In the comments are each of the loglines on the brink of getting in. The ones with the most upvotes will make it into the contest. The others will fall by the wayside!
This was a very fun first weekend.
A lot of ‘no’s’ came down the pipe. Leading to some frustrated writers, some of whom I even got in a fight with. No hard feelings. I get it. Writers are passionate people!
Okay, let’s start off with those of you who got five brutal rejections. I’m not talking about the writers who got a “No. But this story has potential.” I’m talking about the no’s that were harsh and to the point.
If you are one of those writers, I would strongly recommend you get a logline consult. Because there’s an underlying problem with your loglines that you need to address or you will ALWAYS get rejected. Not just by me. By everyone in Hollywood. So, you can get single logline consults for $25. 5 loglines for $100. Another thing I’ll do is, for $50, send me all five of your logline entries that got rejected and I will explain the overall reason for why they got rejected as well as how to improve your logline writing. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested.
Okay, let’s move on to our three big winners of the weekend. The four YES’S.
Title: Just Another Day
Genre: Black Comedy
Logline: Stuck for ages in a time loop and half crazy, a young woman decides on this particular rewind day to use her decades of accumulated knowledge about her town to make life as chaotic and hellish for its residents as she can; but then tomorrow actually comes.
Writer: Brenkilco
Analysis: This is what every screenwriting teacher throughout history tells you to do. Take a well known movie setup and add a fresh spin to it. This adds a fresh spin to the loop sub-genre. Now, thinking about this, I do have a pretty big concern. Let’s say you’ve been stuck in a loop for 1000 days. So you raise hell on everyone around you. And then a real tomorrow comes and you have to deal with the repercussions of what you did to all these people. Well, would you really care? You’re finally out of the loop. You’d be so happy that you’d laugh off the fact that everyone hates you now. So, we’re going to have to figure out a solution to that. Also, Brenkilco has become rather notorious for chirping from the peanut gallery. Is he ready to be placed on the grand stage and judged? We’ll see.
Title: Wyvern
Genre: Action/Fantasy
Logline: A crew of bank robbers are recruited to carry out the most terrifying heist of their lives, stealing a hoard of gold from the lair of a real-life dragon. Heat meets the Hobbit.
Writer: Finn Morgan
Analysis: This is the logline people should point to as the definition of what a true high concept looks like. However, there’s a big challenge ahead as well. The reason heists are so cool is because there are all these puzzles that you have to solve (the computer security, the guards, the escape route, etc). Whereas, when I imagine this, I imagine a big giant cave bedroom and that’s it. They have to get the gold from the room and then run outside. That’s kind of boring. So Finn will have to come up with a more interesting way to set up where the gold is. Maybe they get it and have to move through the forest with the dragon flying around, looking for them. That could be cool. But what about the actual heist itself?
Title: Eternal Stakes
Genre: Thriller/Supernatural
Logline: A secret society of vampires offers a terminally ill detective the promise of immortality if he can hunt down a human serial killer who’d been tracking and killing their members.
Writer: Dev
Analysis: I love the way the elements come together in this one. There are a lot of loglines being pitched where Element A is completely different from Element B, which is completely different from Element C. Making the logline look more like a grocery list than a movie. Here we see what happens when the elements work together. I’m worried that the setup at the heart of this is pretty standard and that that could result in a “been there done that” screenplay. So that will be a big challenge for Dev.
Title: Tenmile
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: In New York City, anyone who slows below ten miles an hour dies; the only person who knows why is a woman racing across the city to save the daughter who can’t stop running.. and won’t stop running from her.
Writer: Branko Maksic
Analysis: I think this is the next Birdbox. But it has WAY MORE potential than Birdbox. I also love that it would create a movie that nobody has ever seen before. The characters have to be moving. Movement movement movement always. But there is a potential cheesy factor here I’m worried about. This will be all about the set pieces. Is Branko up to the challenge?
Next up, we have our USER VOTED winner of the week, with 26 votes!
Title: HEAR/SAY
Genre: Thriller
Logline: At a global tech summit, a deaf accessibility coordinator lip-reads an assassination plot against a whistleblower about to expose a deadly cover-up, forcing her to prove what only she saw before his keynote begins.
Writer: David Cahill
Congrats to David!
