Time is running out to get your loglines in for The Five Loglines Showdown!
As the last entries stream in for the 5 Loglines Showdown…
What: 5 Loglines Showdown
When: Friday, January 31st
Deadline: Thursday, January 30th, 11pm Pacific Time
Submit: 5 loglines, each with a title and a genre
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
….I was reflecting on the kinds of movies that make it to the big screen these days and, like a lot of writers, I thought, “Oh man. It’s all IP and recycled movies.” I momentarily thought, “Why even bother writing a script? Barely any make it to the big screen so who cares??”
Luckily, rational minds prevailed.
First of all, that’s a silly way to look at it. Every movie you see at the box office has a screenwriter – usually several of them – who wrote it, and all of those screenwriters started out writing their own stuff, got noticed with those scripts, and then moved their way up to a place where they could write those studio films.
So don’t get it twisted.
But, the more promising news comes in the form of what I’m about to tell you: Streaming is the new playground for spec script writers. And it’s not like you’re settling that much. Some of these streaming movies have 9 digit budgets. So, instead of crying that theatrical movies based on spec scripts aren’t realistic anymore, take advantage of this new avenue that your screenwriting forefathers never had.
From just 2024, here are 75% of the movies made for streamers (all American – I didn’t include the British ones). And while not every single one started off as a spec, all of these could’ve been written on spec. This is what the streamers are looking for. They don’t care as much as studios do about if it was a comic book, novel, or video game. They just want to make movies.
So, here we go….
NETFLIX
Carry-On – High-concept thriller about a TSA agent who must follow the orders of a terrorist.
Don’t Move – Thriller about a woman crippled by a paralyzing agent from a serial killer. She must escape somehow.
It’s What’s Inside – Body swapping 20-something horror comedy.
The Union – A normal dude must team up with an old flame, who happens to be a secret agent.
Back in Action – Another 2-Hander spy thriller except the two main characters are a married couple.
Atlas – Sci-fi flick that focuses on a rogue robot.
Trigger Warning – A former Special Forces agent must defend her recently deceased father’s bar against a local gang.
Damsel – Die Hard in ancient times with a dragon.
Lift – Big broad Kevin Hart airplane heist action-comedy.
Uglies – Young Adult post-apocalyptic movie about how everyone must get surgery at 16 to become pretty.
Incoming – A comedy about what it’s like to be an incoming freshman in high school.
Lonely Planet – Adult Romance where an older female writer starts a relationship with a young man while on vacation.
His Three Daughters – Three adult daughters return home to take care of their ailing father.
A Family Affair – Strangely enough, another movie about an older female writer who has a relationship with a younger man. This one is more of a comedy, though.
Irish Wish – A woman makes a wish while on vacation in Ireland and becomes the bride in the wedding she’s attending.
HULU
Hold Your Breath – Psychological horror film about a woman living in a house during the Dust Bowl while a dangerous man roams the countryside nearby.
Prom Dates – A high school coming-of-age movie about two girls trying to go to prom.
Quiz Lady – A broad comedy about a serious woman obsessed with a quiz game show who gets a chance to be on the show.
AMAZON
Canary Black – CIA agent on the run.
Brothers – Dark Comedy where two brothers who hate each other embark on a heist road trip.
Killer Heat – A movie about twin brothers where one of them dies and an investigation ensues.
Jackpot – Big comedy where, in a Purge-like future, if you win the lottery, anybody who kills you on that first day takes the prize.
Space Cadet – Legally Blond at NASA.
The Boys in the Boat – Real-life sports story about a rowing Olympics medal in the 1930s, I believe.
Ricky Stanicky – An update on The Hangover template.
Role Play – A man realizes he is married to a secret assassin.
Foe – A hard-drama sci-fi movie about an unhappy marriage and a man called into space to work on a ship.
APPLE
Fly Me to the Moon – A romantic comedy about a woman helping a NASA director beat the Russians and get America to the moon.
Blitz – A World War 2 movie about a kid trying to get back to London while it’s being bombed by the Germans to be with his mom.
Wolfs – Two fixers get stuck on the same job. They despise each other.
