“Am I, like, getting executed or a root canal?”
You may have glanced at the weekend’s box office, saw that some low-budget Chris Pratt movie miraculously climbed its way to the top of the heap, a la Alex Honnold in Taipei, before going back to your TikTok scrolling.
But if you’re a screenwriter, you should be paying more attention. Because this is great news! A spec screenplay just finished number 1 at the box office. That NEVER happens. So let’s take a closer look at why it did.
It starts by asking a crucial question. What kind of spec screenplay can attract an actor with enough star power to not only get a movie made, but to help push it all the way to number one at the box office?
You need a concept where the main character is featured prominently. And I mean VERY PROMINENTLY. The more prominent, the better. Sure, actors want challenging roles. But you know what they really want? They want to be propped up on a pedestal as THE GUY in a film. You can’t spell “actor” without “ego.”
“Mercy” featured its actor more than any other spec I read in 2024. And when actors see that, they want to be a part of it.
Next, the script had a high concept. There’s a lot of discussion about what exactly “high concept” means. It can be quite unclear. So, let me give you a fun way to measure it. When someone asks you what your script is about, are you unapologetically excited to pitch it to them? If so, you’ve probably got a high concept.
What I’ve realized over the years is that any script grounded in real life, whether it’s a coming-of-age story, a period drama, or a dark comedy, almost always has to be sold with qualifiers.
“It’s about a marriage that slowly dissolves. The husband takes it so hard he ends up losing his job. The wife retreats into this book club because it’s the only real connection she has left.” (pause, noticing the light leave the other person’s eyes) “But it’s really sharp. Like, the scenes are great. And the husband is actually a super interesting character. There’s a lot of tension. It’s not depressing or anything.”
That’s the typical pitch of a non-high-concept idea. You feel like you have to apologize for it when you pitch it.
Contrast that with a pitch like Mercy. “It’s set in the future where accused murderers are put on trial immediately. They have 90 minutes to prove their innocence or they’re executed on the spot.”
That’s the kind of pitch you would not be apologetic in giving.
And finally, you’ve got GSU in spades, baby! You’ve got your goal – PROVE YOUR INNOCENCE. You’ve got your stakes – IF YOU DON’T, YOU DIE. You’ve got your urgency – YOU’VE ONLY GOT 90 MINUTES!
If you have these three things – a giant featured role for an actor, a high concept, and GSU – then you can definitely do what they did here. This formula worked in the 90s and this proves it still works today.
So then wait a minute, Carson. Why is it that the movie got a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes?
Now hold on there, cowboys. I never said anything about the quality of the story. That’s a different skillset entirely. This is a point too many screenwriters miss. If you check all the boxes I just laid out, the bar for execution drops dramatically. Why? Because a studio’s first priority is simple: can we market it? If you hand them something that markets itself, they’ll overlook A TON, mostly because they’re convinced they can fix the script later (even though they never do).
So, yeah, Mercy is a pretty awful screenplay. I read it. It’s bad. But if anything, this should make you thrilled as a screenwriter. It means you don’t have to be perfect to get something made. Just don’t show up with some busted ass boring concept and expect great things.
Moving on.
I saw something quite good this weekend – the new Game of Thrones show, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. I wasn’t just wowed by the writing here – which was good. I was wowed by the choice to take a giant property and go small with it. So much so that I realized how valuable the choice was.
In discussing the fall of Star Wars the other day, I was fascinated by the fact that no matter which way they went with their shows/movies, it always seemed to be the wrong direction. And when I watched Knight, it occurred to me that they may have finally found the formula for expanding a giant franchise.
Don’t go bigger. Go smaller.
Now, “go smaller” always sounds great. Especially in cinema nerd circles. A bunch of film dorks get to proudly say they’re doing the opposite of what Hollywood wants. But it’s important to understand what “go smaller” actually means. It means build the story around the characters.
What this does is it forces writers to put everything possible into their characters. Because they know the story isn’t big enough to keep people hooked, especially under the weight of a franchise that’s gone big before.