Okay, so, what are we doing today? Today, I am going to post each of the ‘strong maybe’ candidates down in the comment section. Each entry will have its own comment. From there, your job is to upvote on your favorites. There are 11 entries. ONLY SIX WILL MAKE IT THROUGH. And your upvotes will determine which of those six make it into the High Concept Club Contest. So everyone, please upvote! Here are the 11 entries…
Title: AFTERSHOCK
Genre: Action/Survival
Logline: When an earthquake shatters his high‐rise, interrupting his rooftop suicide attempt, an agoraphobic FBI informer must fight his way down the crumbling tower to rescue his family — whilst being hunted by the gang he betrayed — before the aftershock collapses the skyscraper completely.
DIE HARD meets THE RAID
Writer: Paperback Writer
Title: Glider
Genre: War
Logline: World War II. When a B-17 collides with an enemy aircraft during a mission over Germany —leaving the cockpit exposed and killing the crew via decompression— the pilot of a towed glider must reach the bomber controls before fuel runs out, climbing the 300-foot tow cable without a parachute, with a storm approaching and a Luftwaffe fighter harrying him intent on finishing the job.
Writer: Andrea Moss
Title: GNAW
Genre: Action, Horror
Logline: Europe, 40,000 years ago. Sealed in a labyrinth of caves by an avalanche, a band of Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals must set aside their ancient rivalry to survive the cave bears, hyenas, and hostile clans already lurking in the dark. Clan of the Cave Bear meets The Descent.
Writer: BoxGoblin
Title: DOORS
Genre: Surrealist apocalypse adventure
Logline: The world’s doors have stopped working the way they should. What once took you from one room to the next could now strand you literally anywhere else on the planet, with no way of returning the way you came. When his teenage daughter steps through an open door and into an active warzone on the other side of the globe, a widowed father will stop at nothing to track her down and bring her home in an odyssey that spans the entire planet.
Writer: Connor L
Title: MASON TRIUMPHANT
Genre: Action
Logline: Decades after sacrificing his powers for an ordinary life, a recently widowed farmer who was once the world’s greatest superhero is hunted by the grown children of the enemies he killed.
Writer: Kit Anderson
Title: Robo Hoe
Genre: Comedy
Logline: On the gritty streets of future Harlem, a ragtag crew of aging hookers wages war on a corporate sex bot stealing their clients, their turf, and their mans.
Title: Dream On
Genre: Action/Comedy
Logline: When their patients’ nightmares manifest in the waking world, it’s up to a team of sleep psychologists to solve the parasomnia problem before the nightmares destroy the city.
Title: The Cape
Genre: Thriller.
Logline: After a massive Memorial Day car crash blocks all lanes of the Bourne Bridge, a nervous man becomes trapped above the Cape Cod Canal, surrounded by police officers, with his dead wife’s body in his trunk.
Writer: Mr. Blonde
Title: OFF THE BENCH
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a diplomatic crisis strands a tiny country’s World Cup squad behind closed borders, a ragtag group of expats with day jobs get a chance to take their place and represent their homeland on soccer’s biggest stage.
Writer: Federico
Title: The Coxswain
Genre: Comedy
After his wealthy parents are implicated in a college admissions scheme, a freshman looksmaxxing influencer now must prove that the Ivey offer he received is legit…in women’s rowing.
Writer: Paul DeWolf
Title: LOVE NEIGHS
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: Set in the 15th century during the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, a band of disgraced knights get their shot at redemption when they’re tasked with escorting a French erotic romance writer from the frontlines to the palace of the King of England, his number one fan.
Writer: Maksim
So, how should you vote here? Vote for the movies you’d actually want to see. If you think they’d all be movies you’d see, vote for all of them. If you wouldn’t even check any of these out on streaming, don’t vote for any of them. If you’re having trouble finding all eleven entries, just sort comments by “OLDEST” and they will all come up.
Tomorrow, we’re doing the first half of the “Maybes,” and then Wednesday, we’re doing the second half of the “Maybes.” So, lots of voting ahead!
And if you crapped out this weekend, not to worry. You still have three more weekends and 15 pitches left! Start prepping your next batch of loglines!
You can begin pitching loglines in the comments section RIGHT NOW!
And, oh yeah, the contest is COMPLETELY FREE!
