Did another franchise just bite the dust? Combined with the WB-Discovery merger, does this mean even MORE superhero movies?

Don’t worry all you muggles.

I’m not here to bash your favorite franchise for its poor showing at the box office (Fantastic Beasts = $43 million). But it appears that this latest Dumbledore excursion was more like a Dumble-BORE.

I shall instead use this as a teaching moment.  Writing good movies is a backbreaking endeavor that even Professor Minerva McGnagall would have trouble enduring. When you have seven 500 page books to mine stories from, chances are they’re going to be good. But if you’re trying to mine the same number of stories from a single 120 page book…. Well, I’m sorry, but it’s probably going to go the way of Avada Kedavra.

Let us remember that the primary reason book adaptations tend to do well is that the screenwriter has so much to draw from. Once you throw out that formula, expect bad things to happen.

It’s why I like to remind writers that a spec screenplay is drawn from nothing. You are conjuring up words, characters, mythology, and backstory from a giant bottle of bupkis. It’s why I encourage you to learn as much about your world and characters as possible before you write because how are you going to compete with someone who has an endless slew of character backstories when all you know about your main character is that he’s kind of a jerk?

WB’s meteolojinxian misfire comes on the heels of the company merging with Discovery, who promises to reevaluate the movie catalogue at the company, including DC. I have to say, apropos of nothing, that I’m confused how the company built off of 90 Day Fiance has more sway than an iconic 100 year old movie studio. Do we really live in a world where Big Ed is a bigger deal than The Joker? Either way, Discovery has implied more ‘shared universe’ stuff is ahead for DC, and less muggles and snuffledores.

Join me in campaigning WB-Discovery for a Big Ed – Joker crossover!

I’m 100% in agreement with this approach. I’ve always found DC’s strategy of making random unrelated superhero films to be bizarre. I know their initial attempts at a shared universe failed. But that had less to do with it being a bad idea than it did with putting Zack Snyder in charge. If I need a dreamy CGI backdrop to a badly written movie, I’ll go to Snyder. If I need vision, scope, and a plan??? I have about 700 people in Hollywood I’m calling before him.

One of the properties Discovery is so miffed about is Superman. He’s the most popular superhero ever and they don’t even have him in the production rotation. On the surface, they’re correct. You’d think Superman would be the centerpiece of any comic book movie plan.

But the deeper you delve into the character, the trickier you realize he is. For a screenwriter, the most compelling Superman story is his origin story, cause it’s so fun. But everyone knows that story so you can’t make a movie of it. The next most compelling story is the “Death of Superman.” And they tried to do that to middling results. Snyder also tried to turn him into a tougher darker “Batman” like character. But that didn’t work because it wasn’t Superman. So what do you have left? I honestly don’t know. You need someone with a crazy cool take and there aren’t many people out there who are capable of coming up with that take. Maybe Christopher Nolan? Taika Waititi? JJ Abrams. Problem is, everyone wants these guys. So good luck getting them. Speaking of, I’d like to see a Daniels’ Superman, lol. How awesome would that be?

I want to know what’s going on with JJ. WB snatched him up for giganto money and we haven’t heard a peep from him since. Did they lock him inside a mystery box in the Warner Brothers basement?

He was supposed to shepherd the promising sounding “Justice League Dark” line of characters, which includes Constantine, Swamp Thing, Pandora, and the Phantom Stranger. Newer, fresher, superhero characters who could provide a jolt to the stagnant DC slate. Alas, we are yet to see these characters materialize.

I suspect JJ is still traumatized after Rise of Skywalker, his last film. I was able to get some inside information that JJ was devastated by the final cut of “Rise,” which included numerous things that he did not approve of. I think that experience has made him gun-shy to direct again. So I’ll make my personal plea to JJ here. JJ! You know I love you! Come back! Make movies again!

In the meantime, I’m trying to find something, ANYTHING, to watch. Severance (Apple TV) is good yet I’m not sure the central mystery is powerful enough to get me to the finish line. I stopped watching during episode 3, figuring I’d get back to it soon, but never did.

I like the mood and tone of this new show, Outer Range, on Prime. But I’m not convinced cowboys and aliens are a good marriage. The most interesting thing about this show is how similar it looks to Jordan Peele’s “Nope,” another alien-cowboy hybrid. It never ceases to amaze me how even the most original ideas aren’t as original as you think. Everybody’s drawing inspiration from the same stew. That’s why whenever someone claims somebody stole their idea, I roll my eyes. Nope. You’re just not as original as you thought.