And when you put all your focus on creating great characters, guess what happens? You suddenly have a much better shot at creating great characters! Funny how that works.
Knight is smart in exactly this way. It knows everything is going to live or die on the characters, so it reaches for the most battle-tested character type in storytelling history: the underdog. But this is Game of Thrones. One underdog isn’t going to cut it. Not with those expectations. So it gives us two.
Dunk, a giant, lumbering, slightly clumsy wannabe knight. And Egg, a strange little orphan kid with way more going on than he lets on.
Honestly, that alone would probably be enough to keep most people watching past the first episode. We love underdogs. We root for them. We want to see them beat the odds.
But the writers of Knight didn’t stop there. They actually built a plot into the pilot, which happens far less often than you’d think (at least in the pilots I read). Dunk has come to this town to compete in the Knight Tournament. It’s not a massive plot. But it has something incredibly important.
It has purpose.
A goal provides your hero, and by association, your story, with purpose.
And because we’ve already established Dunk as a lovable underdog who wants nothing more than to be a knight, the mere announcement of a Knight Tournament is enough. We’re in. Of course we’re going to keep watching. We have to see how he does!
The writers then do all the right things to hold our attention. Other knights openly taunt Dunk, daring him to bring it on. And what does Dunk do? He backs down. Every time. This isn’t John Wick, where the moment someone steps up, they get flattened in a blur of violence. Knight plays it smarter. It withholds. It builds suspense. It makes us lean forward, begging for the moment Dunk finally stops backing down.
So today’s two screenwriting takeaways are, ironically, complete opposites.
Number one: if you come up with a giant, high-concept idea, you don’t have to nail the execution. The concept is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
Number two: if you want to write truly great characters, strip the big concept away entirely. Force yourself to hold the reader’s attention with nothing but character.
That kind of pressure is a gift. It’s what pushes you to write the strongest characters you’re capable of.
Here’s my old Mercy screenplay review, which had previously only been available in the newsletter.
SCREENPLAY REVIEW – MERCY
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Premise: In the future, Capital Punishment has been expedited with those being accused of murder having 90 minutes to prove their innocence.
About: We’ve got a big one. This is the package Amazon just picked up starring Chris Pratt. It is a spec sale from an unknown writer, which is rare these days. Nobody knows anything about Marco van Belle other than he wrote and directed a version of King Arthur a decade ago that nobody saw.
Writer: Marco van Belle
Details: 108 pages
In the future, this is where the spec sales are going to happen. They’re going to happen on streamers. Which is fine. Cause streamers have just as much money as studios. Probably more. Which means the paycheck will still be hefty. And, if enough of these spec scripts go on to become hits for the streamers, the studios will get back into the original spec screenplay market. Which means we want movies like Mercy to do well.
Will Mercy do well?
It’s some time in the near future. Chris Raven is a homicide detective in a different world than the one we live in now. Capital punishment, which cost Americans an untold amount of money for every prisoner placed on Death Row, has been thrown out for a much cheeper version. The “Mercy” Program.
Ironically, Chris wakes up in the Mercy chair. The Mercy system locks you down in a chair, gives you one AI robot judge, in this case, Maddox, and you have 90 minutes to prove your innocence. To do so, you must bring your percentage of likelihood that you are innocent down below 92%. If you are unable to do that within 90 minutes, your brain is injected with some electrical wave that immediately kills you.
Chris’s wife, Nicole, is murdered. She was found in her home. And the only person anywhere near her, according to street cameras and phone signal locations, and a bunch of other evidence, is Chris. It is virtually impossible that anybody else killed Nicole. Judge Maddox is so sure of this, she tells Chris that he may as well wait the 90 minutes out and say goodbye.
Obviously, Chris isn’t going to go down that easy. He knows he didn’t kill his wife but has no leads as to who else would kill her. However, the Mercy program allows you to use your judge to access any phone records or video records or databases you want to help prove your innocence. So Chris goes to work.
