Genre: Sports Drama/Comedy
Premise: Mickey Bradley, a wildly talented minor league baseball player in his early twenties who returns home to Los Angeles after an injury and coaches a little league team full of misfits who remind him why he fell in love with baseball in the first place. And there’s a sweet romance in there too.
About: This script comes out of 2020’s Black List. The writer, Ethan Dawes, wrote and directed a small indie film in 2013 called Go For Broke. He was also Carrie-Anne Moss’s assistant in The Matrix Resurrections. Random factoid that has nothing to do with today’s script – Moss just signed on to the new Star Wars show, The Acolyte!
Writer: Ethan Dawes
Details: 107 pages

MBJ for Mickey?

There are certain staples in the studio release cycle that will never die. The “Adult Has-Been Forced to Coach A Kid’s Sports Team” flick is one of those. The reason I bring that up is because, as a screenwriter, you wanna be strategic about what you write. You want to look for the types of scripts that fit into the slots that Hollywood likes making.

I read this old article that Scott posted in the comments yesterday about a struggling screenwriter who surprisingly sold his script, Showtime (that reality TV cop movie starring DeNiro and Murphy), and noticed something interesting within the article.

The script wasn’t the writer’s idea. Someone suggested it to him. He admits he never would’ve written an idea like Showtime otherwise. Afterwards, he tried to sell a script about a 15 year old kid who lived on a floating casino. It didn’t sell. After that, it took him 17 years to get another movie made. And that was another out-there idea – some sort of 70s period piece about Steve McQueen stealing money from a secret fund of Richard Nixon’s.

The only idea that seems to have done anything for this writer was one that someone else came up with. And say what you want about that move – Showtime – but it very much falls into a slot of movies that Hollywood loves to make. Buddy-cop movies. And it was a fairly inventive spin on the genre at the time. So I can see why it got made.

This is a long way of saying that we can get so obsessed by and blinded by our own ideas that we don’t ask the question – does Hollywood actually make the type of movie I’m writing? Cause if they don’t, you’re turning already bad odds into insurmountable odds.

We can make fun of how cliched today’s genre is. But at least this writer is playing to win. Whereas so many aspiring screenwriters are playing to lose.

Mickey is 13 years old pitching to win the Little League World Series when the Japanese team hits a home run off of him to win the game. 15 years later, 28 year old Mickey (hey, didn’t we just cover a Mickey in yesterday’s review??) is pitching in the minor leagues and tears his something-or-other muscle. He’s quickly dropped from the team.

Mickey heads back to the valley in Los Angeles to pick up the pieces and figure out what to do next. After a video goes viral of Mickey throwing a fit in the locker room after getting cut, his agent suggests that he rebuild his image by coaching the same little league team that he played on as a kid. Mickey figures, “why not?” only to learn that the team is now made up of almost entirely girls!

It’s a bit of “A League of Their Own” mixed with “Bad News Bears.” Mickey can’t see himself coaching a bunch of girls but he’s got to rehabilitate that image so he signs on. Naturally, all the girls are terrible (one of them likes singing in the outfield more than catching balls) except for the studly chick who hangs around the park and isn’t on the team… yet!

With a little help from his old catcher, Pickles, and the cute older sister of one of his players, Mickey will have to stop being so serious about the sport and learn how to have fun! If he can figure out that little life hack, he may finally realize that the real wins in life come on the inside, not the outside.

What can I say?

This was a really smart idea to write a script about.

Same old formula. But instead of a boys team, you make it a girls team. I don’t know if it’s possible to tailor something to 2020s Hollywood better than that! Dawes probably reserved his spot on the Black List months beforehand by alerting Franklin Leonard to what he was writing. “Boys bad, girls good!!??” Franklin responded. “You’re in!!”

That had to be how it happened, because if you actually read this script, you saw that nothing else changed. Minus the gender-swap, it’s the exact same Bad News Bears formula.

I don’t know how I feel about that. As someone who critiques screenwriting, I want more. I want originality. I want the writer to push themselves. As someone who closely monitors the business, however, I respect the hustle. The writer knows he doesn’t have to do anything extra here. He gave us the “different” in “the same but different” equation. Why stress yourself beyond that?

As for the writing overall, it was decent but not exceptional.