Moon Knight is another show I started but haven’t gotten back to. I’m realizing with these ‘event’ shows, there’s a formula. They spend a ton of money on the pilot episode then have no money left over for the second episode. Moon Knight’s second episode is one scene after another of two people talking in a room. My interest dove from an 8 out of 10 (the pilot) to a 3 out of 10 (second episode). And I haven’t been able muster up the energy to get back to it.

That’s a weird thing to say: I find it hard to press a remote control button to enjoy a FREE high production value TV show. But this is the entertainment environment of 2022, a sort of “TV FOMO” where there are so many shows that whenever you watch one, you figure you’re missing out on another. Or, at the very least, there’s gotta be some other show that’s better than the one you’re watching, right? That’s been my experience lately. I keep thinking, “I vaguely remember there’s some show I should be watching. Where is it again?” That thought alone can get me to turn off the current episode of Moon Knight, Severance, or Outer Range.

I checked out feature film, “After Yang,” on Showtime Streaming. As most of you know, I’m a huge Kogonada fan, who directed one of my favorite movies from 2017, Columbus. I also love his directing story. He was a film critic for years and decided, in his 50s, to start directing himself. It’s a reminder that it’s never too late to give this career a shot!

Unfortunately, After Yang is storyless. There’s no screenplay here. After starting out with an amazing visual of several families dancing to a networked video game workout, the movie never identifies any sort of driving narrative. There is a goal – a family’s android helper breaks down and they try to fix it – but the stakes are below sea level. You never get the sense that it’s that important they fix Yang. And the casualness with which the father character, Jake, goes about the journey, gives the story a laissez-faire attitude that, quite frankly, puts you to sleep.

While Kogonada thrives with slower-paced deliberate material – that’s what was so great about Columbus – this story is begging for more urgency and importance. The implications of why the family’s android conked out appear to be large. So nobody caring all that much whether they fix him or not creates a confusing message.

I’m not giving up on Kogonada, though! He directed four episodes of the Apple TV series, Pachinko, which chronicles the hopes of a Korean immigrant family across four generations. Did I just say I was gonna watch a period Korean drama? Hell yeah I did. Only fellow members of the Kokonuts fan club understand what I’m talking about. Kokonuts, unite!

I was going to see Everything Everywhere All at Once this weekend but I came down with a cold and didn’t want to be a cold superspreader. Even if I was okay, though, I still would’ve huffed and puffed at spending 20 bucks on this film. As much as I admire A24 for bucking all logic and refusing to cater to the new demands of the industry, it’s hard for me to justify seeing an independent film in the theater these days. I love the Daniels. And the movie’s doing pretty decent so far ($17 million total). But I wish they would’ve premiered this on a streamer and spent a ton of money promoting it as a big event. It’s got streamer written all over it.

It may sound like I have no hope for the future of entertainment but that would be incorrect. My hope rests with YOU! More specifically, your first acts. My First Act Contest deadline is just two weeks away (May 1). So keep sending those entries in!  Also, if you need help on your logline, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line “CONSULTATION.”  Logline consults are just $25!

THE FIRST ACT CONTEST

I need your title, genre, logline, anything you want me to know about the script, and, of course, a PDF of your first act. You want to send these to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the subject line “FIRST ACT CONTEST.” The contest is 100% free.

What: The first act of your screenplay
Deadline: May 1st, 11:59 PM Pacific Time
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Include: title, genre, logline, extra info, a pdf of the act.
Cost: Free!

Is your screenwriting career stuck on pause? Let me help you un-pause it.

One of the hardest things about screenwriting is the solitary aspect of it. It’s the long hours you spend alone working on something when you have no idea whether it’s going to connect with people or not. This feeling of loneliness and frustration builds every time you write a script that doesn’t go anywhere. You begin to get bitter. You become convinced the system is rigged. And, tragically, you lose all motivation to write. Or at least write consistently.

I was just chatting with a writer over e-mail about this yesterday. He said he was in a really bad spot screenwriting-wise and didn’t have any motivation to write. Then he finished as one of the finalists in The Last Great Screenwriting Contest and that was the shot in the arm he needed. His latest script just got him a meeting at, arguably, the hottest action production company in town. That’s what this business is.  It’s highs and it’s lows. But you have to weather the lows to get to the highs and not everybody can. Well, today, I’m going to give you ten things you can do to reignite your passion for screenwriting and get your career moving in the right direction again. All you have to do is pick one of these things, do it, and I promise you, you’re going be excited to write again.

