This is a big recent spec sale to Lionsgate. It is being pitched as a “negotiator” version of Source Code

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: Unable to prevent a bomber from blowing up a hotel, a hostage negotiator finds himself stuck in a time loop, using the extra time to figure out who the determined bomber is and what he wants.
About: This script sold to Lionsgate last week. Here’s Deadline’s account of how it went down – “Townend’s deal is remarkable, we’re told, for a writer with no produced credits, particularly given that the script was taken out without any talent attachments. Sources described the outcome as a three-way bidding war that resulted in a mid-six-figure guaranteed fee against a low-seven-figure purchase/bonus. The script was taken out on the first Monday of April, and by Friday of that week, 20 premium production companies were chasing aggressively.” And for those long-time screenwriters who want a little bit of motivation, I have an e-mail from Mark dating all the way back to 2014!  11 years of writing to get to the sale.  So, always keep writing!
Writer: Mark Townend
Details: 108 pages

Hot spec alert hot spec alert hot spec alert hot spec alert.

And a very “Carson” hot spec it is. Sci-fi? Loop? Was this written just for me?

Let’s find out!

40-something Billy Aubrey is a negotiator. He’s also a terrible family man, which is why he’s on the outs with his wife and son. One day, he gets a call from his lawyer wife, who says she wants to have a big conversation with him.

First he goes to work, then he attends a conference, then he shows up at the hotel to talk to his wife. Only to spot a man in a parka with a detonator in his hand. Billy tries to approach him, ready to use his negotiating skills, but the man presses the button and everyone in the lobby, including Billy, is blown to bits.

But then Billy wakes up at the beginning of the same day. At first he assumes he had a nightmare. But when everything in the day happens exactly as before, he comes to the shocking conclusion that he’s stuck inside a loop. He’s a little more ready for the bomber (Chris) this time. But Chris still detonates the bomb.

Billy wakes up again, this time with new information. On day 1, he woke up at 6:47 am. Day 2, 7:47 am. Today, he’s woken up at 8:47am. He’s losing an hour with each reset. And the bomb? The bomb always goes off at 12:47. Which means he only has a few more shots to figure out what’s going on here.

He ropes in his disbelieving partner, Josie, and learns that there’s a major tech titan at the hotel that day. That must be Chris’s target. But with each reset, Billy finds out more about Chris, eventually getting his address. So he visits Chris’s house in the morning, where he finds that there are men there, men who are making Chris do this.

(Spoilers follow) That’s when things get really crazy. The men are talking to someone on the phone. They’re telling the mystery phone man, “He’s here. The target is here.” Which means that Billy…. IS THE TARGET. Which means now Billy has to figure out why he’s the target. He eventually realizes that a man from his past, his old partner John Rosen, who’s about to become mayor, is trying to dispose of him. With only one loop left, Billy will have to confront him and take him down.

We all know I love myself a time loop script.

But – and this is a continuation of yesterday’s theme – what are you adding to the time loop genre that’s new?

Here, the fresh addition is that, after every loop, we start the day 1 hour later. This adds a ticking time bomb (literally) to the proceedings since, sooner or later, we’re going to start too late into the day to prevent the bomb from blowing up.

The obvious question, then, is, “Is that different enough?”

My gut instinct answer is no. Like we talked about yesterday, the objective, when creating the “different” part of the “same but different” formula Hollywood likes, isn’t to win the logic debate. The “different” aspect that you add must *feel* genuinely different. And this doesn’t feel that different to me. It feels like a lot of other time loop scripts I read.

That doesn’t mean the script doesn’t work. From a structural standpoint, I like the idea that one hour disappears each day. It creates urgency inside a genre that is all about anti-urgency (a loop is endless – that’s the obstacle the hero faces). And the writer explains a potentially complicated rule-set (the loop moves forward 1 hour every reset) effortlessly, which I can tell you does NOT always happen. Many amateur scripts I read fall apart because their writers don’t explain their rules clearly enough.