The Instigators – Two knucklehead criminals get caught up in a job way bigger than them and must somehow survive the skilled people trying to kill them.
Fancy Dance – A very heavy drama about a Native American woman trying to find her missing sister.
The Family Plan – About a family who must go on the run due to the dad being a former secret assassin.
Are you catching what I’m throwing here? As you look through all these ideas, what do you see? The streamers are pretty much looking for everything! You’re not limited to very narrow parameters like you are when you’re writing spec scripts for studios.
There are a few main trends I noticed though. Streamers love secret assassins. They love two-handers. And they love action-comedies. So you’ll probably have a little more success with them if you’re writing one of those genres.
Okay, keep those loglines coming! As of the time I’m putting this post up, 5:00pm Pacific Time Wednesday, you have 29 hours to get your five loglines in!
Good luck!
Remember, the Logline Showdown deadline is this Thursday! Details below!
Genre: Drama
Premise: A doctor coming off a divorce must learn to understand his anxiety-ridden teenage daughter while exploring a romance with an old flame.
About: This is the last script from the 2023 Black List that I was interested in reading. Screenwriter and director, Rachel Lambert, is best known for a film she made recently with Daisy Ridley titled, “Sometimes I Think About Dying.”
Writer: Rachel Lambert
Details: 116 pages
The character of Rebecca feels like an adult Jennifer Lawrence role.
A quick reminder of how to enter Logline Showdown this week.
What: 5 Loglines Showdown
When: Friday, January 31st
Deadline: Thursday, January 30th, 11pm Pacific Time
Submit: 5 loglines, each with a title and a genre
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
This may be the most ironic review I’ve ever posted considering I’m promoting a logline competition in the same post. This is, obviously, one of the weakest loglines you could enter in a logline competition.
To that end, Carousel is a great example of a script that a Hollywood agent would read and say, “This writer has talent,” while simultaneously knowing the script would never go anywhere.
UNLESS the writer was also the director. Which today’s screenwriter is. So she’s figured out a way to circumvent the obstacle. But let this be a lesson to non-writer-directors that trying to get traction with a script like this is like trying to get traction as a tennis pro while playing with a hockey stick.
The script takes place in Cleveland, Ohio, where Noah, the head doctor at a local medical clinic, is dealing with the fallout from his divorce and his deteriorating relationship with his 14 year old daughter, Maya, who’s battling crippling anxiety.
If the recent divorce isn’t bad enough, Noah’s also dealing with the death of his father, who used to run the medical clinic. Noah’s brother, Sam, stepped in to help during the transition but is now eager to move on, leaving Noah unsure of how to move forward.
The one bright light in Noah’s life occurs when Maya falls in love with Debate Team at school. However, Noah will later learn that his former lover, Rebecca, who’s moved back from a high-level political job in D.C., is coaching the debate team.
Noah attempts to weave his way back into Rebecca’s life even if she’s reluctant to reciprocate. Then the two run into each other so much that she figures, ‘why not give it a go,’ and the relationship reignites.
I wish I could give you some splashy exciting plot that develops after this but the above synopsis is pretty much it. That’s all that happens in the script. Which should give you an indication of where this analysis is going.
This is the problem a lot of writer-directors have.
They hide their writing behind their directing. They can make something look like a movie. But there’s nothing underneath it. That’s because writer-directors, except for the superstars we all know, rarely put as much effort into learning writing as they do directing.
Literally nothing happens in this script.
It’s so devoid of any plot points that you might as well have had us follow 5 real people around for a week. Just have us experience life. Cause that’s what this script is. It is trying to mimic real life.
Well, I’ve got news for you.
REAL LIFE IS BORING.
Movies are meant to highlight the most important and exciting moments from life. That’s what makes us want to see them. Cause they feel larger than life. Even writers who like to explore grounded real-life stories know this. Your biggest plot point in a movie cannot be drunk texts on page 103, which is what actually happens in Carousel.
You can probably feel my frustration here because this is one of my pet peeves – writers who place the burden on the reader to be entertained rather than on themselves to entertain. It’s your job, as the writer, to inject DRAMA into your story consistently enough that we stay invested.