Take Three Months Off To Study Your Biggest Weakness – Sometimes we just need to take the pressure off. Pushing out pages can be difficult when you’ve lost confidence in yourself. So why not kill two birds with one stone? First, stop writing. And second, identify what it is you’re weakest at and spend a quarter of the year studying and getting better at it. We all have that thing we suck at. For some of us, it’s dialogue. For others, it’s structure. Some of us, theme. Others, character. Create a three-month course for yourself where you study the hell out of that weakness. For example, if it’s dialogue, google 30 articles about dialogue. Watch ten dialogue-driven movies. Read twenty dialogue-driven scripts. Take meticulous notes on why the dialogue is good in these movies and compare it to your dialogue. What are they doing that you’re not? Then, when you’re all finished, write a script that specifically features your weakness and use all your newfound knowledge to write it. I guarantee you’ll find it fun because you’ll have all these new tools and concepts to play with.

Try a new genre – We’ve all heard the advice, “Get out of your comfort zone.” We know we should do it yet we never do. Why in the world would I want to be uncomfortable? Well, I don’t have to tell you that the only way to grow in an area is to place yourself in situations you’re not completely comfortable in. You’ll hear actors say this all the time. “I took this role because it scared me.” Sure, under normal circumstances, you’d like to work within the genres you’re confident in. But we’re trying to jumpstart you, get you excited about screenwriting again. With that in mind, why not try a genre you’ve never written in before? One of the unique benefits of doing this is that you’ll probably bring something fresh to the genre because you’re not beholden to it. Since it’s a one-off, you’ll have no issues breaking all the rules. Which, ironically, is going to be what makes the script so unique and fun.

Write with a partner – I know that a lot of screenwriters are particular about the way they work. They like their little routines. They don’t want anyone breathing down their neck or challenging their choices. But there’s something about writing with a partner that can really energize you. You’re more accountable now, which means you’ll write more. You learn from the other person, since they’ll have a different style than you do. And when you find someone you click with, there’s nothing like it. You’ll find that writing is fun again. And remember, you’re just working on one script together. It’s not like this person is now your wife and will be with you for the rest of your screenwriting life. You’re just trying one script with a co-writer. You might be surprised and how much it gets your juices flowing. Feel free to look for partners in the comments section below. I suggest you trade info through e-mail about how many scripts you’ve written and where you are in your careers as these pairings tend to work best when the writers are at a similar level.

Shift over into a different form of art – One of the tips I was going to give today was to quit for six months. But the more I thought about that tip, the less I liked it. I suppose it’s an option to just get away from something for awhile. But then I realized there’s a way to do this without completely abandoning screenwriting. Just slide over into an adjacent art form for six months. The one I would prefer you try is filmmaking. Specifically, make a short film on your iphone. You will definitely learn something new about screenwriting in the process. And if you like it, you become a double-threat, as you can now direct your own screenplays. But if you don’t like filmmaking, write a song. Paint. Sing. Draw. Become an amateur photographer. Do something in the arts, as I’ve found that there’s always a carryover effect where you learn something from that experience that helps you back in screenwriting. And the time off will also get you excited to write again.

Become a contest jockey for a year – A lot of writers avoid contests because they’re so subjective. And I get that. But that’s not what this advice is about. One of the issues with screenwriting is that, unless you’re a working writer, there are no deadlines. This creates a lackadaisical approach to writing where you only write “when you feel like it.” By entering 3 to 4 contests, you’ll find that you’re accountable and, therefore, forced to write. The bonus with this is that you have that possibility that your script will do well. So it gives you more motivation. If you’re wondering what contests are worth entering, people in the comments section will be happy to tell you. You can start by entering my FREE First Act Contest. Send me your title, genre, logline, anything else you want me to know, and a PDF of your first act to carsonreeves3@gmail.com by May 1, 11:59 pm Pacific Time.

Get a consultation – Am I pimping my own services? Hell yes. But I wouldn’t pimp my services unless I knew for sure it would help you. A lot of times as writers we get stuck in our heads for so long that we lose perspective. This can happen with individual scripts and it can happen with long stretches of your screenwriting career. You don’t really know what’s working anymore because how would you? You’ve only experienced rejection with little to no feedback on what you’re doing wrong. The great thing about a consultation is that you hear all those things that you knew somewhere deep in the back of your mind already, but just weren’t ready to accept. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard that after a consult. “Deep down I knew this, Carson. But you helped me realize it’s a legitimate problem and I need to fix it.” You’ve invested years in screenwriting. Investing a little money to get a huge pick-me-up seems like a no-brainer (e-mail “CONSULTATION” to carsonreeves1@gmail.com).