I can tell you exactly when I knew this script would be ‘worth the read.’ It happens halfway into the script when Billy is at Chris’s house, trying to figure out why he’s determined to bomb the hotel, and he overhears the men in the other room – the ones making Chris do this – on the phone with someone saying, “We don’t know why but he’s here.” In other words, the tech guy isn’t the target. Billy is the target.

Why is this such an important plot development? Because I read scripts like this a lot – not loop scripts per se, but mystery thrillers – and nine out of ten writers would’ve gone with the tech guy as the target. The tech guy as the target is an *okay* plot choice. But it’s not sexy. It’s not that interesting. What’s interesting is your hero being the target because now the mystery deepens and the story becomes more personal.

So, why then, doesn’t the script score higher than “worth the read?” Because nothing surprising happens after that. The writer ties up the story threads he’s set up. But that’s all that is – tying up plot threads.

This is a dangerous trap that’s easy for screenwriters to fall into. They set up the pieces of their mystery and, at a certain point in the story, once we know what’s going on, the writer just goes through the motions of wrapping up every plot beat. (Spoilers) We know Rosen is the bad guy now so it’s just a matter of getting to him and taking him down. There are no new developments.

As screenwriters, we should always be looking to stay ahead of the reader. The reader should never get too comfortable, especially in the final act. But here, everything that I expected to happen in the final act happened. We could’ve still pushed in a few areas – had one last surprise or two.

White Lotus did a great job of this in its season finale. I don’t know anybody who predicted what was going to happen in that final episode. Because Mike White knows that you have to stay ahead of the reader. You can’t just use your final episode (or act) to tie everything up. You still have to titilate and excite and throw some curveballs at us.

With all that said, this is another good example of how sexy concepts capture the attention of readers. It doesn’t always mean they’re going to sell, like Renegotiate, but it gives you a much better chance in the marketplace.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Beware of this word – INEVITABLE.  If anything is inevitable in your story, we’ve lost interest.  I’ll give you an example.  Return of the Jedi.  Everybody already knew that Luke and Leia were brother and sister.  But Luke and Leia had not had that conversation yet.  So it was INEVITABLE that Lucas had to write that scene.  Which is why the scene is one of the most boring in all of Star Wars.  Well, maybe not as boring as episodes 1-15 of Andor, but boring in the OG Star Wars universe.  My point is, you should always try to give a little more than what’s expected when you’re wrapping storylines up.  Cause it’s always going to be more interesting than that inevitable scene we’re all waiting for.  Here, once we knew about John Rosen and we’re just waiting for the inevitable showdown, I thought more could’ve been done.

This weekend’s box office is one of the few in recent years that Hollywood can get excited about. Sinners only slipped a tiny bit in its second weekend (45 million) which is unheard of in this day and age. Outside of tiny Oscar-hopeful films in November, no movies have that kind of hold these days. So good for Ryan Coogler.

And freaking Revenge of the Sith (!!!) somehow tallied up 25 million bucks in its re-release! I celebrated by re-watching my preferred Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, and what a fun experience that was. The quality on display in that film – writing, directing, special effects, production design, score – is on another level. It still transports me to a different galaxy all these years later.

But that was pretty much the only piece of entertainment this week that I liked. Well, there was one more that I liked. I’ll tell you about it in a minute. As you know, I’m working through some eyesight issues and while I think I’m getting better, I’m still not good enough to spend endless hours on my computer. Which has left me desperately searching for content to watch on the good old TV! And boy, are the pickings slim.

How slim?

I actually tried to watch The White House Plumbers last night. A zany period piece comedy about Watergate. Yeah, it’s gotten ugly. I even spent 20 bucks renting Mickey 17, a novel that I hated and that I begged Warner Brothers not to make. But they went ahead and made it anyway. Oh my God Heavens to Mary. It is ten times worse as a movie than it was as a novel. And it was a really bad novel. I would go so far as to say that every worst creative decision that could’ve been made regarding any element in the movie was made.

It dies within 60 seconds of watching it, no pun intended. But the biggest issue – and one that no writer can recover from – was how freaking depressing it was. It was sooo soooo soooo sooooooo sad. They leaned into this sad person who sadly dies all the time and he’s always sad and his backstory is sad and his voice over is sad. Why would anyone expect anybody to enjoy that?? It was baffling. I never had to think about creating a rating less than “what the hell did I just watch.” But if I did, this would be the first movie I’d make it for.