Last year, I created the only contest where you had to pitch the script idea just to get in. I did this because almost every amateur writer writes scripts that aren’t big enough to get anyone in Hollywood’s attention. So I created a contest where I would only accept script ideas that I knew had a shot at selling once they were written. That contest was called “The Blood & Ink” Horror Contest.
If I accepted the idea, you had six months to write the script.
Well, we’re doing it again. But instead of you only being able to pitch horror ideas, this time, you can pitch any genre you want, as long as it’s a high concept idea. What is high concept? Here are some definitions…
Michael Hauge: A high-concept film is one with a unique premise that can be easily communicated and attracts a broad audience.
Justin Wyatt: Movies built around a striking, marketable premise that can be easily promoted through advertising, posters, trailers, and ancillary media.
Carson Reeves: A high-concept is one where the premise itself creates immediate excitement, curiosity, and marketability before execution enters the equation. If I can hear the pitch and immediately see the poster, trailer, and movie, it’s likely high concept.
And here are some examples…
Inception – A thief who steals corporate secrets through the use of dream-sharing technology is given the inverse task of planting an idea into the mind of a CEO.
The Purge – A wealthy family is held hostage for harboring the target of a murderous syndicate during the Purge, a 12 hour period in which any and all crime is legal.
A Quiet Place – In a post-apocalyptic world, a family is forced to live in silence while hiding from monsters with ultra-sensitive hearing.
Yesterday – A struggling musician realizes he’s the only person on Earth who can remember The Beatles after waking up in an alternate reality where they never existed.
Beverly Hills Cop – A rough, street-smart Detroit cop has to investigate a murder in the most polished, wealthy, image-conscious place on earth — Beverly Hills.
Rental Family – A struggling American actor living in Tokyo takes a job with a company that rents out stand-in family members, only to form genuine bonds with his clients that blur the line between performance and reality.
Sketch – When a grieving young girl’s sketchbook falls into a magical pond, her monstrous drawings come to life, forcing her and her brother to stop the creatures before they destroy their town.
Novocaine – When the girl of his dreams is kidnapped, a man with a rare condition that prevents him from feeling physical pain turns his disability into an unexpected advantage.
Here are some examples of movies that are NOT high concept.
Is This Thing On? – After his marriage falls apart, a middle-aged father discovers an unexpected talent for stand-up comedy, forcing him and his estranged wife to redefine who they are, both apart and together.
One Battle After Another – When his longtime nemesis resurfaces and kidnaps his daughter, a washed-up former revolutionary reunites his old comrades for one last mission to rescue her.
Sorry Baby – After a traumatic encounter with a trusted professor derails her life, a young academic struggles to move forward while everyone around her seems to move on.
Hamnet – After the death of their young son shatters their family, a gifted healer and her playwright husband struggle to survive their grief, unaware that the tragedy will inspire one of history’s greatest works.
Friendship – A suburban dad falls hard for his charismatic new neighbor, but his desperate attempts to turn the relationship into a friendship threaten to ruin both of their lives.
Now that you know what a high concept logline is and isn’t, you can jump down into the comments and start pitching. But, there are a lot of rules so you’re probably going to want to read them first.
To start, what’s the prize for this contest? Well, if you get in, you will have 6-7 months to write your script. Then, I’ll start reading them and reviewing a lot of them on the site. The prize is exposure. What I’ve learned from Blood & Ink is that people in the industry are reading. They’re watching. If you write something good, I’m going to review it and I can almost guarantee you’ll get representation. And if you write something really good, I’m getting on the phone and I’m making sure people in the industry know about your script.
I just got off a Zoom call with a major producer regarding Wildman yesterday. He loved it. And now we’re hoping something comes of it. I want to do more of that with these High Concept scripts.
Okay, let’s get to the rules! There are a lot of them. But I’ve got to list them because I learned many things from the Blood & Ink Contest.
1) There will be 4 pitch weekends. Friday through Sunday. Pitching ends every Sunday at 11:59pm Pacific Time. This is the first of those 4 weekends.
2) You can pitch five loglines each weekend.
3) Make sure you pitch each logline in its own comment. Do not pitch all 5 loglines in a single comment. This is because I need to vote yes or no on individual loglines.