Do sh#t – A few years back, I traveled to Prague for a couple of weeks, and I was more energized after that trip than at any point in my life in the last decade. Being around a new culture, experiencing new things, meeting new people, getting outside my comfort zone, it just gave me this fervor for life that had been missing. As writers, it’s important that we experience new things consistently because that’s where we draw our inspiration from. You can’t solely be inspired by movies and TV. You just can’t. Now I know not everyone can afford to travel. But that doesn’t get you off the hook. Go to bars you’d never go to. Visit a nearby town you’ve never been to. If you’re an atheist, go to a church service. Look up all the events in your city, close your eyes, spin your finger around, and whatever event it lands on, go to it. There’s nothing like the inspiration that comes from doing new things. All artists must do this.

Drop that script that’s making you miserable – You know exactly what I’m talking about. You’ve been working on this script for longer than you can remember. The script is big and complex and therefore needs a ton of rewriting, and you think if you can just redefine this one character and make the second act move a little faster and improve the arc of your villain, that it’s all going to come together. And sure, you were saying the exact same thing last year at this time, but this year you’re really going to finish it. No, man. It’s time to let that script go. It’s making you miserable. And deep down, you know it’s not fixable. Once you do this, you’re going to feel like a 1000 pound brick has been removed from your back. You’re going to feel free and you’re going to love screenwriting again.

Write a script with just two characters and all dialogue – I’m talking your Before Sunsets, 500 Days of Summer, Once, When Harry Met Sally. Why? Because these are the fastest scripts you can write. It’s screenwriting in its purest form – 2 people and dialogue dialogue dialogue. There’s something about being able to belt out a script quickly that gives you confidence. And because you can write it so fast, there’s no downside to it. If it’s bad, so what? You lost two weeks. I know that when I don’t have to worry about plot and I can just write a bunch of fun dialogue, that’s the most fun I have writing a script. And I always feel better about screenwriting afterwards.

Write a pilot – If you’re anything like me, you get a little gristly when you hear, “Write a pilot.” “A pilot?? I’m a feature writer, dude!” But here’s the cool thing about pilots. You don’t have to come up with a bunch of answers. That’s one of the things that makes feature-writing such a challenge, is that you have to come up with really compelling questions (in your first act), and then really satisfying answers (in your third act). But a pilot is just setup. You can have fun with it, especially if you’re writing something like, “Lost,” where you can set up this really wild world and leave it to your future self to figure out all the answers. Plus pilots are shorter, and therefore easier to write. So it’s a good break from what you usually do and you’ll probably find that it’s more fun than you expected.

Were you ever about to give up on screenwriting and then, magically, found your mojo again? What did you do? Share it in the comments!

Genre: Comedy
Premise: Ten years after graduation, one of New York’s most eligible bachelors and his eccentric wanderlust wingman try to pull their recently divorced friend out of his rut by taking him back to Howard University’s legendary Homecoming for the best weekend of their lives.
About: Today’s script made the Black List last year, finishing in the 13th spot. It then went on to sell to Lionsgate early this year after being part of a small bidding war. What’s unique about the script is that it’s written by THREE SCREENWRITERS (who go by the name, “Murder Ink”).
Writers: Brandon Broussard & Hudson Obayuwana & Jana Savage (Murder Ink)
Details: 107 pages

Michael B. Jordan for JB?

Three screenwriters?

Have you ever tried to keep track of changes on a script with just TWO screenwriters? It’s impossible! Good luck trying to find that scene that one of you deleted eight mini-drafts ago. “Hey Johnny, was that meet-cute scene in ‘draft 7.1b’ or ‘draft 3.6master (new inciting incident)’? I can’t find it!” The workflow of three screenwriters working on the same script must have digital crypto currency levels of sophistication.

That doesn’t even begin to get into the differences of opinion. It’s like having three people in a marriage! As if getting into a fight with your one wife isn’t frustrating enough. Just ask Will Smith.

Yesterday’s comedy was… very poor. Will today’s comedy make up for it?

Thad, 32, a successful Wall Street investor and eternal bachelor, heads back to Washington D.C., Howard University, for homecoming weekend. There, he meets up with his best friend from college, 32 year old JB, described as, “the guy that puts a napkin in his collar before eating fast food.” JB, who’s speaking on a panel at Howard, is fresh off his wife leaving him for a hotter younger stud.