That’s not taking anything away from the character development or the dialogue here, both of which I found strong. The attention to detail, particularly in relation to Cleveland, was also strong: “This storied institution of Cleveland is a menagerie of ethnic cuisine and legacy food stalls the size of multiple city blocks. There’s pierogi, kimchee, paczki, salted and cured fish, kraut, sausages served on hard homemade rolls with krauts. Noah, Rebecca, and Maya browse and sample.”
But that’s not storytelling.
Storytelling requires a plot. It requires you to periodically advance the story in dramatically compelling ways.
I don’t think I encountered a single plot point here. I’m not asking for 16,000 plot points, like Deadpool & Wolverine. But can you give me one? Even though I liked the Maya character, as we trudged towards the midpoint, I was hoping she was going to die so, at least the story could have some plot to deal with.
It just makes things so much harder on you, as the writer, if you’re only writing a character study. When characters are only going through internal emotions, that exploration needs to be perfect for the script to work. You have no wiggle room for error like you do when you’re hitting us with a new plot point every 10 pages.
Take Rebecca and Noah. A pretty good exploration of a relationship. But was it good enough to carry the movie all by itself? Not even close. I just finished the script and I still don’t understand why these two have such a complicated relationship with one another. This line from the script explains it best: “She looks up. And there, standing right there in her backyard, is Noah. He is the last person she wants in that moment. And he is the only person she’d ever want.”
Uhhhhh… what?
I don’t care as much about that confusion if I’m enjoying the plot. But if that character stuff is the only source of entertainment in the screenplay, I’m going to demand perfection.
It’s too bad because there is talent on display here.
In particular, there is a sophistication on the character side that you don’t usually see in a lot of screenplays. “When you’ve convinced someone it’s safe for them to love you, you have immense power.” “They talk about whatever topics allow them to feel connected to another man without doing any emotional labor.” “This is Ian all over again. He builds the maze, you run through it, hoping there’s an “I love you” at the end.”
If you love drama and character studies, I would not write feature scripts. I would write for TV. I would write a novel. Both of those give you more space to explore character and neither requires the stakes and urgency movies do.
I’ll leave you with a page from the script which demonstrates just how slow the read was designed.
Script link: Carousel
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: To all the writers who prefer grounded drama, I beg of you to keep this in mind – You’re not trying to win over your college English professor. You’re trying to win over hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of moviegoers. Never forget that when you’re coming up with a story.
People be doggin Flight Risk but I swear on the Delta wings that Sally the flight attendant gave me on a flight from Chicago to Cleveland when I was 10 years old that it was a good script!
Plus we gotta give Lionsgate credit. The studio only gets two number 1 films a year so we just celebrate it when it happens!
I’m not here to talk Flight Risk though.
I’m here to talk American Primeval.
The show has exploded on Netflix, becoming the most watched new show on the streamer.
Let me make something clear to every screenwriter: When you have a show that does well in a genre that the public typically ignores? YOU MUST STUDY WHY.
There are secrets in every breakout success so, if you’re smart, you’ll dissect why something that wasn’t supposed to happen happened.
I sat down and watched the pilot episode of American Primeval and have discovered all the answers.
Come in with a focused sympathetic situation
A lot of times with these TV shows that have a lot of characters, the pilot will jump around, covering a lot of territory, so as to set up the plot. The problem with this is that whenever you dilute the narrative, you lose narrative thrust.
So, I like when a pilot introduces us to a main character, or group of characters, and stays with them. It’s much easier to hook a reader that way. Especially if you create a sympathetic situation with those characters.
When we meet Sara Rowell and her son, Devin, they’re in a bind. They’ve arrived in a dangerous town on the frontier. They don’t have any allies. They’re two weeks late. Sara’s trying to meet up with her husband, yet nobody knows where he is.
We sympathize with that. Because we know that if they don’t find her husband, they’re probably dead. So, emotionally, we’re hooked. And that does sooooooooo so so so much work for the story. If you can get the reader emotionally hooked on your main characters and their situation, you’re golden. American Primeval does that right away.