4) I will vote on every single logline pitched. I will give you either a “YES!”, a “yes,” a “strong maybe,” a “maybe,” or a “no.” An all-capital “YES!” Is the Holy Grail. It means you not only get in, but you can also send me a 5 page outline of your script before you write it and I will give you notes on it. This is HUGE because what I learned from Blood & Ink is that a lot of writers went down weak creative paths that I could’ve prevented had I seen their outline.
5) A “yes,” still gets you in. Just without outline privilege.
6) If you get a “maybe,” you can rewrite and re-pitch that logline two more times that weekend to try and turn it into a “yes.” If you can’t turn it into a “yes,” it’s dead. Don’t pitch it anymore.
7) If you get a “strong maybe,” you can rewrite and re-pitch that logline four more times that weekend to try and turn it into a “yes.” If you can’t turn it into a “yes,” it’s dead. Don’t pitch it anymore.
8) The large majority of ideas will get a “no.” Please understand that I’m evaluating a ton of loglines so I don’t have time to give everyone feedback. I will try to add some quick feedback when I have some extra time during the day. But don’t be offended if I only write, “no.” It probably means I’m making my way through 100 loglines in a row and I don’t have time.
9) Upvoted Entries – The highly controversial “user voted in entries” are back. But with an extra helping of quality control. If you get 15 upvotes, your concept gets in. BUT I CAN VETO any of these entries. It’s pointless to have one of these get in if I don’t like the idea. So, I’m just going to veto those on the spot.
10) Golden Weekend Ticket – However, the ‘strong maybe,’ ‘maybe’ or ‘no’ entry with the most upvotes each weekend automatically gets in. So one user-voted entry will get into the contest each weekend. Therefore, even if I’ve voted “no” on something, and you like the idea, you still want to upvote it because that entry might win the Golden Weekend Ticket. I have special plans for those scripts once written which will involve users reviewing them.
11) Posters – You can include a poster for ONE IDEA PER WEEKEND. This is to prevent every single comment from having a poster in it. So, if you love AI posters, save them for your best logline that weekend.
12) You can get multiple ideas into the contest. But you must choose only one to write.
13) You CAN pitch scripts that have already been written (I am aware this is controversial but tough cookies).
A quick reminder that my popular logline consultation service ($25 per logline, $100 for 5) is available. If you want a more extensive reason for why I didn’t pick your logline, order one. If you want to see ahead of time if a logline has a shot, order one. You can also do a deluxe logline consult ($50) where we keep workshopping the logline until it’s perfect. I believe 4 loglines got into Blood & Ink that way. But most of them did not. So, don’t think it’s a guarantee. If you want to use this service, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com.
Finally, keep in mind that I am going to be living my life during these weekends. And I also have to sleep 8 hours a night (during this contest, that will likely be between 2am to 10am). So don’t freak out if I don’t vote on your logline right away. I will be coming in and out when available. So, just stay patient. The same goes for anyone who’s new or doesn’t comment much. Your loglines may get stuck in moderation at first. But I will approve them once I’m back at my computer.
I have a lot of confidence that someone here is going to come up with a movie idea so amazing that it’s going to be a sure-thing in script form. Maybe that writer is you.
Let’s rock’n’roll baby!!!!!!!
Genre: Supernatural Thriller/Horror
Premise: A hardened 9-1-1 dispatcher begins receiving emergency calls from the future, including one reporting her own death forcing her to confront whether she can change fate without becoming the very cause of the tragedies she’s trying to stop.
About: The Blood & Ink Horror Screenplay Contest is a unique screenwriting contest whereby, six months ago, you had to pitch your way into the contest. Scripts either got in with a “yes” by me or they got at least 15 upvotes when pitched in the comments section. The 90+ writers that were chosen then had six months to write their script. I will occasionally review one of the scripts here. If you want to see the previous Blood & Ink reviews, you can do so here, here, here, here, and here. For those who missed Blood & Ink, I am doing a brand new pitch contest starting Friday July 10th. Get those high concept script pitches ready!
Writer: David Lamberston
Details: 104 pages
This was one of the more popular voted-in screenplays in the Blood & Ink Contest. That may be because David Lamberston is one of the most respected commenters and writers on the site. The script may seem familiar because we did a first-scene review from the screenplay early in the year. Now, it’s time to take a look at the full thing!