A reminder to Ethan and all screenwriters out there to be aware of the reader experience. Writers are often so in their heads, they’re not gauging how their writing is being received. If you’re too cavalier about this, you can leave confusing moments on the page. Or moments that cause the reader hiccups. Here’s an example. In this scene, Mickey gets fired from his minor league team…

Mickey says, “Im done?” So we know he’s being let go. The next line is, “A coach seat?” The first thing that I thought of, in that moment, was, “Oh, they’re asking him to retire as a player and become a coach.” Because what else would “coach” mean in this context? But then I realize, “Oh… he’s talking about a coach seat on the plane.”

I get it. You want to get the “coach seat” line in there to emphasize how little they value him. But if it’s going to confuse the reader or cause a hiccup, is it worth it? I say it isn’t.

Now it’s true that the parenthetical in there tells us to focus on the ticket, which helps stave off potential confusion. But here’s something that writers may not know: Readers are not reading your script like it’s some classic novel where they’re savoring every syllable like a fine wine. Their eyes are moving down the page fast.

Most readers don’t even read parentheticals. Not because they’re lazy. But because they’ve read so many scripts in the past where writers use parentheticals superfluously. They don’t tell us anything we don’t already know. So we skip them.

Just watch out for that stuff.

To show you that I’m not picking sides here, soon after that scene, Mickey flies back to Los Angeles. The writer uses 3 lines – just 3 lines – to create one of the clearest characters I’ve read all month. Here’s that moment in the script.

By far, the best way to create a strong and clear character is through a strong and clear introduction. Tell me you don’t know exactly who Mickey’s mother is after this scene. Any mom who will show up at the airport for her son, after he’s been let go, and bring a sign with her that highlights how great she thinks he is? That’s the most supportive mom ever. So we immediately know she’s a great mom and that these two have a great relationship. IN JUST 3 LINES!!!

That’s awesome writing!

But let’s be real. This concept, while marketable, is so susceptible to cliche that even when you swap in an entirely different gender, it still feels dated and predictable. Maybe if Mickey had been a more interesting character, it might’ve worked. But he’s pretty generic.

Ted Lasso has really raised the bar for sports comedy. And Here Come The Bandits couldn’t reach that bar if all its players stood on top of each other.

This script didn’t have anything beyond the smart marketing strategy.

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

What I learned: Weird ideas (like 15 year olds living on fictional floating gambling islands) should be treated experimentally, not as legitimate attempts to make it in the business. Don’t spend too much time on these scripts. Accept that they will probably only be used as writing samples. If you have that attitude, you’ll be fine. But don’t spend an entire year writing a period piece about Steve McQueen trying to steal money from a secret presidential fund that only exists in your mind. It’s not an efficient way to spend your time as a screenwriter and is only going to lead to frustration. Spend the bulk of your time writing movies THAT HOLLYWOOD ACTUALLY MAKES.  Today’s script is an example of one of those movies.

Logline Rewrite: The logline I included at the top of the review comes from the Black List and was likely written by a first-time manager. Here’s what the logline should’ve been — After a devastating injury, a tough traditional-minded baseball player returns home to coach his former little league team, only to find out that it’s become an all-girls squad.

Get a logline consultation for $25. It includes a 1-10 rating, a 150-200 word analysis, and a logline rewrite. Improve your logline from that awful version at the beginning of this review, to the one I just wrote above. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com (5-pack of logline consults for $75!)

Oh Mickey you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, hey Mickey 7!!

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: Set in the future on a mining colony, an “expendable” named Mickey 7 – someone built to die over and over again on dangerous missions, their mind re-uploaded to their cloned successor – is erroneously assumed dead, and comes home to find out they’ve already created his replacement, Mickey 8.
About: I always pay attention to what an actor, at his hottest point, chooses for his next project. Because when you’re at your hottest point, you’re being offered the best roles in Hollywood. So whatever you choose in that moment tells us writers something about what actors are looking for. At Robert Pattinson’s peak of stardom – as he played the Batman, which was in theaters at the time – he announced that this would be his next project.  Parasite’s Bong Joon Ho is directing.
Writer: Edward Ashton
Details: 280 pages

One of the paradoxes present in my life is that I love sci-fi yet dislike so many sci-fi movies I’ve seen lately.

Moonfall, Tenet, The Tomorrow War, Dune, Reminiscence, The Adam Project, Interstellar, Infinite, Life, Blade Runner 2049.

Where the good stuff at?