No sooner does JB land than he’s driven to the Ethiopian Embassy and meets up with Sweet Milk, another 10 year graduate who can best be described as a mix between Kramer, Dwight, and DJ Jazzy Jeff. Sweet Milk will be appearing and disappearing throughout the story without rhyme or reason.

The bare bones story takes us through all the Homecoming checkpoints. The check-in, the dinner, the bars, the parties, the football game, the speaking panel. It’s sort of like The Hangover but without all the pomp and circumstance, to make a ‘graduation’ reference. Oh, and because Howard University is so famous, it has a bunch of celebrities there, like Kamala Harris, Danny Glover, and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

JB and Thad eventually run into Dana, their former classmate. Thad and Dana were that classic college duo who everybody thought would hook up but didn’t due to a continuous streak of bad timing. This may be their only chance to get together. JB, meanwhile, runs into his former professor he always had a crush on, Professor Winters, who is just as hot as she was a decade ago. But can JB forget about his ex-wife long enough to seal the deal?

Lots of stuff happens during the night. They get kicked out of every single bar in the city due to Thad hitting on a major club promoter’s wife. They get chased (in a lake!) by rival school’s mascot “Wally the Wolf” after they release him from his cage. And JB steals the spotlight away from fellow alum, Ta-Nehisi Coates, during their speaking panel, after he gets absolutely trashed and does a 20-minute on-the-fly dissertation about how to save black males in 2022.

That last scene was one of my favorites.  Here’s the final part of it…

Finally, after the long weekend concludes, the guys must decide where they’re headed moving forward. Thad will need to figure out if he’s going to just make money and bang chicks the rest of his life (doesn’t sound so bad). JB must decide whether to stop deluding himself that his ex-wife is coming back (sounds worse). And Sweet Milk… well, let’s be real. Sweet Milk is never going to change. And everybody’s perfectly okay with that.

First thing’s first. This script is good. Waaaaay better than yesterday’s script. And this just shows you how faulty the Black List voting process is. The fact that this got 8 less votes than Killer Instinct is a joke, literally! The jokes were sharper here. The characters were better constructed. These writers have a much better command of the craft than yesterday’s writer. It’s night and day.

What’s interesting to note is that every script has its own unique challenge. Once you decide on the story you want to tell, you’re always posed with a major problem. How you solve that problem will determine whether the script works or doesn’t.

The problem with Homecoming is that there’s no plot. It’s just guys coming back for a weekend at college and having a good time. A “plotted” concept would be this exact same setup but… the three of them accidentally kill somebody during the night and have to cover it up.

The question then becomes, without a plot, how do you still make the story compelling? And a trick I always tell people is that if you’re going plotless, make the timeline as tight as possible. That way, your characters are always moving, there’s always stuff going on, and the reader doesn’t notice that there isn’t an actual plot to the story.

Dazed and Confused and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off are good examples of this. No plot to either of those stories. But we didn’t notice because they took place in a single day. I don’t think “Homecoming” works if these characters come home for an entire week. The lack of a story would’ve slowed the story to a crawl.

While I commend Homecoming for taking this approach, the issue does eventually catch up to the script. The story really only has one goal, which is JB speaking at the panel. Any time you’re telling the reader, “This is important and this is going to happen later,” the reader will look forward to that moment. Which is a tool you should take advantage of.

However, if you don’t have any “this is happening later” goals after that goal, you’re sort of leaving the reader out in the cold. Which is what happened here. After JB spoke at the panel, there was nothing left to really look forward to. Yes, I wanted to see if Thad and Dana got together. Yes I wanted to see if JB ditched his stupid ex-wife. But those are character things.

Look at The Hangover. We had the PLOT ELEMENT of needing to find Doug (the groom). So we always had that to drive us to the very end. It’s not that you need these things. There is no rulebook that says you do. But stories play better when there’s purpose behind the plot – when we’re moving towards a clear finish line. So if you don’t have that, you’re playing with fire.

With that said, the dialogue and jokes were really sharp in Homecoming and that says a lot about having three writers on a script. I made jokes at the start of this review about it being impossible to write with three people. But in comedy, it’s a huuuuuge advantage. It’s always better to have multiple people to bounce jokes off of because you know that if all three of you laugh, that joke is going in. Whereas, if you’re a lone comedy writer, it’s a complete guessing game. You may never actually know which jokes work and which don’t because nobody’s going through all your jokes to tell you.

