHING!
2014 – Low-budget horror gets you in like Flynn.
2015 – Biopic Party. Write a script about anybody from any time period who was reasonably famous. Bonus points if World War 2 is mentioned in even a cursory manner.
2016 – Be Max Landis.
Today’s script is going to be interesting because on the one hand, you have Max Landis, the social media rabbel-rouser who’s six months away from having an Amanda Bynes-like public meltdown. On the other you have David Ayer, a screenwriting superstar who’s a writing badass on every level. I don’t know what I’m expecting, but I do know it’s going to be worth talking about.
Scott Ward is a good cop who used to be well-liked until he teamed up with the first orc-cop in the department, Nick Jakoby. There’s tons of tension between humans and orcs in the real world as well as this precinct, and this politically correct hire has pissed a lot of cops off.
Scott and Nick receive a dispatch to check out some gunshots fired in South Central, only to walk into a home and see people dead in ways they’re not supposed to be dead. That’s when Scott sees it. A magic wand! Just lying there. Now magic wands are a big deal in this world. As another cop points out: “You wanna be rich? Tall? Have a bigger dick? Live forever? A magic wand can give you anything.” And it’s just lying there.
The second group of cops on the scene realize just how rare this opportunity is and inform Scott that they’re keeping this motherfucker, and he’s going to stay quiet about it. Not only that, but since his orc partner can’t be trusted, he has to kill him right now.
Scott freaks, and when the moment of truth comes, he spins around and kills the other cops instead. Him and Nick then take the wand and book it into the bowels of South Central, where word quickly spreads that they have a magic wand. And everybody wants that wand.
Latino gangs, Orc gangs, LAPD, the Feds, even private companies are coming after that wand. And let’s not forget that the owner of the wand, the witch, probably has a “find my wand” app on her phone. As Scott and Nick realize that nobody’s playing by the rules anymore, they’ll have to escape South Central and come up with a plan to get the wand into safe hands. That’s assuming there are any safe hands left.
There’s a lot to learn from this script, guys. For starters, what are the scripts that are most likely to sell? We’ve discussed this before so you better know the answer. What? You’ve forgotten??? A fresh take on an established idea. That’s the first thing Landis does with Bright. What’s cool is that this plays out like a typical grimy LA cop drama. But the introduction of orcs and magic and witches and elves – it gives it all an exciting fresh feel.
Next, we have a SIMPLE STORY. How many times have I babbled about this one? If you’re writing a spec, you don’t want to get too complicated. And actually you don’t want to get too cpmlicated with any screenplay you write. You only have 2 hours so keep things basic. Here we have cops who have found a wand and must escape South Central LA without getting killed. Easy-peasy bag of cheesy.
Next, we have the tried-and-true McGuffin setup. One item that all the characters are after. The McGuffin setup is particularly effective when you’re following multiple groups of people in a script. That’s because if you have to create unique goals for 5-6 groups of people in your story, you’re going to spend 10-15 pages of your screenplay dishing out exposition (“We have to go here now so that we can get that thing that will helps us solve that other thing.”).
What a McGuffin does is it takes out all that exposition. Because everyone’s chasing the same thing – the wand! We know that. So when we jump to the Feds or the orc gang or the bad cops, we know exactly what they’re up to and don’t need to be constantly updated.
Something else is going on here that I’d like to weigh in on. I’ve heard this a lot lately: “Don’t write a big-budget spec.” Everybody says that. Guess what? It’s bullshit. What these people are really saying is, “Don’t write a big-budget spec with a lame-to-average idea.”
They’re probably not even aware that that’s what they’re saying. To them, they’ve seen all these big-budget specs passed over by their bosses with the feedback: “Too expensive.” So they disperse that information into the ranks. But what the boss is really reacting to is the fact that this movie is going to cost all this money and the idea isn’t even very good.
“Bright” is a good idea. So it doesn’t matter if it’s going to cost a bunch of money. And that’s what you have to remember when writing a big-budget spec. The more your movie will cost, the better the idea and the more marketable the concept will have to be.
Whenever I read big-budget specs, 95% of them fall victim to the same mistake. They’re a carbon copy of another big movie from the past. Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, The Matrix, Blade Runner, Independence Day, Armageddon. You can’t change the character names and the time periods and expect to win the “fresh take on an old idea” argument. It’s more like a “fresh coat of paint on an old ass house” argument.
If you really want to write something fresh, you have to perform a tear-down. “Bright” really does nail that “same but different” feel, and that’s why it’s gotten all this heat.
But what’s great about this script is that it also executes. I have no idea how much of this is Landis and how much is Ayer (Ayer is the cop-movie expert so I’m sure a lot of the specific cop-related stuff was his), but this is solid storytelling here. The scene where we find the wand and the other cops tell Scott that he has to kill his partner – and we build up that suspense of “what is he going to do?” – that was a great scene and the moment I got hooked.
If I had to nitpick, I’d say I wish they’d spent more time on the other creatures and not just the orcs. More variety. But the story was so strong that it didn’t suffer much from the issue. It’ll be interesting to see how this comes together. Isn’t Ayer signed on to Suicide Squad 2? When is he going to have time to make this movie? Anyone know?
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Whenever you write a script that requires a lot of world-building (fantasy and science-fiction), it’s essential that you convey exposition in as few lines as possible. You don’t want to weigh down your script with Monologue Mike never shutting up about how the Orc Castle of Targenhale once birthed a young orc cub, who would later become the king of Smokerbasin until he lost his right eye. That may fly in Game of Thrones. But movies are short and need to move quickly. Here Landis and Ayer did a great job of explaining the magic wand. This wand is driving the entire story, so a lesser writer might’ve thought a flashback and three page monologue were in order to build it up. Here’s what we get instead:
HICKS
: Ever seen a wand in person?
WARD
: What? Sure … yeah. That broken one in the Smithsonian.
This conveys two things quickly. One, that seeing a wand is very rare. And two, that they’re such a big deal, they’re displayed in museums. That’s all we need to know going forward to understand that this wand is going to change their lives.