What I like in a sci-fi script is rich mythology and a good story that moves along at a brisk pace. A good example would be The Martian.

Some of you are probably angry that I’m including “Dune” in movies I don’t like. Dune is the perfect example, for me, of a movie that only gets it half right. It has a rich mythology. But it slogs along at a glacial pace. Then you have something like The Adam Project. That movie moves along at a brisk pace but has some of the weakest mythology this side of Battlefield Earth.

I need both.

Let’s see how today’s novel fares. And whether it will make a stellar movie or not.

Mickey 7 is an “expendable.” He lives in a colony on a planet far away, with about 200 people on it. Mickey has a unique job. He goes out on dangerous missions – usually to suss out whether giant worm-like “creepers” are threatening the base – to die. His deaths give the colony data they can use to stay safer.

As soon as he dies, his backup consciousness is uploaded into a new cloned version of him. So Mickey never truly dies. When we meet Mickey, he’s dropped into a new area and falls through the ice into an underground cavern where a giant worm-like “creeper” sizes him up. Mickey calls base, says he’s about to die, and then waits for the end to come.

But when the worm doesn’t eat him, he finds his way back to the surface and back to base. Except, now, Mickey 8 is in his room. Mickey 7 and Mickey 8 quickly discover that they don’t want to kill each other. So they’re going to try to live together. Which is going to be hard because the base recently instituted a 2000 calorie limit for everyone due to a slow-down in food production. That means each Mickey only gets 1000 calories a day.

In addition to this, our Mickey twins are going to have to fool Mickey’s girlfriend, flight commander Nasha, and Mickey’s best friend, pilot Berto. If they can do that, maybe they can make this “two Mickeys are better than one Mickey” plan work. But when the super angry base commander gets word that something is up, the Mickeys will need to accelerate a plan for figuring out the true purpose of Mickey.

Back in the day, there was this trick literary agents used to use in order to sell scripts. They would send a script off to several buyers at once, let each buyer know that other buyers were reading, which would result in studios quickly reading through the first act to see if they had a movie here, then bidding before they reached the second act, just to beat the competition to the punch.

This is what allowed so many bad scripts to get purchased. When you write a high concept script, the first act is the easiest part. You just introduce your cool concept and you don’t have to prove that it can result in a good movie because the studio doesn’t even get to the second act.

This trend of novels becoming the new spec scripts has a similar con in play. Nobody has time to read anything. Nor does anybody in Hollywood like to read. Agents know this. So they send these books out knowing that nobody is going to read more than 30 pages because doing so would take up 8 hours of their day.

So buyers read the first 30 pages, and if they like the setup, they buy the property. Which has to be how this book got through the system. Because if anybody read the last 200 pages of this, they would not have purchased it. It’s not that it’s bad. But it fails at its primary goal – which is to exploit its concept.

This movie is built around the idea that a guy comes back to find that they’ve already created a new copy of him. Two living copies is illegal. They’re not allowed to exist. That’s our setup. So how does our author explore this dilemma?

One of the copies ends up taking a lot of naps.

No. I’m serious.

This is how the author explores the idea. By ignoring it. He keeps Mickey 8 back in the room so that Mickey 7 can go walk around the base.

The only way this premise works is if we’re scared for Mickey 7. That being discovered would mean instant termination. Yet we’re never once scared for Mickey 7. There are veiled insinuations that bad things might happen if they’re caught. But they’re all so vague, we’re not even kind of worried for Mickey.

What’s frustrating about Mickey 7 is that there are some intriguing ideas being explored in the book. This ongoing question of, is Mickey 8 still Mickey 7, and is Mickey 7 still Mickey 6, going all the way back to Mickey 1? That’s a cool question to think about.

It’s the same concept Christopher Nolan explored in The Prestige, I believe. If you’re immediately uploaded to a new body when you die, did the last version of you die or did you really get transferred?

I liked how this script played with that idea when Mickey 7 discovers Mickey 8. Before this, Mickey 7 was okay with dying because he’d still be alive once his new clone was created. But his new clone – Mickey 8 – has already been birthed. So this person in front of him was already developing his own life and, therefore, wouldn’t be Mickey 7, if Mickey 7 were to voluntarily die.

