This weekend had not one, but TWO, spec scripts vie for a bite of that juicy but elusive summer box office apple. We’re going to talk about them in a second, but first we cannot ignore the giant looming money shadow that is The Lion King. I have to say that Jon Favreau has had one of my favorite careers to follow. I remember after he did Swingers, him and Vince Vaughn were the toast of the town. And then he went and did Made which was as forgettable a movie as they come. I didn’t even know what the genre was. I thought that might’ve been it for Favreau. So when I heard that he was doing “Elf,” I thought, “He’s desperate. His career is done.” And then that became an enormous hit.
Flush with Hollywood capital, he then went off to make Zathura, which confused the heck out of me. The creator of Swingers was now doing movies for 10 year olds?? I thought he was squandering his talent. And the movie, which was a less-good Jumanji, didn’t do well either. Again, I thought he was done. Then he gets called up to do Iron Man. And that’s when people had zero expectations for that character. The movie not only became a monster hit but it became the movie that built the House of MCU. However, immediately after that, he was given 2 years to do Iron Man 2 instead of the 3 he knew he needed to make it good and the movie ended up being awful as a result. To add insult to injury, the MCU quasi-discarded him because of it. “Thanks for the 10 billion dollar franchise. Bye!” I thought, “he’s done” again.
Things went from bad to worse as Favreau created his biggest misfire ever in the ill-conceived Cowboys and Aliens. Favreau let his long-time desire to direct a Western cloud his judgement, and the result was a film stemming from an idea that never worked in the first place. Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, however, Favreau burst back on the scene with the personal film, Chef, which became the little independent film that could.
Believing he was bankable again, Hollywood gave him The Jungle Book, which looked so amazing that Disney handed him one of their crown jewels, The Lion King. Concurrently, he also gets to make one of the flagship shows for Disney Plus, The Mandalorian. Jon Favreau is the guy who’s never quit. He’s always kept fighting. And I think I learned a couple of lessons from him. One is to stay involved with people. When things were tough for Jon, he filmed this show, Dinner For Five, which was way ahead of its time. It was basically a Youtube show before Youtube that covered five people from the business sitting down, eating, and talking about Hollywood. Some of his guests included a young JJ Abrams (long before JJ became the half-billion dollar man), Ben Affleck, Judd Apatow, Will Ferrell. That wasn’t just a show for him. It was an ongoing networking event which would allow him to keep his name in the hat, so to speak. Next, Favreau’s a go-getter. Favreau didn’t just show up to Disney begging them for a Star Wars TV job. He went ahead and wrote The Mandalorian pilot and second episode on spec! He then brought them to Disney and said, “I want to do this.” People know you’re serious when you have skin (all the hours put into those episodes) in the game. Finally, he’s such a curious positive person that you can’t help but leave a conversation liking him. That’s the power of positivity – is it makes you memorable. And in a business where the new hot thing is always coming around the corner, that’s a powerful weapon to have. The Lion King is getting mixed reviews. But I’m really happy for Favreau that he got to make it and that it will likely become one of the biggest movies of all time.
Now let’s talk spec scripts.
The biggest letdown of the weekend by far was Stuber (my script review here), which barely cleared 8 million dollars. The lone giant comedy entry in the summer never exhibited that “must see” quality in its marketing that gets people to rearrange their schedules to go see a movie. Here’s my take on what a comedy spec needs in order to be successful in 2019. For starters, you need a big concept (The Hangover) or a big situation (being a Bridesmaid) that hasn’t been seen in theaters for at least the last 20 years. That gets people charged up. Well-known new technology – in this case, Uber – is what I’d consider a “big situation.” So they got that part right. But there were a couple of things wrong with it. First, it was a few years too late. If this would’ve came out in 2014? It would’ve done four times what it did over this weekend easily. Second, the technology is too similar to previous situations we’ve seen in movies. This is basically, “Two mismatched guys in a car.” We’ve seen that setup hundreds of times before. Changing the car to a ride-share service isn’t enough to get people excited. All they see in the previews is two guys in a car. They don’t see “Uber.” And so it just didn’t look that original.