We are in New Orleans. Zoey Martinez, 43, is an Emergency Dispatch Caller. And one day she gets a call from a little boy who says his parents may be dead. The little boy hangs up. She sends cops to the house but everyone is fine. On top of this, the call never gets logged into the system, making her boss believe she’s lost it. So they send her to a shrink, Dr. Ellis.
Dr. Ellis digs into her foster child past and thinks that Zoey may have some unresolved traumas that caused her to imagine this phone call. However, a few days later, the call ends up becoming a reality. An entire family is killed due to carbon monoxide poisoning. Now the cops get involved cause they want to know how the heck Zoey knew these deaths were coming.
When she goes to work, she receives another dropped glitch call, confirming that this issue may not be isolated. But now Dr. Ellis is starting to have suspicions about Zoey. Might Zoey be involved in these deaths somehow? So he starts looking into Zoey’s file on the down low.
Another call comes in, this one a marine bridge jumper and Zoey decides to leave the station and handle it personally. She gets a friend to call in the suicide before it happens but even with the warning, the cops get there too late and the bridge jumper dies.
In their next session, Dr. Ellis informs Zoey that her real father killed her mother and he’s in prison. So, they decide to meet with him to see if they can learn anything, and the dad shockingly tells them that the mom could see into the future, and a situation arose where if he didn’t kill the mom, then baby Zoey would have died. So he killed mom to save Zoey.
Zoey then gets a 9-1-1 call regarding a teen who took a fall and is dying. So she goes to the house herself and saves the girl. But the parents think that she tried to kill her and get mad. And the cops are very suspicious of Zoey now, since she seems to know these bad things are going to happen before they happen.
Meanwhile, Zoey and Dr. Ellis continue to work through her issues and even, at times, Dr. Ellis’ issues (his teenage daughter killed herself). In the end, Zoey gets pulled off her station. Shit has gotten too crazy to let her continue. But she does get one final 9-1-1 call and this one will be the most personal of all. Will Zoey survive????
This is one of the more challenging scripts I’ve had to review in a while because, on a character level, it’s better than most amateur scripts for sure. But as a horror script, it’s like a 737 with only one engine working. I would go so far as to say that there’s a bit of a bait and switch going on here. You think you’re opening a horror script but it’s really a character piece.
Now, it’s fair to ask, “Who cares what you do to get them to read it as long as the script is good?” However, one strategy that does not work well in this situation is promoting a sexy genre, like horror, and then giving the reader an unsexy genre, like drama. The horror lovers are going to be disappointed.
But it isn’t JUST that it’s not horror. It’s that the plotting doesn’t build the story aggressively enough. We get these calls and the calls are basically all the same. Someone is about to be in trouble. And Zoey has to figure out a way to save them. And while Zoey’s personal storyline is growing, these repetitive call plot beats keep the script running on a treadmill. We keep waiting for the story to escalate and it doesn’t.
That puts a lot of pressure on the script because, at that point, the primary engine driving the story is our investment in Zoey and her journey. For me, there was enough there to keep reading, but I found myself wanting more momentum from the plot itself. Some sections worked better for me than others in that regard, which is why I occasionally found myself wanting a stronger external narrative drive to complement her character arc.
One thing I didn’t like with Zoey was her backstory. I have an issue with double trauma in characters. Because the second trauma is where you feel the writer. You feel him trying to make the character as impactful as possible and, ironically, it achieves the opposite. A big part of Zoey’s past was that she was raped for a year by a foster dad. And then, also, her father murdered her mom. That second trauma is essential for the story. But the first one is not. And when you add that Dr. Ellis’s daughter killed herself, that tells me there’s an over-reliance on intense trauma which makes me aware of the writing and, in turn, chisels at my suspension of disbelief like an ice pick.
But the thing that sinks this script for me was that the hook of the movie, which is these phone calls, were not nearly interesting enough. Guy jumps off a bridge. Family dies of carbon monoxide poisoning. Girl takes a bad fall. This is the heart of the premise and these emergencies just felt so small. I’m fine with the first one being small but I wanted them to increase in intensity.
The final call is good. But by that point I’d mentally given up on the script.
I’m going to finish up with a weird note for David. But it’s the biggest thing I felt after finishing the script. This script needs more swag. Right now, this script is the guy sitting at the bar in a plaid button-down, tan chinos, and neatly combed hair. He looks perfectly presentable. You’d trust him to house-sit for a week. But if I asked you to describe him an hour later, you’d struggle.