The book also explores some really interesting backstory stuff about other colonies that went haywire. For example, there was another colony where everybody died except for the expendable and, to make up for it, the expendable kept recreating himself until there were 200 expendables in the colony and no real people. There were several backstories like that that got your noggin thinking.

However, these previous stories were bittersweet to read as they were all a lot more interesting than what was happening in our story, which amounted to, “I’m going to nap for a while, then I want to come out and get some food.”

This was a writing lesson I learned way too late in life. If your characters are talking about things that happened to them (or situations that mirror their lives), and those things are more interesting than the story you’re actually telling? You should probably consider ditching your current draft and writing one of *those* stories. I would’ve loved to have read the version of this where the expendable keeps replicating himself until he takes over the entire base.

If I were this writer, I would’ve sat down and asked myself, how can I exploit this idea as much as possible? For example, there was a brief moment, towards the middle of the book, where I thought Ashton had done something brilliant. I thought that he was actually slipping in and out of Mickey 7 and Mickey 8’s POV and telling the story through their points-of-view without telling us that he’d switched. And we were going to be tasked with trying to figure who was who. Cause they both think they’re Mickey, right? So it would stand to make sense that when telling this story, they both sound the same. And it’s up to us to decipher what’s going on.

Instead, we get this very straight-forward execution that amounts to Nap-Gate and a Tremors ripoff.

Why, then, did Robert Pattinson sign on to this project? That answer is in the What I Learned section below!

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

What I learned: With this novel being only okay, it leaves me to conclude that there was only one reason why Pattison signed onto it. He signed on for the same reason so many actors before him have taken these types of roles – because he gets to play two different people. It seems almost too easy of a strategy as a screenwriter. But if you want to grab that big-name actor, write a dual role screenplay. It’s one of the most effective strategies in the book.

What’s that old saying?

You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone?

No. That’s not it.

The grass is always greener on the other side?

Maybe.

I’m trying to say something about why Black Adam didn’t do well at the box office.

There have been a lot of critiques of superhero movies as of late. They say that they all feel the same. They’re all lowest-common denominator entertainment. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.

While there are definitely issues with Marvel and DC movies, sometimes it takes a superhero flick outside of that space to help you realize just how much better those movies are. While technically part of the DC universe, Black Adam is its own thing. And it’s so generic that nobody went to see it.

This has surprised no one except for the film’s creators.

How did they get it wrong?

We always say that the key to a successful idea is to make one tweak to the formula. Give us “the same but different.” If you spoke to The Rock or anyone working on this film, they would’ve proudly said that’s exactly what Black Adam did. The title character is a superhero who kills people. He’s not all good. That’s what makes him and this movie different!

For this reason, we should all be running out to theaters to watch this film because it’s a unique twist on the superhero formula.

But we aren’t.

Why?

In my newsletter (e-mail carsonreeves1@gmail.com to get on), I talked about the importance of telling the TRUTH as a screenwriter. If you lie to the reader, they’re done with you. Cause if the reader can’t trust that what you’re saying is real, why would they continue to subject themselves to more lies?

The Rock tells us, in the trailer, that he kills people. That he’s not good. But does anybody watching the trailer truly believe that? Do they believe that he’s bad? Not a chance.

First of all, if you were really bad, your movie wouldn’t be rated a safe and cozy PG-13. And, if you were really bad, you wouldn’t have cast The Rock in the lead role. Everybody knows that the Rock has an image to uphold. They all know that he’ll never do anything that bad. So we all know you’re lying to us.

Right there, you’re done. You’re done before we even got to the theater because we know you’re lying. If you were serious about what Black Adam was saying, you would’ve cast Tom Hardy, Christian Bale, Idris Elba, or Michael B. Jordan. You wouldn’t have cast the sweetest most caring guy in Hollywood who actively cultivates a family-friendly brand. You would’ve given the movie an R-rating. You would’ve given us a much darker film, which we would’ve seen in the trailer.

We all know The Rock is going to be The Rock in this film. So the only thing you could claim as different in your movie, you neutralized with the casting. Maybe this is for the better. With James Gunn taking over DC, you get the feeling that he’s going to make a lot more Suicide Squad type movies and a lot less Black Adams.

Yet another high profile piece of fiction was also shown the exit door recently. Westworld got canceled at HBO. I hear a few people complaining about this online. How could you cancel Westworld? Pretty simple. It originally had 12 million viewers an episode. Now it has 4 million.