Drop us into the thick of things
A mistake I see a lot in TV writing is, what I call, “SETUP ADDICTION.” All the writer cares about, in that pilot, is setting up the 15 characters in their show. I get it. TV has a lot of characters. It covers many hours of story. For that to work, you have to tell us who everyone is.
The problem is, when you only focus on that, you don’t actually hook us. You’re telling us, “bear with me while I describe all my characters to you. Then, once I’m finished, we can get to the good stuff.”
No. That’s not how successful storytelling works. You must entertain us ALONG THE WAY. That starts on the very first page. So, here, we’re not just setting things up. We’re immediately meeting two people, a mother and her son, who have arrived at a remote train station, both of whom are looking for the mom’s husband.
Every character we meet isn’t met to say to the audience, “Here I am. I will be one of the characters in the story.” Instead, they come in as dramatic accomplices or foils to our heroine’s goal. That’s how you hook a reader in a pilot. You start the entertainment on page one.
And here’s a pro-tip for you: Come into the story as late as possible. We could’ve easily come into this story with Sara on the train, on her way to town. And it probably would’ve allowed us an easier way to introduce her and her son. But, had we done so, we would’ve started off with a slower, more boring, scene.
By starting the story as late as possible – with her and her son already having arrived in town – we jumped right into things.
Introduce danger above and beyond what we’re used to
The average potential viewer dismisses Westerns because they find them boring. Westerns move slower. Plot beats take longer to get to. The setting is vast but often empty. This genre doesn’t feel exciting enough for most people.
Therefore, if you write a Western that leans into that template, we’ll dismiss it. But, it’s clear right away that American Primeval has no interest in typical Western conventions. It leaned into intensity as much as possible. Even in the slow moments, there were always scary-looking dudes lurking nearby – guys who could snap our heroine’s neck in a second if need be. There is no safety in American Primeval and that’s what’s drawing in people who don’t typically watch Westerns.
That’s a valuable lesson, by the way. When you give readers what they’re used to, they will react accordingly. Give them a bigger, scarier, more intense, Western, and they will clear their Thursday nights out to binge your show.
One of the things that really stuck out to me about American Primeval is when the local sheriff laid out to Sara why she needed to turn around and go back to Philadelphia. You’ve got a brutal winter, fearless outlaws, three of the most violent Indian tribes in the country, bears, wolves, and let’s not forget the crazed Mormons.
Unlike any Western I’ve ever watched before, it felt like there was no way to succeed. If you can create that belief, you will retain 99% of your readers. People are inherently curious about impossible odds. In contrast, if you say, “The goal is difficult but doable,” there’s no reason for the reader to keep reading. Cause you told them straight up that the hero will probably succeed. NO. You want them to believe that YOUR HERO WILL DEFINITELY DIE. That’s how to keep a reader invested.
Urgency In Non-Urgent Scenarios
This next tip is reading crack. Whenever you write period stuff, create an URGENT SCENARIO. Readers are so accustomed to stories set in the distant past unfolding at a slower pace. So if you can create a scenario that feels urgent, the juxtaposition will evoke an unfamiliar and exciting feeling in the reader.
Right from the start here, we learn that Sara’s husband left two weeks ago because she and her son were late. So time is of the essence. He’s two weeks ahead of them. They have to move now!
Give us truth
Finally, American Primeval is yet another example that writing rewards truth.
When you try and lie by creating scenarios that the reader knows are either factually or subconsciously inaccurate, they will turn on you.
One of the things that confused me when I looked into this show is that audiences loved it but critics did not (they gave it a 67% on Rotten Tomatoes). The deeper I looked, the more I realized that critics, who mostly favor progressive storytelling, dislike when Native Americans are portrayed poorly. So they never give stuff like this a positive score.
This opens up an opportunity for anyone who wants to portray controversial aspects of history truthfully. There were some savage natives back in the Wild West and by simply showing that truth, you give the reader a show that feels different from every other show they’ve seen.