I then tried to watch Havoc, which I was hoping would be my review today, but the movie feels like it was made by a malfunctioning AI. I started Thursday night (after midnight, when it appeared on Netflix). I barely made it through 20 minutes. Then I tried again on Friday. I made it 15 minutes. I tried again yesterday – barely made it through ten minutes.

I couldn’t tell you what the plot of that movie was if you made me watch it 100 times in a row. At one point, Tom Hardy is coming home to his apartment and he runs into a young female cop on the stairway who’s just busted someone in the building, and the two just… BECOME PARTNERS. There’s no explanation as to how they became partners or why they needed to bump into each other on a random stairway to become partners, but that was the extent of how much effort was put into the screenplay.

And then you had these weird city scenes where the entire city and the cars seem to be generated in a computer. And then, even though they shot digital, they added this lazy “film” filter over the footage so it would look like it was shot on film. It’s really hard to watch. If both your script and your production are sloppy, you’ve got no shot at making a good movie.

At that point, I was so desperate that I was willing to try anything. Which is why I made the fatal error of watching the first episode of the second season of Andor. If there is a more boring space show ever made than Andor, please tell me what it is. Cause I don’t think it exists. There is a 10 minute scene in the first episode where people sit around a table and watch a documentary about mining. It’s bad, folks. It’s insanely boring. They spent three-quarters of a billion dollars on this show and I would literally rather watch paint dry.

For those lucky enough to say they haven’t watched it, let me give you a window into the latest Star Wars controversy. Gilroy adds a sexual assault scene to the show. This has gotten the Star Wars fandom up in a tizzy, something that, admittedly, isn’t difficult to do and the argument *for* the scene seems to be that, this is the Empire. They’ve killed children before. Of course there’s going to be sexual assault. Yeah, but, there are probably orgies in the Star Wars universe as well. That doesn’t mean you have to show them. As the writer, you get to choose what you show and don’t show and just because you *can* show something, doesn’t mean you should. So, no more Andor for me.

The lone surprise for me this week was Babygirl, the Nicole Kidman sex movie. I thought it was just going to be mommy porn, a la 50 Shades of Gray. But it’s actually an interesting character study. Nicole Kidman’s character has a serious sex addiction and, unlike movies from the past, where you’d never show a married woman with children having an all-out affair, this movie isn’t afraid to go there. And it’s an A24 film, so it’s got some artsiness to it. It caught me by surprise. I still have a little bit left but I’ll definitely finish it tonight.

The box office is going to try and up its game next weekend when Thunderbolts shows up. I’ve been thinking a lot about Marvel movies because they face the same issue your average screenwriter faces – which is that we’re all tasked with finding new ways into old ideas. That’s the big trick. If you find a new way into a Western or a new way into a slasher flick, and it’s fresh and exciting, that’s a meal ticket you can ride all the way to a produced film.

And I’m realizing that while Marvel is trying to do that, they’re not doing it enough. Because if you asked Kevin Feige, “What’s new and different about Thunderbolts?” He would have an answer for you. He would say, this is the first Marvel movie where the superhero team are the underdogs. And if you really think about that answer, you’d have to agree with him.

But that’s the funny thing about the “fresh but different” formula. You can logically make the argument why your take on a genre is fresh, but unless it FEELS fresh to the audience, the logic won’t matter. I don’t think anyone is looking at Thunderbolts and thinking, “This looks different from other superhero movies.” And that’s the problem.

With Marvel, and superhero movies in general, the amount of “different” that needs to be applied must be bigger than the typical “different” that you apply to an average genre. We have to truly feel like we haven’t seen something before to come to a superhero movie.

I’m on the fence about whether to go. If it’s above 90% Rotten Tomatoes, I’ll definitely go. But I just don’t think it has enough firepower. I love Florence Pugh. And I love David Harbour’s Red Guardian character. But everyone else on that team – both actors and superheroes – sucks.

How bout you? Are you going?