Maybe you can rationalize that drop with a White Lotus budget. But you can’t rationalize it with a Westworld budget.

Look, I’ve said this a dozen times already. You could see Westworld falling apart mid first season. You could see that they didn’t really understand their mythology. And every episode since then has shown the mythology getting sloppier and sloppier.

It’s the same deal as the Rock telling you he’s a bad guy. We know you’re lying. We know, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, that you don’t really understand this world. And I’m not saying world-building is easy to do. It’s painstaking to flesh out mythology that can support 6-8 seasons of television.

Which is why I tell writers, you gotta do the hard work and figure this stuff out ahead of time instead of putting it off. Cause readers have a sixth sense. They can feel when you’re trying to figure things out on the fly.

One of the reasons the original Star Wars trilogy was so good was because George Lucas’s first Star Wars screenplay was 200+ pages and included all three movies. It wasn’t until people kept pestering him to cut the script down that he finally focused on just the Death Star storyline and took the Emperor stuff out.

Therefore, when it was time to make a Star Wars sequel, he already knew all the mythology surrounding that sequel because he’d written it into the original script.

Naturally, we saw what happened when Lucasfilm took the opposite approach in the most recent trilogy. They tried to figure it out on the fly and that resulted in bizarre moments such as Rey being a Palpatine, Han Solo coming back as a Force ghost, and Snoke being some sort of test tube clone.

You don’t want to f**k with mythology, guys. It’s unforgiving, particularly later in your story when your world and rule-set have to be airtight. And just to reitnerate. You can’t fool the reader. If you’re shaky on some rule or some piece of your mythology, I guarantee you the reader will feel it.

Since it’s been light offerings at the movies, I’ve been looking for films to watch at home and have been frustrated with the options. I know some of you are gung-ho about Terrifier 2 but I suspect that the only terrifying that would happen if I saw that film is how terrified I would be to admit it.

By the way, looking for films to watch is impossible in 2022. Rotten Tomatoes is hit-or-miss. Sometimes I’ll use “Decider.com.” But there’s no place I can just go and they give me three great suggestions. And even after 20 minutes of intensive research, there are always movies that these supplementary sites miss. So since you don’t have any confidence that they’re giving you all the films, you stop going to them.

I mean, did you know there was a film out with Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hawke – two great actors! I didn’t. But apparently there is! And it just came out this month! There’s a movie, Causeway, starring an Oscar winner, that just came out. No one’s aware it exists. There’s a movie from the former head of Pixar, the guy who invented Toy Story no less, called “Luck.” Nobody knows about it.

There’s a war movie called “All Quiet on the Western Front” that just came out a week ago. Nobody’s seen it! Just four years ago, every war movie that came out would get a giant marketing push. This one debuted with a whimper. Like a lot of content these days, I have no idea it’s out until it shows up on my Netflix home screen.

You have a film from a filmmaker WHO JUST WON AN OSCAR (for his movie “Green Book”) called “The Greatest Beer Run Ever.” You could take a bullhorn to the intersection of Hollywood and Highland and ask if anyone knows about the film. They’d all tell you they have no idea what you’re talking about.

Granted, some of these movies aren’t good or aren’t made for broad appeal. But you’ve got stuff like 13 Lives, which is a great movie on Amazon Prime, that is just sitting there in digital obscurity. You’d have to look for it to find it. But since no one knows it exists, you don’t even know to look for it in the first place!

This is a growing trend and something I’m worried about. I suspect that the years of 2019 to 2026 or 7 are going to be known as the Graveyard Streaming Years in Hollywood. All of this content is being made that immediately disappears. Is that not devastating?

There’s a show right now called Shantaram, which is based on a novel that sold six million copies. It’s got a legit lead actor in Charlie Hunnam. And it’s got insane production value, as it’s shot on location in Mumbai. Five years ago, this show would’ve had an insane marketing campaign. There would be so much awareness of it. Yet nobody seems interested in letting you know the show exists. Including Apple, who made it!

Lou, Blonde, Day Shift, Senior Year, Rosaline, a Fletch movie, Outer Range, Tokyo Vice, The Sandman, Maid, Black Summer. These are only recent shows or movies that have come out and that you’ve never seen because nobody’s told you they exist. They have been banished to digital purgatory. It’s more terrifying than Terrifier 2.