If you look at Killers of the Flower Moon, there are no bad Native Americans in that film. Only bad white people. That’s mostly how things are portrayed these days. As a writer, your job is not to mimic what other people think is right. It’s to seek out the truth and show it. Cause if you can show that truth, you are giving people an authentic experience, which is something audiences rarely experience these days.
All of this is what’s led American Primeval to be the most popular show on Netflix. I was only surprised by this BEFORE I found out who wrote it. Mark L. Smith is a great writer. What better endorsement can you get as a writer than Quentin Tarantino hiring you to write something (he hired Mark to write his Star Trek film).
I also chat with Mark every once in a while. I beg him for that Star Trek script but he always says the same thing. He’d be kicked out of Hollywood if he gave it to me. But I’ll keep trying!
Unless you can’t handle extreme violence, I recommend ALL OF YOU watch this show. It’s a spectacular example of how to write a great pilot script that hooks the reader.
Will Taxi Driver 2 be written by AI?
What: 5 Loglines Showdown
When: Friday, January 31st
Deadline: Thursday, January 30th, 11pm Pacific Time
Submit: 5 loglines, each with a title and a genre
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
So, the other day, I heard that Paul Schraeder was in the news for saying outlandish things. For those of you who don’t know, Paul Schrader is a famous Hollywood screenwriter best known for scripting Taxi Driver. He also wrote Raging Bull.
Just to provide some context, Schrader’s last five movies were Master Gardener, There Are No Saints, The Card Counter, Dark, And First Reformed.
The reason, it turns out, Schraeder was in the news is because he said he’s been spending a lot of time on Chat GPT and that the AI program is better at coming up with movie ideas than he is.
Now, the last time I checked this, which was about six months ago, that statement would be demonstrably false. AI could come up with these ideas that SOUNDED like movies. But they were always missing an ingredient or two that made them sound like an actual movie.
Maybe that’s changed. But that was my experience six months ago.
Another thing to keep in mind here is that Paul Schraeder isn’t exactly an ideas guy. Taxi Driver is literally a movie about a guy driving around in a taxi. Its strength is in its execution, not in its concept.
And here’s the logline for Master Gardener: “A meticulous horticulturist is devoted to tending the grounds of a beautiful estate and pandering to his employer, the wealthy dowager.” Not going to win any Pitch Fests, that’s for sure.
So, from the jump, my initial thought was, “Well, Paul, lots of people could come up with better movie ideas than you.” He’s not very good at it.
But, in the leadup to next week’s Logline Showdown, I’m curious where we stand on AI movie ideas. Is it getting to a point where AI could actually come up with an idea that’s worthy of spending 30 million dollars on?
So, what I thought I’d do is challenge AI to come up with five movie ideas in the five most marketable genres. Horror, Thriller, Action, Adventure, and Sci-Fi. I’m going to tell it exactly what I’m telling you here. In fact, I’m going to paste this paragraph into the prompt and tell it I want it to come up with its five best loglines for those genres. And then I want to dissect those ideas and see if they’re any good.
Are you ready?
Okay. Here goes nothing!
Horror:
Echoes in the Hollow – When a grieving mother moves into an isolated mountain village, she discovers the town’s eerie folklore about soul-stealing shadows might be true, as she begins to hear whispers from her dead child calling her into the woods.
Thriller:
The Algorithm – A brilliant tech investigator uncovers a government-run AI capable of predicting crimes before they happen, but as the AI starts framing innocent people, she must outsmart the machine before she becomes its next target.
Action:
Code Red: Omega – When a rogue paramilitary group hijacks a U.S. missile submarine, an ex-Navy SEAL turned disgraced shipwright must infiltrate the vessel to prevent a global catastrophe, relying on his engineering wits and old combat skills.
Adventure:
The Titan’s Map – After discovering a hidden map etched into an ancient statue, a group of rival treasure hunters embarks on a perilous journey across the globe, chasing a mythical lost city rumored to contain an artifact that can rewrite history.
Sci-Fi:
Quantum Divide – In a future where teleportation has revolutionized travel, a physicist discovers a dark secret: each teleportation creates a copy while killing the original. When the technology is weaponized, she must expose the truth before humanity destroys itself.