I couldn’t ignore all the buzz that Sinners was getting. It’s not easy to achieve both 90+ percent in critics and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes. So, over to the local movie theater I went and strapped in for two hours of… well, I didn’t know what. I’d seen the fist trailer, which was vague, and nothing else. This is how I prefer to see movies if possible. I want to know as little as I can.

The story takes place in a 1932 Mississippi town – and yes, I was, as always, excited to be able to type out “Mississippi.” Identical twins Smoke and Stack, who used to work for Al Capone in Chicago, have returned home to start a new business venture. They’re going to open a dance hall.

For whatever reason, they’re adamant about starting their dance hall TONIGHT. You’d think maybe they’d spend a month putting the place together. But no, it must be tonight. By the way, it’s never explained why the urgency but maybe Ryan Coogler reads Scriptshadow and knows that the tighter the timeframe, the better.

Smoke and Stack put together their team throughout the day – getting their guitar man, their harmonica man, their door man, their food people, their liquor guys. And, as the sun sets, people start showing up.

Little do they know, just down the road, a vampire has crashed a couple’s home and immediately turns them into vampires as well. The three of them, who now are, also, an Irish folk band, show up at Smoke-Stack’s party and want to join. A little issue, though. They’re white and everyone here is black. So Smoke and Stack tell them to get lost.

Eventually, Smoke’s (or Stack’s) side piece girlfriend ventures out to ask the folk band why they’re still hanging around and she gets bitten. Therefore, when she comes back inside, she lures Stack into a back room and, during hanky-panky time, she bites him. Smoke catches wind of what’s going on and orders everyone but the staff to leave. And now, the games begin.

The folk band vampires immediately turn all of the leaving partygoers into vampires, which means there are a good 200 vampires outside eager to devour the staff. So they wait, and they taunt, and they tempt, and they trick, all in an attempt to lure the rest of the crew out and turn them into vampires. Eventually, it becomes an all-out war and nearly everyone dies.

So, how was it??

Was it as good as everyone’s saying?

Well, you know how I see things at this point. The first thing I’m looking at is not the acting, not the directing, not the visuals or the music. I’m looking at the script. And the script has problems.

I’ve seen these types of scripts before and they have a very significant issue that’s hard to overcome. That issue is that the main event – in this case, the party – is too small to get to right away but too big to get to too late. In other words, you can’t start the party at the beginning of the second act (pages 26-31). You’ll run out of steam before the climax.

However, the later the party starts, the more script you have to cover in the meantime. And what do you do with that time? The first act (pages 1-30) sets everything up. In this case, it sets up the brothers’ return. It sets up the purchase of the party building. It sets up all the characters who are going to be involved.

But, traditionally, when the second act begins, that’s when your characters need to go out on their journey. For example, that’s when Deadpool and Wolverine begin their journey to escape the world they’ve been banished to. In Sinners, the “journey” is the party.

But like I said, you can’t start the party too early. So this leaves this “No Man’s Land” between the end of the first act and the beginning of the party, where Sinners is clearly lost. Coogler’s solution is to extend his setup from 30 pages, to a full 45 pages, and so we get lost in this ENDLESS setup where, quite frankly, we’re bored out of our minds.

Now, in fairness, the reason I don’t think it bothered critics as much, is because they know what’s coming. They know Insane Vampire Party is coming. And when you know something big and flashy and sexy is coming, you’re more willing to suffer through an elongated setup. But there’s no question that this setup section is a disaster. It’s way too long.

Still in need to cover time before the real movie begins, Coogler then gets us to the party, but gives us this sort of “half party” where people are lingering about and chilling and not really into it yet. Again, we’re stuck in Screenplay No Man’s Land here. And it’s giving this movie all sorts of pacing issues.

In fact, the inciting incident, when the vampire folk band shows up at the party, doesn’t happen until 60-70 pages into the script! Which is insane. But, at least now the movie has begun.

So, once the movie truly begins, was it worth the wait? I would say…. Almost. Things get so crazy that there’s definitely entertainment value to be had here. And the music stuff is really good. There’s sort of like this music battle going on between the people inside the building and outside the building. It’s funky, a little bit different. And that was cool to watch.