I almost feel like there should be an entertainment version of the SEC that makes sure that films and shows get a minimum amount of exposure so that people know they exist because it doesn’t make sense to spend 100 million on something and let it die on a below-the-fold 4th line of suggestions on your streamer’s home screen.

We shouldn’t be feeling like we’re all missing stuff just because it’s not being marketed properly. I don’t know if anybody else feels this way but I certainly do.

The good news is, we’ve got a big one next week. In fact, we’ve got tons of big movies coming our way. This is one of the best times of the year for film buffs. I’m curious how they’re going to balance emotion with entertainment in Black Panther 2. If they go too heavy on Boseman’s death, the movie might be a sad experience. I still want to have fun here. But this film is coming at just the right time. We need something big that everyone is talking about. Those releases unify the movie-going public. I’ll definitely be reviewing it Monday.

In the meantime, what the heck should I watch???

And it’s a good one!

I stumbled upon a giant SHOCKING screenwriting lie that was sold to the world back in 2017. I find a freaking new SCRIPTSHADOW TOP 25 SCRIPT! When was the last time I found one of those?? And I include a download link so you can read it yourself. I talk about the writing in House of the Dragon versus She-Hulk. Ted Lasso, Ant-Man, James Cameron, Sydney Sweeney, and the next writer of Secret Wars all make an appearance as well.

If you’re not signed up for the newsletter, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and I’ll send it over!

P.S. – Don’t forget to e-mail me if you want a script or logline consultation.  $100 off if you mention this post!!! (carsonreeves1@gmail.com)

Why do Ryan Coogler and James Cameron get to write mega-scripts while you’re obnoxiously constrained by the script-length Gods?

We are about to be hit with two of the longest studio releases of the decade. We’ve got Black Panther 2, clocking in at over 2 hours and 45 minutes. And we’ve got Avatar 2, which is somewhere north of 3 hours.

This got me thinking about the age old question of script length. When I first got into screenwriting, I was told (and promptly ignored) that your script should never extend beyond 120 pages. As time went on, that number dropped to 110 pages.

Despite this unofficial or official (depending on who you talk to) page rubicon, the newbie screenwriter receives mixed messages every time they go to the theater. They’re told their scripts have to be 110 pages as they watch Avengers Endgame arrogantly clock in at 150 pages. How does a young and confused newbie screenwriter reconcile this?

Over time, I’ve learned that the script length question is a nuanced one. There are certain genres that have low page counts and other genres that have high page counts. There are also additional variables that affect page length, all of which make up a complicated picture, one that seems to change depending on which angle you view it from.

But the basic equation works like this…

Character Count + Location Count + Plot Complexity = Page Count

Less characters = less characters to develop = less pages

Less locations = less situations to set up = less pages

Simple plots = less explaining = less pages

The horror movie I reviewed at the beginning of the month, Deadstream, about a single character live-streaming inside a haunted house… that movie was 90 minutes long. And, for those who don’t know, one page of screenplay equals one minute of screen time (this is why screenplays are written in that weird spaced out manner – to match out page time to screen time).  So 90 pages is usually where you’re going to be when writing a 1-3 character movie in 1-3 locations.

If you prefer to write non-contained thrillers, you’re going to need more page space. The word “thrill” implies a fast pace which means you’re still keeping the page count low. But these movies have a few more locations and characters, which should put them closer to 100 pages.

“Taken” is a good example of this. Tiny character count (only two main characters – the father and the daughter). Our hero is constantly on the move. Final page count for the script: 101 pages.

If you move over to comedies, these tend to work best in the 105-110 page range. Like thrillers, they need to move fast. And since most comedy plots are bare bones, you don’t need to spend a lot of time plotting. Even the slightly complicated storyline of The Hangover didn’t affect the page count that much, as the screenplay came in at 111 pages.

When you move up to action or action thrillers (Bond, Fast and Furious, Mission Impossible), now you’re tempting the page count Gods, moving closer to that most evil of script overseers: PAGE 120. This is because you’re visiting more locations, which requires more setup, as well as more explanation. And managing any plot big enough that we’re jumping to entirely different cities requires more time on the page. So these scripts will hover around that 120 page zone.

When you add sci-fi or fantasy into that mix, you really start struggling to keep the page count under 120. That’s because in addition to everything else you’re doing, you’re also adding mythology to the recipe. You need scenes that show how your world works (The Matrix spent 25 pages setting up the rules of its world). You also need more description than your average script because you have to explain all this stuff you’ve invented in your imagination. This can really bulk scripts up.