Once you’ve got a great concept or a great situation, you need to nail the casting. That’s what I’d say are the two biggest factors for success with comedies. Great idea and casting. Hollywood continues to make this mistake where they get inside their little echo chambers about who the best “up and coming” actors are and because all their agent and producer buddies are parroting the names, they think the actors are bigger than they actually are. The average person has no idea who Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista are other than, “Hey, that’s that guy from that one movie.” Instead, you should cast a) the best actors and b) the actor combo with the best chemistry. That’s what they did with The Hangover. Nobody knew who any of those guys were. But they were perfect for their parts. In Kumail and Dave’s defense, they seem to like each other a lot. But chemistry isn’t just getting along. It’s about projecting the dynamic required to make the film believable. In this case, these guys WEREN’T supposed to like each other. So it just didn’t pop enough in the trailers. I’ll point to one of the best casting decisions of all time, when Sylvester Stallone cast Carl Weathers as Apollo Creed in Rocky. He hated Carl in his audition. Hated him. Carl was loud, crude, insulting, and mean to Stallone. However, that’s exactly who Apollo Creed needed to be in Rocky. So he cast him.
It’s crazy to me that the last two break out comedy hits were The Hangover and Bridesmaids. I still have faith though, my friends! The cool thing about the comedy spec space right now is that unlike horror and thrillers, where you have to think about containing them to keep the budget down, comedies need to be big and action-packed these days. So you can come up with big premises and have fun with big wild set pieces if you want. And if your concept is awesome and your script is hilarious, you can sell one of these.
Meanwhile, Crawl made 11 million dollars. I’ve read some conflicting reports on whether this take should be considered a success or not. Some people believe the film bombed. Others think it did well considering it had such a tiny budget and was competing in the lion’s den known as the summer movie season. I’m hard-pressed to say that any film whose marketing budget only allowed them to make people aware of the movie the week of its release is a failure if it made over 10 million dollars. People didn’t know this movie existed last Monday. And on top of that, you’ve got two actors who nobody recognizes. I think Crawl did solid business all things considered. And like I said, this is one more bullet in the chamber for Team Spec Sale.
Michael Rasmussen, who wrote the script with his brother Shawn, tells Final Draft how they came up with the idea: “ It’s just so crazy how you live side-by-side with alligators. You’re side-by-side with these predators and they’re walking across your golf courses; sometimes they’ll get stuck under your house. You just peacefully coexist with these things that can turn on you at any moment. One of the years I was there, there was a hurricane and people were being kind of casual about that, too. Not so much now, but at that time they were like, “ah, a hurricane is coming. I’ll just ride it out. It’s not a big deal.” There’s just this attitude down there that I wanted to capture. I sat down with Shawn and said, “I have this idea and we should just write it before someone else comes up with it.” That started about two years ago.”
Later in the interview, brother Shawn noted the challenge of writing on spec: “It’s interesting when you’re writing a spec because you’re really writing it to maximize it to the full effect; everything has got to be really perfect. In the spec market it’s so hard to get something that generates interest so we worked super hard for six months to make it the best script we could.” Later still, Shawn gave his advice to aspiring screenwriters: “I would say write. If you want to be a screenwriter, you need to write a screenplay. You need to sit down and do it. Sometimes your first three, four, five scripts are going to be not so good, maybe even awful. But you’re going to get better by doing it. You need to sit down and just write. I think that’s the most important thing.” I’ll definitely be checking Crawl out once it comes to digital.
The 2019 box office shows just how big Disney has become. This kind of dominance has never happened before. Avengers: Endgame, Captain Marvel, Toy Story 4, Aladdin. Only at number 5 do we get another studio, Sony’s Spider-Man. And we still have Disney behemoths The Lion King and The Last Jedi coming. I know I just wrote a newsletter about how Disney has to fall at some point. But who’s going to topple them? Universal’s biggest properties are Fast and Furious and Jurassic Park. Warner Brothers is Batman and Wonder Woman. Paramount’s is Mission Impossible and Sony’s is the Spider-Man universe. Do you see any of those taking down Pixar, Marvel, or Star Wars? Good gosh, these studios might have to actually, you know, come up with some NEW IDEAS if they want to challenge Mouse Head. Will any of them have the stones to take a chance? We’ll see!