Also, Coogler was a genius to cast Michael B. Jordan in the brother roles. Because, traditionally, if you had cast a movie star and a character actor in those roles, you wouldn’t make your movie star a brain dead vampire halfway through the film. The movie star wouldn’t go for it. They’d want to be the star, the guy who leads the charge til the very end. But because Jordan is playing two roles, it allowed Coogler to do that, which was cool.

And I was into the final battle. I was curious what was going to happen. Unlike traditional Hollywood movies, you got the sense that nobody was safe and that’s when endings are most exciting. I’m not sure I understood why we continued the movie after the night was over. But, otherwise, I thought the climax was good.

So, it’s a mixed bag, this film. It’s messy. In addition to the early script issues, I don’t really understand what the movie was about. I’m guessing some sort of social commentary was being made here but I didn’t pick up on what that was. I’m sure people will get on their high horses and confidently claim it was about “this” or “that,” but I’m betting every one of them got those theories from a quick post-movie internet search.

In the end, I have to ask the question, “Would I be confident in telling someone it was worth 30 bucks (ticket plus parking) to go out and see this movie?” And the answer is, “No.” I think whoever I told to go see this movie would be upset with me afterwards. But is it worth checking out when it hits streaming? Sure. There’s enough good here to, at the very least, have a nice passive viewing experience.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Beware story setups that have a “Screenplay No Man’s Land.” This is where there’s a gulf in between the end of the first act and the beginning of the official “adventure.” You’ll be pulling your hair out trying to figure out how to make pages 30-60 entertaining.

An excellent resource for how to write a pilot script

For any of you writing pilots, I want you to watch the pilot episode of Your Friends and Neighbors. I’m not saying it’s the greatest pilot script ever. There were aspects of it I didn’t like. And, if I’m being honest, I don’t know how the overall concept is going to last (how many houses can you steal Rolexes from before the viewer gets bored?). But the writer, Jonathan Trooper, nails the basics of what you need to do to write a good pilot.

You see, whenever I read pilots, I’m looking for two primary things for the writer to get right. One is the characters. TV *is* character so we’ve got to have at least 5 compelling characters to care about. And two is plot. You have to create a plot that actually keeps the story interesting.

Sadly, when I do TV pilot consultations, 90% of the pilot scripts achieve neither. I’m lucky if I come across a pilot that does one. But if you want to be a professional TV writer, you have to be able to do both. And that’s where Your Friends And Neighbors comes in.

The show follows a guy named Andrew Cooper, a financial worker who makes gobs of money for his firm, enough to afford a giant house in the suburbs of New York, where he lives with his beautiful wife and two children. Well, where he *lived* with his beautiful wife and two children. One day, he came home and found her having sex with his best friend. She then left Andrew for the friend and now Andrew is alone.

To make matters worse, Andrew comes into work one day and is fired by his boss, who says he’s being let go because he had sex with a subordinate, a strict no-no at the company. Since Andrew will not gain access to his clients, per a work agreement, for another 2 years, that means Andrew has no income. Not good when your bills amount to 100 grand a month. So Andrew, who now rents a smaller house in the neighborhood, resorts to sneaking into his neighbors’ houses and stealing stuff, like watches, wads of bills, probably paintings in future episodes. That kind of stuff.

The most common mistake I see in pilot-writing is that the writers place all their focus on setting up their characters, to the point where no plot can emerge. It’s basically an extensive 60 page character list. Writers often feel confident about these pilots because it takes a lot of work to conceive of 7-10 characters and naturally set them up in the story. So it feels good when you do it. But what they don’t realize is that it’s not enjoyable to read a bunch of, “And here’s this character, and here’s this character, and here’s this character, and here’s this character.” Those characters need to be brought into a story that’s entertaining us.

That brings us to plot. Every once in a while, I do read consult pilots that have the opposite problem. They’re all plot and very little character. These usually come from feature writers who are writing their first pilots. Features are way more plot-driven so, naturally, the writers are bringing that spirit to their pilots. Like I’ve been alluding to, however, you want to do both.

