The fastest way into Hollywood is to write a script like this
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A widowed woman out on her fist date in years receives a drop on her phone telling her she must kill her date.
About: Although it’s unclear if this was a script sale to Platinum Dunes or something they conceived of internally, today’s review is going to be about how this is the TYPE OF SCRIPT you want to write if you want to sell a screenplay. It was written by Chris Roach and Jillian Jacobs, who are all about high concept thrillers (Fantasy Island, Truth or Dare).
Writer: Chris Roach & Jillian Jacobs and Christopher Landon
Details: 90 minutes
We all wrangle over what script we should write next.
I’m hoping that today’s review helps make that choice easier.
“Drop” follows a 30-something mother, Violet, five years after she killed her abusive husband. Needless to say, it’s been hard for Violet to gain the confidence to get back on the dating scene. But she’s been talking to a photographer, Henry, online for several months and the two are finally going on their first date.
The date takes place at a restaurant on the top floor of a Chicago building. Violet’s date is a little late getting there, allowing her to meet a few other people (the hostess, the bartender, another guy on a first date) at the restaurant while she waits.
Henry finally arrives and the two grab a table by the window overlooking the city. Violet starts receiving drops on her phone, funny little memes at first. But then she gets one that says to check her Ring cameras back home. She does and sees that there’s a man in the house with her kid and babysitter.
The dropper proceeds to give her a series of tasks to accomplish, which amount to destroying information on her date’s camera, oh, and then POISONING HIM! The dropper makes it clear that if she tells Henry what’s going on or tries to call the police, her kid is dead.
This results in Violet having to excuse herself during the date approximately 6,373,872 times where she either accomplishes a task or tries to figure a way out of this. Her extremely patient date, Henry, is none the wiser, figuring she’s just having issues leaving her son at home for the first time in five years. It will be up to Violet to figure out who, in the restaurant, is sending these drops. Because if she can’t, she’ll have no choice but to kill poor Henry.
I chose to feature this movie today because this is the number 1 type of script to write if you want to break into the business. Let’s explore why. Cause there are actually two components to this.
On the movie side…
It is high concept.
It is easily marketable.
It has two locations, making it cheap to produce.
On the script side…
Tons of GSU – clear goal, stakes, and urgency
Low character count, which are the easiest scripts to read, cause you don’t have to remember much to keep track of what’s going on.
Contained location, further making things easy to follow
Real-time – which keeps the narrative exciting
But do you want to know the biggest reason to write one of these scripts?
BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE TO BE GOOD.
There. I said it.
“Drop” isn’t a very good script.
In fact, it’s borderline bad. The gimmick of these drops wears out quickly, to the point where every time we get one, we’re annoyed. Cause they’re showing up every 60 seconds. The story is never able to breathe.
Also, it doesn’t make sense. You can imagine a date sticking around after 2 to 3 interruptions. But there’s no way in a million years that your date is sticking around after 75 interruptions. That doesn’t pass real-world muster.
But guess what?
IT DOESN’T MATTER.
That’s the benefit of writing a script like this. All that matters is that the person reading it can see the movie in their head and that that movie can be produced cheaply. They’re not concerned with quality.
And the few that are concerned with quality will tell themselves that they’ll fix the script issues on the way up to production. Which they may even try to do. But this setup never quite works on paper. You can’t disrupt a date 75 times and it make sense. You just can’t. But the people making the movie can see the poster, can see the trailer, they know how to cast it, they know how to market it. That’s all that matters to them.
Sure, you can write a script like Love of Your Life and make a million dollar sale as well. But the catch with that is, you actually have to be a good writer. You’re going to have to execute the hell out of that thing to make it work. Whereas here, you don’t have to be good at all. You can be someone who just understands the basics of screenwriting. Seriously! If you read Scriptshadow a lot, you can write a script like this.
I’m not saying this movie was trash. I liked the mystery element of it. I was genuinely unsure of who the “dropper” was in the room and I really wanted to figure out who it was. That tells me the movie must’ve been working on some level. The constant interruptions just strained credulity so much that I was constantly being pulled out of the movie.
Watch this movie to learn how to sell scripts but NOT if you want to be massively entertained. :)
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: It pays to understand what Hollywood can produce for cheap these days. Because, sometimes, when you’re writing low-budget scripts, you limit yourself in order to keep the cost of the production low. But not everything is as expensive as you think in the days of green screen and AI. So, here, they could’ve easily set the centerpiece restaurant on the ground, like a normal restaurant. It’d be a very cheap easy-to-build set. But, these days, it’s super cheap to create a realistic city skyline at night. So, our writers put the restaurant on top of a building, making a 7 million dollar movie look like a 15 million dollar movie. It’s a small thing but it definitely makes a difference.