First impressions?
Before I share those, let me emphasize that the ultimate goal of a logline is to make the reader go, “Holy shit, I want to see that movie now.” It’s rare to achieve that, whether you’re human or artificial intelligence, but that’s the goal.
So, that’s the initial criteria I’m judging these loglines by. And none of them pass the test. Nothing here makes me go, “I have to see this!”
With that said, none of them are bad. I didn’t read any of these loglines and roll my eyes, which, to be fair, is something I do often when I go through logline submissions. Just the fact that there are no spelling or grammar errors puts them above 60% of the entries in my competitions.
But, ironically, AI’s loglines have the same issue that a lot of human loglines have, which is that they sort of feel like a movie you’ve already seen, yet they don’t offer a fresh enough perspective to make this new version movie-worthy.
Let’s take a look at them one by one.
Title: Echoes in the Hollow
Genre: Horror
Logline: When a grieving mother moves into an isolated mountain village, she discovers the town’s eerie folklore about soul-stealing shadows might be true, as she begins to hear whispers from her dead child calling her into the woods.
The “special attractor” here (otherwise known as the variable in your story that’s supposed to make your idea sound exciting) is “soul-stealing shadows.” I’m just not interested in shadows. I don’t find them very compelling. In fact, they seem kind of boring. Shadows? So, your special attractor is weak from the get-go.
Then, you have the dead kid calling from the woods trope. I mean, come on. I must’ve read a thousand scripts where you can hear kids or babies, laughing or crying from the woods or deep in the house. It’s lazy and it’s far from a hook.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with this idea. But nothing about it stands out. Which means it’s going to get passed over.
Title: The Algorithm
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A brilliant tech investigator uncovers a government-run AI capable of predicting crimes before they happen, but as the AI starts framing innocent people, she must outsmart the machine before she becomes its next target.
I’ve noticed that AI does this thing where it takes movies that already exist and makes a minor change to them. This is just Minority Report with AI instead of those milk-laden prognosticator people.
But, to be fair, this is what humans do, too. They keep trying to spin their favorite movies in new directions. The success of a movie idea often lies in finding the perfect balance—pushing the concept in a fresh, new direction while still preserving the core elements that made the original idea compelling.
The Algorithm is too close to the original Minority Report to feel fresh.
Title: Code Red: Omega
Genre: Action
Logline: When a rogue paramilitary group hijacks a U.S. missile submarine, an ex-Navy SEAL turned disgraced shipwright must infiltrate the vessel to prevent a global catastrophe, relying on his engineering wits and old combat skills.
This is an interesting one because straight action concepts aren’t usually flashy. With that said, Hollywood still places value on originality and a flashy concept in a genre they love to make could be the difference between your movie getting picked over another one.
I know that Hollywood has been looking for a great sub script for a while now. Therefore, if you can come up with a good submarine concept, you have a chance at filling that requirement.
Ironically, the problem with this logline is a logistical one. Which I didn’t expect to encounter with AI, since AI is built on 1s and 0s. But how do you infiltrate a submarine that someone has already hijacked? Do you swim down there and, when they’re not looking, climb in through the missile hole?
I suppose he could’ve already been on the sub. And, if that’s the case, it’s not a bad idea. I would’ve liked a little more irony in his job (having him be a ship builder feels barely adjacent to the task at hand).
And then the ‘save the world’ thing feels generic. But I guess a lot of big action movies subscribe to those stakes. — On the plus side, I like the title.
Title: The Titan’s Map
Genre: Adventure
Logline: After discovering a hidden map etched into an ancient statue, a group of rival treasure hunters embarks on a perilous journey across the globe, chasing a mythical lost city rumored to contain an artifact that can rewrite history.
More than any other example, this idea feels stitched together from other movies. And this is the big complaint against AI, that it doesn’t know how to create on its own. Its creation is always built on top its database of previous creations.
And while the argument is that humans do the same, I would argue they go about the process differently. AI literally cherry picks variables from these past successful movies and stitches them together in a mechanical way.
Humans tend to think more emotionally when they build on top of previous ideas, utilizing what they feel, specifically in relation to how humans would be involved in these stories.