Enter Your Friends and Neighbors. This show sets up a solid 10 characters and always stays entertaining. That’s a very key point I want you to ingest. Character introductions often slow stories down. So you have to carefully balance introductions with plot movement. Best case scenario is that you introduce a character AS THE PLOT IS MOVING ALONG. But it’s not always possible. Sometimes, you need to stop the story so you can say, “Here’s a new character.”

An example of this would be the character of Samantha in Your Friends and Neighbors. Samantha is a neighbor who’s separated from her husband who Andrew has a sexual relationship with. The scene they introduce her in has no plot movement whatsoever. She comes over, they have sex, they bicker afterwards, and she leaves. Tropper needed to introduce that character at some point, so he stopped the story to give her a scene.

So yes, it’s okay to do that. Just make sure that the next scene moves the plot along. What you want to avoid is a bunch of character introduction scenes mashed together without any plot movement. Unless they’re all the most amazing characters ever, I promise you that the reader’s going to get bored.

What is the plot in the Your Friends and Neighbors pilot? It’s a classic 3-Act structure. We establish Andrew’s life in the first act. He’s fired at the beginning of the second act. This forces him to try and figure out what to do. That’s his second act purpose. And the third act is him committing to stealing from his friends and neighbors.

But just smacking down a 3-Act structure does “take care” of your pilot’s plot. All you’ve done is lay the framework. You now want to get into that frame and PLAY. You want to bob and weave and introduce positives and negatives, and twists and turns. You want to keep the viewer on their toes.

The opening scene has a young woman hitting on Andrew at a bar. Andrew, out of boredom and maybe loneliness, sleeps with her. That becomes the reason his boss, later, fires him. Because this woman worked in an adjacent department at the firm and was technically his subordinate.

A character acts. There are repercussions for that action. That’s plot.

The “play” part comes in later. A desperate Andrew shows up at his old work in the morning, cutting off the girl he slept with as she’s walking into the office. He begs her to recant her complaint. She looks at him sideways. “What are you talking about?” She says. “I never made a complaint.” And now we realize that this goes deeper. Andrew storms in, confronts his boss, who’s elusive about the whole thing. But the point is, there’s more to this story. And that’s a great way to think about plotting. You want to introduce developments that announce, “There’s more to this story.”

In between the scenes that make up that plotline, we’re meeting the ex-wife. We’re meeting the kids. We’re meeting his mentally troubled sister. We’re meeting the friends and neighbors he’s going to steal from later. Tropper does a really great job with that balance. If we meet a new character, the next scene will be plot. If a scene is all plot, the next scene we’ll meet a new character. And then, occasionally, he’s able to include both (plot advancement, character introduction) in the same scene.

It all adds up to a seamless story and, therefore, a professionally polished pilot, the kind of production companies happily pay writers to write because there aren’t many writers who are good at it.

Your Friends and Neighbors is on Apple TV+. Have a watch and let me know what you think.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Try to add conflict to your character introduction scenes. Like I said above, a lot of character introductions are kinda boring. The main character usually gets a sexy character intro (Andrew has a 3-page monologue with the girl who hits on him in the bar about the struggles of becoming successful while raising a family). But once you get past the 2-3 biggest characters, you often just have to introduce characters to get them in the story and it’s not always the most entertaining scene. But, you have a secret tool at your disposal to make the scenes at least A LITTLE MORE entertaining. And that tool is called “conflict.” Take the scene with Samantha, the separated woman Andrew is sleeping with. Tropper introduces CONFLICT into the post-sex scene where she gets pissed at him because he wants to sleep alone. It’s not the greatest scene. But it’s better than no conflict. It’s better than everyone being peachy and boring and perfect. So use conflict to spice up your character intros. That’ll keep us satiated until we get to the next plot beat.

As my strained eyes continue to keep me from reading my weekly allotment of scripts, I have been watching a lot of movies and it’s been a really cool experience. I’ve developed this terrible habit over the years of watching movies and shows with my laptop on. When the movie or show inevitably hits a slow scene, I’ll quickly check my e-mail or pop over to the Hollywood Reporter or ESPN to see if there’s a new story up.