I need a little more of the guy who walks in and immediately catches your attention. Not because he’s louder. Not because he’s trying harder. But because there’s something unpredictable about him. Maybe it’s the Henley with the top three buttons undone. Maybe it’s the tattoos. Maybe it’s the look in his eye that says there’s a story there. You don’t know if he’s trouble or the most interesting person in the room, but you want to find out.
That’s what I felt was missing here. The script is competent. It’s readable. It does a lot of things well. But it rarely surprises us. It rarely takes that big swing. And those are the moments I was craving.
Script link: What’s Your Emergency?
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: It’s important that both the character storyline AND the plot build. Here, the character storyline builds. But the plot never does and that’s what holds the script back.
Mandalorian and Grogu built a movie on a main character whose face we couldn’t see. Minions & Monsters built its movie on main characters who speak a language we don’t understand. Will it suffer a similar fate?
I find it funny when the trades try to cover for a movie bombing. According to them, the reason Minions made 60 million dollars compared to 120 million for the last sequel is that July 4th landed on a Saturday. Which meant the weekend played traditionally, versus when it lands on, say, a Thursday, and then it gets more people in on the non-weekend days.
Oh, and then there’s the World Cup excuse. You know, cause the World Cup fans are entire families. So they’re more focused on that than movies. Hmm, strange how the World Cup excuse didn’t apply to Toy Story 5’s record-breaking opening.
Uh, here’s an alternative explanation. Just throwing it out there. DON’T RELEASE YOUR ANIMATION MOVIE TWO WEEKENDS AFTER THE PREMIER ANIMATED FRANCHISE IN TOWN!
You know. Maybe that’s a reason also?
Now that the Obsession obsession has finally cooled down, the second biggest box office story of the year has come to the forefront. And that’s the quick merciless death of Supergirl. The movie dropped 80% in its second weekend, which is almost impossible, just based on the fact that, when you have that many theaters, sometimes people accidentally buy tickets to the wrong movie.
One of the things that’s always thrown me about Hollywood is how the town will decide early on that a movie is toast and every single person gets on that narrative train, making it very hard for the movie to overcome that negative buzz.
That’s how I would frame the failure of this movie. Right from the beginning, people were against it. And it strangely started when Millie Alcock signed on to play the lead, hot off the buzz she was getting from Game of Thrones.
I’m starting to think that all you need to build buzz about yourself in this business is a really bright blond wig. Maybe I should get a bright blond wig. Wear it around the farmer’s market at the Grove a few hours a day. Speak in Old English. Use a lot of “ye’s” and “thou’s.” Who knows what might come of it.
A lot of people point to Millie Alcock’s interviews as a problem. That’s when a lot of people turned on her. Her most famous quote was this response: “It definitely made me aware that simply existing as a woman in that space is something that people comment on. We have become very comfortable having this weird ownership of women’s bodies. I can’t really stop them. I can only be myself.”
When she was asked about that comment a year later, she doubled down. “I didn’t even say ‘men’ — I said ‘people!’ And they got so angry. I was like, ‘You’re proving my point. You’re proving my point!’”
There were also some woke criticisms that came from comments claiming Supergirl doesn’t live “inside the binary of what a woman should be.”
And it’s definitely Millie Alcock’s fault for saying these things. But not for the reasons you’d think.
Reporters asked her questions that they hoped would get these very responses because reporters know that these responses go viral. So they asked her in that first response what she thought about toxic fandom in regards to House of the Dragon. And they asked her, in that second response, if Supergirl is a good role model for queer people.
In other words, they were baiting her. And she took the bait. And she only took it twice but that’s all that was needed. People turned on her hard after that.
This is part of being an actor. You have to know that the media is not on your side. They are only there to get things from you that help them. And so you sometimes have to swallow what you want to say and instead say what’s best for your project and your career.
There’s a reason that nobody can quote a single thing that Leonardo DiCaprio has ever said in an interview. Because he knows the game the media is playing so he’s deliberately boring. He gives them nothing to print.
The other option is to be like Inde Navarette (Nikki in Obsession). She is the most beloved actress in town right now and she would never ever make a mistake like Millie Alcock made. She was recently cornered by the press asking her about the rumors she might play the lead in Michael B. Jordan’s movie adaptation of the popular book franchise, The Fourth Wing.