Most of the time, protagonists are stand-ins for the writers writing them. Writers use the characters they’re writing to work through their own problems they’re dealing with in life. And that’s what makes the story feel relatable and human.
AI has not figured out how to do that. Nor do I think it’ll ever figure that out. Because how do you work through a human experience if you’ve never been a human?
On top of that, The Titan’s Map feels like an old discarded Indiana Jones sequel pitch. It’s just not very original.
Title: Quantum Divide
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: In a future where teleportation has revolutionized travel, a physicist discovers a dark secret: each teleportation creates a copy while killing the original. When the technology is weaponized, she must expose the truth before humanity destroys itself.
Same problems. AI is aware of Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige. It’s using the basic premise behind that as its foundation. And the rest of the idea doesn’t even make sense. It’s going to be weaponized??? What do you mean? Are you going to trick people into teleporting so you can secretly kill them?
I’m just working this out in my head here. Teleportation R&D, building of the devices, powering these devices – probably equates to a couple of million dollars per teleport? How much does a bullet cost again? About 10 cents?
Can someone do the math for me? Which one of those options is more cost-efficient if you want to kill someone?
Look, maybe the implementation of the weaponization makes more sense in the actual script. But it’s your job as the writer to convey that in the logline. Or else you’re going to get snarky responses like this one.
For fun, I copied and pasted my critiques of all five loglines back into ChatGPT and asked it to rewrite the loglines incorporating the criticism. I’m not going to include all of those rewrites since I don’t want this post to be 5000 words. But I’ll include one to give you an idea of if it’s able to improve.
Title: The Titan’s Map
Genre: Adventure
New Logline: When an estranged father and daughter uncover a map etched into an ancient artifact, they must navigate deadly rivals and their fractured relationship as they search for a mythical city rumored to grant its finder unlimited power.
As you can see, AI tries to create an approximation of a “human issue,” by adding a father daughter team with problems. But it’s conveniently just that – the symbol of a human problem. There is no sense at all that these two are real people. That’s what AI continues to miss the mark on.
So, what’s my conclusion in all of this?
AI has gotten A LITTLE BETTER at creating movie ideas. But because it doesn’t have any power to create brand new ideas out of nothing and because it lacks any understanding of human behavior, its output continues to result in half-baked ideas without any emotional depth. The more you scrutinize them, the less they hold up.
Motherboy goes for the shockiest ending of the 2024 Black List. Does it succeed?
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A pregnant wife dreads spending the Thanksgiving holiday with her husband’s parents due to his odd mother, who continues to baby her son well into adulthood.
About: I got sold on this script due to its one line pitch. “BARBARIAN by way of an erotic, Hallmark holiday movie.” How brilliant is that!? Screenwriter Tess Brewer is originally from Australia. She is yet to secure her first writing credit.
Writer: Tess Brewer
Details: 94 pages
Mommy?
I love setups like this.
It’s simple setups like this that have led to classic movies such as Get Out.
Send two characters to a remote location where they encounter other characters that they are in conflict with in some way and then allow the drama that gestates from that clash to guide your story.
The reason I like this setup so much is because you can write a really cheap movie this way, which massively increases the chances of your script getting made. We just saw it with the great Speak No Evil.
The pitfall with these setups is that there aren’t as many places to take the story. Which means you gotta be a really good writer to make them work. I have a very structured way in which I judge these scripts. I’ll share that process with you after the plot breakdown.
33 year old Tatum Woodrow is pregnant. But that equates to 1/100th the anxiety she feels compared to her impending holiday hang-out session with her husband’s, Owen’s, mother. The two are headed to Owen’s parents’ remote cabin for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Owen’s obsessive mother, Amelia, has never quite accepted her son as anything other than a 10 year old child. She loves him, she babies him, she bathes with him, she sleeps in the same bed as him whenever they’re in the same house. Tatum has brought this up numerous times during their marriage counseling but it never seems to get through Owen’s thick skull.