What Chris quickly realizes is that his wife may have had an affair. That’s the first lead he follows. He’s also interested in a party that happened the night before at his home. Could one of the party members be the killer? Nicole also worked for a shipping company that has some dicey employees, guys who may be shipping suspicious cargo.
As Chris’s frantic investigation continues, there is a secondary battle going on between him and Maddox. Maddox is an AI judge deemed perfect for this Mercy system because she cannot feel anything. She only goes on facts. But as the investigation continues, Maddox learns that not every aspect of a case can be explained with facts. There are times when you have to make judgments based on your gut. Maddox grapples with this as well as with the duty of a job where she’s forced to kill. In the end, the two will have to team up to take down a bigger enemy.
“Mercy” is what I call a “bulletproof concept.”
Let me explain what this means.
When you send a script like Nyad or Maestro out to the town, you’ll hear the phrase, “execution dependent.” In other words, the idea is so unmarketable that the execution of the idea has to be amazing for the movie to succeed.
Bulletproof concepts are the opposite of this. The concept and story setup are so marketable and ideal for an audience experience that you don’t need to nail the execution to sell the script. The movie will work regardless of how well you write it.
Which sounds insane but it’s true. There are certain ideas that write themselves. Mercy is one of those ideas.
We’ve got a flashy genre, in sci-fi. We’ve got timely subject matter, in AI. We’ve got a gigantic goal – prove innocence. We’ve got gigantic stakes – if you fail, you’re executed. We’ve got insane urgency – you’ve only got 90 minutes to prove your innocence. You’ve got a movie star. You’ve got a robot. You’ve got a mystery.
Let’s be honest. This script has it all. This script is everything I tell you to do when you write a spec. Cause when you nail all these things, this is what happens. Big movie stars want to star in your movie. Big producers want to produce your movie.
Oh, and on top of all that, it’s going to be a fun ride.
But here’s why the bulletproof concept really matters…
Mercy isn’t a very well-written script.
It’s okay in places. But every ten pages, I would notice something that didn’t make sense. For example, at a certain point, a SWAT team is working for Maddox and Chris on the outside. But this team seems to have been brought onto the case by pure happenstance. They weren’t doing anything so they happened to have some extra time. And now Maddox and Chris are able to direct them around the city wherever they want.
It would seem to me that a system based on proving your innocence or dying in 90 minutes would have a clearer rule-set than hoping a SWAT had some free time to help save your life.
Or there were times when Chris would call people he knew and the people would be annoyed, insisting that they had to get back to work. Is that how people really act when someone they know is 60 minutes away from electrocution? There were a lot of clunky moments like that.
But.
BUT.
When the major pillars of your movie idea are in place like this one, a script can withstand these miscues. I was still curious who killed Chris’s wife! I still wanted to see if Maddox had any humanity. I was still under the spell of the story’s intense GSU.
Just to be clear – these things do not mean the finished movie is going to be good. I don’t care about that nor should you. You should care about getting your script to the finish line. That’s it. Yes, if you want a great movie, you need to fix a lot of these problems in the script. But if you want to get something made, the bulletproof concept is your biggest asset.
I will never hold Mercy up as an example of good writing. It’s way too uneven for that. But the strength of the concept as well as the setup of the story, make this a surprisingly compelling read. I hope they bring in a good screenwriter to clean it up.
Because if they can fix all the weak world-building and max out the character interplay between Chris and Maddox, which has the potential to be moving, this goes from a decent script to a really good movie.
We’ll see!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Two underrated things that screenwriters overlook are vanity roles and budget, two things that this script nails. This script is a total vanity project. The camera is on our trapped hero the entire movie. It’s hard not to find an actor who will be excited by that idea. And, also, the entire movie takes place in a room with two characters (cheap to make!). Sure, we get some outside stuff via the video feeds and those will need to be shot. But it’s easier to create those on a small screen than go out and shoot them like Christopher McQuarrie does with Mission Impossible. This makes a big idea cheap to produce.