This was her response: “I have seen this because I said that I’m a really big fan of Fourth Wing and I would love to play Violet. But I mean, at the end of the day, I really want the studio to find who they want to find and what everybody thinks is like the perfect actress. But if that happens to me, that would be phenomenal.”
You don’t get the sense that Millie Alcock could respond like that. And she’s paying the price for it.
Look. Supergirl was a miscalculation on a giant level. The biggest miscalculation was betting on a third-tier superhero at the tail end of the movie superhero era. People aren’t seeing superhero movies at nearly the same clip anymore. The only ones that do well now are the big dogs. So, if you want to identify the core issue that caused this movie’s failure, that was it.
Millie Alcock’s attitude only exacerbated that problem. And it’s something I believe Gunn was aware of. So he made sure that Supergirl was going to have a big “save the cat” moment early on in the movie so that we fell in love with her. The save the cat scene we got? Supergirl is drinking in a bar when a giant alien steals a little girl’s dead father’s sword. Supergirl then goes after the alien to get the sword back for the girl.
What struck me most about that scene was how little I felt afterwards. I did not think, “Wow, I really like this person.” Which is the primary thing that the save the cat scene is designed to do. But I didn’t feel that way and I suspect it was because Supergirl was pissed off the whole time that she had to help this little girl. So it negated the action.
On top of that, reluctant heroes are notoriously difficult to write, since characters who don’t want to do the very thing the story requires them to do create a tricky puzzle for screenwriters. In storytelling, it always works best when the person pushing the story forward wants to achieve the goal.
The best I’ve ever seen the reluctant hero work in a screenplay was Braveheart. William Wallace hated every second of his quest. But he also loved his country more than anything and wanted freedom for his people. So, that helps a lot. When your hero is doing things for others rather than himself. And even though Supergirl is technically doing this to save her dog, she feels like she’s only in this for herself.
I think one of the more interesting subplots of the downfall of superhero movies is the bizarre choice by both Marvel, with Thunderbolts, and DC, with Supergirl, to center their stories around depression.
I’m not saying depression shouldn’t be discussed. I just think it’s a tough fit for a genre built on wish fulfillment and escapism. People go to superhero movies to feel uplifted, not to spend two hours watching superheroes wrestle with the same problems they brought into the theater.
I don’t know. Maybe they thought with Joker’s success that they could bring in a new “depression era” in superhero movies. That everyone was now going to get all jazzed to see depression trilogies. I got news for you, Hollywood. AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN. You want to explore depression, do it with a 15 million dollar film. Not 200 million dollars. Cause these are the results you get.
But the funniest story to come out of Supergirls’s failure is the battle between the “needle drops.” For those who don’t know, I guess because of his Guardians movies, James Gunn has anointed himself the king at being able to drop just the right song at just the right moment into the climactic sequence of the movie, delivering an epic finale.
Because Supergirl had been testing in the 60s (that’s really low) for months before its release, they were looking for every way possible to bring that score up.
Their big solution? The needle-drop moment!
Apparently, there was then a battle between Gunn and Supergirl director Craig Gillespie about what the needle drop song should be. And they went back and forth on it and they had all these meetings and they even tested different needle drops with different audiences.
Dude.
If you’re depending on a needle drop to save your movie, your movie’s dead. It is six feet under. Maybe that’s your needle drop. Billie Eilish’s Six Feet Under.
I think Supergirl just had too many things working against it. It’s too bad because everybody says the comic book the movie is based on is amazing. But not all comic books are meant to be turned into movies. And I think that having an unlikable protagonist combined with a not very likable actress was the nail in the coffin.
Do you have some amazing high concept movie ideas? Starting next Friday, you get to pitch them!
The High Concept Club Contest starts Friday July 10th!
Last year, we had the screenplay pitch contest of the century, The Blood & Ink Contest. And this year? We’re going to one-up it, with The High Concept Club Contest.
If you weren’t around last year, the way it works is, you can pitch me 5 movie loglines each weekend for four weekends. I’ll tell you right there in the comment section whether it’s a ‘yes,’ a ‘no,’ or a ‘maybe.’ The goal is to get one of your ideas approved by me, in which case, you will be officially entered into the contest. You will then have six months to write your script. The contest, like all Scriptshadow contests, is free.