They head to the house where we meet Amelia, along with her sick and fast-deteriorating husband, Neil. Right away, Amelia is babying Owen (she wants to get him into that warm bath ASAP!). On the first night, Tatum wakes up to find herself alone in her bed. She goes downstairs and see Amelia watching over Owen, who’s asleep on the couch. Creepy!
The next day, when Neil and Tatum are alone, he tells her he wants to do something that makes him feel independent again and heads off. Tatum feels weird about letting him go due to his dwindling physical state but what can she do? An hour later, Amelia finds Neil in his car in the garage, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. Suicide.
Amelia is furious with Tatum for not watching over him more closely. She quickly has Owen turning on his wife as well. It’s not looking good for Tatum! But then, later, Tatum stumbles upon a secret so shocking, it will pit her against Amelia in a fight to the death.
One of the primary ways I grade screenplays is I look at the concept and I note what the average screenwriter would do with that concept. In other words, if you gave 100 screenwriters that concept, 75 of them are going to write a very similar version of that story.
That’s the version of the story you DON’T WANT TO WRITE. Because that version is the version that anyone could write. You want to write the version that only a few screenwriters could write. That’s the reason Hollywood pays screenwriters – to give them the version of the story they could not write themselves.
That’s a fancy way of saying: NEVER WRITE THE OBVIOUS VERSION OF YOUR CONCEPT.
Give us a version that’s unique in some way. That can be through the unique voice you use to tell the story. It can be in how you play with the structure. It can be through adding a couple of bold creative choices that send the story down non-traditional paths. It can be through the creation of unique characters we don’t typically see in this setup.
But whatever you do, don’t go into auto-pilot and give us exactly what we expect the movie to be. Cause, if you do that, why do we need to watch it? We’ve already seen that movie in our heads.
So, where did Motherboy land on that game board? The obvious version or the unique version?
A bit of both. The first half of the script was very by-the-numbers. Anybody could’ve written it. For example, there’s a scene where Tatum wakes up in the middle of the night, her husband gone. She hears giggling down the hallway. She creeps down it, she peeks inside the bathroom doorway where Tatum and Owen are naked kissing in the bathtub.
AND THEN OF COURSE it’s a nightmare.
I must read scenes like that a thousand times a year. They’re so cliche. They’re so obvious. That’s what I mean when I say, 75 out of 100 writers are going to write the same version of the story. That kind of writer will write that scene. Why? Cause it’s obvious. And it takes no work to come up with.
You should be writing scenes that DON’T COME TO YOU EASILY. Cause those are the ones that nobody’s thinking of.
But the second half of the script was less predictable. Lots of spoilers so you’ve been warned. First, Neil kills himself. I wasn’t expecting that. Then, not too long after, Amelia kills Tatum! That’s a bold creative choice right there, getting rid of one of the co-leads. Finally, you get this shocking twist. I’m not going to spoil it here but I’ll just say, the script wanted to give the Chinatown ending a run for its money.
Now, did it all work?
Ehhhhh… that’s not easy to answer. I suppose I was mildly entertained throughout that second half of the script. But I’m not sure pure shock earns you a ‘worth the read.’ I needed a more. So, it’s by no means a hard ‘wasn’t for me.’ But it didn’t quite climb enough rungs to get to recommendable.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This is a great way to conceive of a concept. Take a known issue in society then extrapolate it to its extreme. So, if you have a mommy’s boy, make it the most inappropriate mother-son relationship ever. If you have a helicopter parent, make that parent so psycho that they’d kill to keep control over their kid. For an empty-nester, maybe they’ll do anything to lure their kids back to their home, lie, cheat, steal, kill. Something to consider for the Logline Showdown!
What I learned 2: Little details. Little details can be the difference between cliche and original. For example, I read more screenplays than you can possibly imagine with a miscarriage backstory. So that story choice has become cliche to me. But if you can add just one small differentiating detail, I won’t see it as cliche. That’s what Brewer did here. Tatum had a miscarriage but they were twins, not a single baby. It’s a small thing but it makes a difference. You know why? Because it shows that the writer is THINKING. They’re not going with the obvious. If a writer is constantly putting thought into their choices, their script usually ends up being good.