I didn’t realize just how detrimental to the movie-watching experience that was until these past couple of weeks, with my eye strain, and me closing my laptop up. Movies are definitely different when you give them your undivided attention. I’m sure it improved Brave New World by a good 25%. I’m not sure I would’ve liked that movie had I also been trotting around the internet at the time.

It definitely made a difference when I watched A24’s latest film, Opus. Then again, I’m a huge fan of this type of movie set-up. I love a group of people heading off to some remote mysterious location, stranded from the rest of the world. I just think it’s such a juicy setup that has so many routes for you to potentially go down.

Opus follows an online journalist, Ariel, who is called to the remote ranch of mega pop star, Alfred Moretti. Part Michael Jackson, part Elton John, part Prince, part Lady Gaga, Moretti hasn’t released an album in 30 years and he’s only bringing in a select group of music journalists to hear his new songs.

But when Ariel shows up to Moretti’s remote Wyoming ranch, she’s surprised to see just how many people are walking around in blue jumpsuits. It almost seems like she’s just walked into… a cult. Moretti, played by John Malkovich, greets the group, showing off just how weird and eccentric he is (if you’ve ever wanted to see John Malkovich twerk while performing a pop song, this movie is for you).

The rest of the group is so starstruck by Moretti that not a one of them notices how weird the situation is. For example, nobody is allowed to walk anywhere without a concierge (Ariel’s bitchy concierge is played by “Prey’s” Amber Midthunder). And what’s with that hut on the outskirts of the foundation where people go and shuck oysters for hours on end?

Of course, they all figure it out too late. And by that time, the killing has begun.

If I was trying to figure out what kind of spec script I should write that would sell, this setup – a group of people ignorantly going to a dangerous remote location – would be in my top 5 choices. It’s such a delicious setup and has so many fun plot options to play with.

I read a lot of scripts about cults. But what I learned the hard way is that cults aren’t enough. There’s something cliche about them. So, just like any good screenplay concept, you have to find a unique way in. Which is exactly what Opus did. It uses this mysterious pop star as its entry point, which makes the script unique.

Was the execution perfect? Definitely not. There was a haphazardness to the chaos as opposed to uniformity. For example, the representative influencer in the group ends up waking up inside one of the bean bag chairs during a puppet show (yes, a puppet show), ripping herself out, only for us to realize that her entire body is bloated. Moretti then casually explains that he’s given her a drug that makes everything in her body – flesh and organs – expand. So her tongue has swelled up to ten times its original size.

It’s a freaky wild scene. But there’s no rationale to it. Why did Moretti choose to infect one of the group with that specific poison? I’m guessing that the writer just thought it would look disgusting and awesome. That’s not how you write scripts. You want the mythology behind all the actions to be consistent. For example, in “Saw,” the kills are always sadistically crafted torture devices. There’s a consistency there.

But I still give credit to Opus because it took chances. John Malkovich performs a raunchy version of his latest song. It’s a weird scene. I don’t even know if I’d say it worked. But it had me on the edge of my seat. It was different. And that’s what you want to do as a writer. We should always be trying to give the viewer something they haven’t seen before. Always. It’s hard to do cause you’re competing against millions of hours of movies. But you should still try.

I actually think this movie would’ve been a lot bigger had they cast someone different in the lead. I respect that Hollywood is trying its hardest to make Ayo Edebiri a thing. But she’s not a lead in a movie. She just isn’t. She’s got a character actor’s face if I’ve ever seen one.

If they would’ve cast Sydney Sweeney or Anna Taylor-Joy or Mikey Madison. Even Daisy-Edgar Jones. This would’ve been a much much more successful movie. Cause it’s a really fun premise and I think people saw Ayo’s face on the poster and said, “Ehh… not interested.”

But she’s good! She’s definitely good enough to keep the story compelling. If you’re someone who likes these types of movies – modern-day Agatha Christie scenarios – this is a strong entry into the genre. I think this movie is going to age well.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Horror is all about looming dread. You set up that something bad is coming and then milk the suspense. This movie setup is one of the best at achieving that. When we show up to this remote location, we know, from minute 1, that something bad is coming. So the looming dread begins. And you’d be surprised at just how powerful an engine that is in screenwriting. It makes people want to turn the pages!