My standards are going to be high. I lost count of how many loglines were pitched last year but I think it was somewhere around 6000? And just 90 got through. Why is the bar so high? Because the whole point of this contest is to only approve scripts that have a shot at selling.
The problem with screenplays on the amateur level is that everyone writes whatever the heck they want and doesn’t figure out beforehand if producers would actually be interested in making that movie. There are numerous avenues towards getting a script made. But this contest is about finding ideas that have a legitimate shot at getting managers, agents, producers, and studios interested.
Wildman, the Bigfoot pitch from last year, is into 10 production companies as we speak. And even the people who passed were excited when they heard the pitch. That’s exactly what this is about. It’s about writing scripts we know production companies around town are going to be excited by.
So, now comes the obvious question. What is “High Concept?” Cause we always bump against a definition whenever we talk about it. High Concept will always be, on some level, up to interpretation. Part of this contest is likely going to be people realizing, after the fact, that their concepts aren’t big enough.
But, to give some context to it, here are some definitions to work with…
Michael Hauge: A high-concept film is one with a unique premise that can be easily communicated and attracts a broad audience.
Terry Rossio: A concept that is inherently intriguing before execution enters the equation.
Justin Wyatt: Movies built around a striking, marketable premise that can be easily promoted through advertising, posters, trailers, and ancillary media.
Carson Reeves: A high-concept is one where the premise itself creates immediate excitement, curiosity, and marketability before execution enters the equation. If I can hear the pitch and immediately see the poster, trailer, and movie, it’s likely high concept.
As far as strategy for this contest goes, you can practice pitches in the comments section of this post and get feedback. That way, you’re not wasting pitches on weak loglines that people already told you sucked. By the way, if someone pitches a weak logline here, tell them. Don’t coddle them. Cause if you do, they’re wasting a pitch next week.
If you don’t want to do it publicly, find a few people on the board to privately share concepts with. If you want to go straight to the horse’s mouth, get a logline consult from me ($25). In addition to my analysis and rewrite of the logline, I’ll tell you straight up if it has a shot at getting into the contest. I believe that four entries in the Blood & Ink Contest came from writers who workshopped loglines with me. But, it’s no guarantee. I rejected a lot of those as well.
E-mail me at: carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you want a logline consult.
And just to give you a little more context, here are some high concept ideas that were turned into movies….
Inception – A thief who steals corporate secrets through the use of dream sharing technology is given the inverse task of planting an idea into the mind of a CEO.
The Purge – A wealthy family is held hostage for harboring the target of a murderous syndicate during the Purge, a 12 hour period in which any and all crime is legal.
Obsession – After wishing his crush would fall in love with him, a hopeless romantic finds himself getting exactly what he asked for, but that love soon becomes a dangerous and violent obsession.
A Quiet Place – In a post-apocalyptic world, a family is forced to live in silence while hiding from monsters with ultra-sensitive hearing.
Yesterday – A struggling musician realizes he’s the only person on Earth who can remember The Beatles after waking up in an alternate reality where they never existed.
Beverly Hills Cop – A rough, street-smart Detroit cop has to investigate a murder in the most polished, wealthy, image-conscious place on earth — Beverly Hills.
Good Will Hunting – When a janitor anonymously solves a mathematical proof that has stumped the brightest minds at MIT, a professor takes him under his wing and tries to steer him toward greatness, only to discover that the young genius would rather cling to the life he’s always known.
Free Guy – A bank teller discovers he’s actually a background character in an open-world video game and decides to become the hero of his own story.
Freaky – After swapping bodies with a notorious serial killer, a teenage girl discovers she has less than 24 hours before the change becomes permanent.
65 – After a catastrophic crash on an unknown planet, a pilot discovers he’s stranded on Earth during the age of dinosaurs just 12 hours before the meteor that wiped them all out hits.
Novocaine – When the girl of his dreams is kidnapped, a man with a rare condition that prevents him from feeling physical pain turns his disability into an unexpected advantage.
The Gorge – Two elite snipers stationed in watchtowers on opposite sides of a mysterious gorge are forbidden from communicating or entering the chasm below, but when they uncover evidence that a deadly secret has been buried there, they must risk everything to investigate it.