In general, however, the two things that have the biggest influence on your page count are your character count and your plot complexity.

It takes time to adequately set up a character. You need to show who they are in their everyday life. You need to show us what their job entails. You need to establish their relationships with other people. You need to introduce their flaw. That takes time.

If you then have two major characters – or three, or four – you can see how that could start chewing up page space. Cause you have to do the exact same thing for all those characters. This is why movies like Black Panther 2 and Avatar 2 are so long. They’re not only covering Black Panther and Jake. They’re covering the lives of the many many people around them. Like that Ironheart girl (the Iron Man offshoot). She’s going to need 10 pages of setup easy. That’s a lot of pages!

Also, to be clear, when I talk about character count, I’m talking about legit characters who have major roles. I’m not talking about the waitress or some loser who comes in for one scene to provide exposition. I’m talking about characters who have at least five scenes in your movie. The more of those characters you have in your script, the more pages you better prepare for.

The other thing that adds a lot of pages is plot. But it’s not just the plotting itself that brings your page count up. The more complex the plot, the more extensive the exposition. It requires more scenes with characters explaining things to other characters: what’s going on, what they’re after, where it is, how they’re going to get it. And that information is constantly changing, which requires another set of extensive exposition scenes.  Watch an Avengers movie and track how often characters talk about what they need to do and how they’re gong to do it.  It’s a lot!

Complexity of plot = more exposition, and more exposition is a page-eater. Your Fast and Furious crew discussing how they’re going to break into the White House could take up 5 pages easily.

Bringing this back to Black Panther 2 and Avatar 2: Both these movies have extremely extensive plots and tons of characters. I’m amazed that they’re able to keep the scripts under 300 pages with how much territory they cover.

The question then is, why aren’t we allowed to do that in our scripts? This question requires a multi-faceted answer that I don’t have the time to get into. But the bullet points are, you’re writing a script to win a reader over. Ryan Coogler is making a movie to win over an audience. Two completely different scenarios. Look no further than the exit point options for each. Once Ryan Coogler has you at his movie, you’re stuck there. A reader, however, can stop reading your script the second they get bored. And if they’re wavering on page ten and see that they still have 120 pages to go, believe me, they’re going to give up on your script.

But the more nuanced answer is that you *are* allowed to write long scripts. You just need to know all the dramatic tricks in the book to suspend time. One of the reasons Titanic could be 3 hours and 14 minutes is because James Cameron is a master at suspending time. His entire story is built around dramatic irony (we know the iceberg is coming and the characters do not) which creates a strong line of both anticipation and suspense, each of which help us forget time. And that’s just one of the many tricks he uses.

If you know how to do that, then, theoretically, you can write a 300 page screenplay. I’m being serious. If you know how to make time go away in the reader’s head, they won’t check the page length. Cause they won’t want your story to end.

Unfortunately, this is a really hard thing to do. The best authors on the planet struggle to do it every time they sit down and write a book. So it’s going to be extra hard for anyone without a lot of writing experience.

And that’s where the real problems with page count lie. The people who usually write the longest screenplays are the newbies who know the least about screenwriting. They are in that wonderfully ignorant stage where they believe everything they write is gold. But it isn’t gold. It’s trash. Which means that readers are conditioned to think that any long script from another amateur will also be trash. Which is unfair, I guess. But, guess what? Life is unfair.

To summarize, your script’s length will be determined by the genre, concept, and content. More characters equals more pages. More intricate plots equals more pages. So watch out for both. The more you have to explain and describe (think sci-fi and fantasy), the more pages you’re gong to add. Use this information to make informed decisions about which scripts to write.

I’m not saying don’t write a long script. Some stories require more time. But you do want to be realistic and understand that the industry isn’t accepting of longer screenplays from unproven talent. So, if you’re going to write one, make sure you have a plan for distilling and eliminating time to such an extent that the reader never thinks about the page length while reading. They’re too busy enjoying your story.

Good luck!

P.S. – Newsletter coming to your Inboxes tomorrow night with an AWESOME(!!!) script that seems to have been forgotten by time.  Oh, and don’t forget to e-mail me if you want a script or logline consultation.  $100 off if you mention this article!!! (carsonreeves1@gmail.com)