I liked these writers and I liked their script. The reason it doesn’t rate above ‘worth the read’ is because after JB’s panel, it wasn’t totally clear what was left to say. It felt like we were walking towards the finish line instead of running. But, other than that, this was a fun ride. Definitely worth checking out.

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

What I learned: If you write a comedy and you have some VERY GOOD FRIENDS, ask them to go through your script, and next to every single joke, write F for “Funny” or NF for “Not funny.” If you can get two people to do this, I guarantee your comedy will be a million times better because you’re going to find out which jokes suck and you can replace all of them with better ones.

Genre: Action-Comedy
Premise: After a Hollywood assistant is publicly fired for admitting while on a conference call that he’d love to kill his boss, he finds his boss dead in the office the next morning and goes on the lam to figure out the real culprit, all while being hunted by his boss’s assassin.
About: Lillian Yu graduated from Harvard, wrote for the prestigious Harvard Crimson, and sold her first spec, Singles Day, back in 2018, to New Line. She’s since worked as a staff writer on TV shows, Powerless and Warrior. This latest script of hers finished in the top 5 on last year’s Black List. This script may or may not be written due to Lillian’s direct experiences with Scott Rudin. I have no info on whether that’s the case. All I know is that the second page of the script says, simply, “F*uck you, Scott.”
Writer: Lillian Yu
Details: 100 pages

Parasite actress Park So-Dam for Chelsea?

By this point, you’ve all heard the famous Hollywood saying: “Nobody knows anything.”

More specifically, nobody knows what movie ideas are going to work and what movie ideas are going to fail.

That’s because, although the formula – give them something the same but different – is agreed-upon by everyone, nobody can identify what the percentages of “same” and “different” in that equation are.

This is why you hear so many people say, “That idea is too much like so and so movie.” And for the next idea you’ll hear, “That idea is way too weird.” Nobody can agree on how much of “the same” and how much of “different” is required for a magical winning concept.

Today’s concept puts that quandary to the test. This definitely feels like familiar territory. A couple of mis-matched people are running from someone who’s trying to kill them, carrying, in their possession, a macguffin USB drive, that potentially has the answers they need to achieve their goal.

The “different” part is that, instead of this taking place in Budapest, like a Mission Impossible movie, or even New York City, here in the states, it’s taking place in Hollywood. So that becomes the big question. Is throwing in the Hollywood part enough to make this idea fresh and exciting? Or is it still one of thousands of the exact same types of scripts written in this space?

I suspect the answer will depend on the individual.

Our script follows producing assistant, and 28 year old Ugandan, Teddy Adebayo. Teddy works for a really terrible producer named Frank who throws things at him, makes him kill poor little squirrels because he doesn’t like the sound they make when running on the roof, and routinely laughs at him for being so stupid.

One day, when Teddy is fed up with Frank and not really paying attention to what he’s doing as he patches a bunch of people into a teleconference in the conference room, he confesses to his best friend and fellow assistant, Chelsea Hamamura, that he would kill Frank if he could. Little did he know he was broadcasting on the teleconference when he said this. So Teddy is immediately fired.

That weekend, when Teddy goes in to return his company keys and collect his final paycheck, he finds Frank stabbed to death in his office…. WITH TEDDY’S LETTER OPENER! No sooner does this happen than Chelsea appears, who congratulates Teddy on finally doing the deed. Teddy insists he’s innocent. Only seconds later, a masked man shows up to make sure Frank is dead, forcing Teddy and Chelsea to hide.

While observing the man, Chelsea notices that his gun is cop-issued, which means they can’t go to the cops with this! Teddy will have to prove his innocence some other way. He remembers a “secret” project Frank was working on that may have answers and locates a thumb drive that may have that project’s script on it. They drive off in a James Bond stunt car, with the masked man in pursuit.

Chelsea heads to the SoHo House to confront Paul Rudd, who’s had a two year feud with Frank. While she gives Rudd the business, the masked man appears and starts shooting up the SoHo House. Luckily, KEANU REEVES is there taking a meeting and tackles the guy, allowing Chelsea and Teddy to slip away.

The two eventually end up at Elon Musks’ house (or an Elon stand-in) and then Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s house. It’s a celebrity cameo party. Each celebrity gets them a little closer to their answer. But will it be enough to clear Teddy’s name? Or is he getting screwed one last time by the boss from hell, whose parting gift is sending him to prison for life?

This is the kind of script I was just talking about yesterday as one of the ways spec screenwriters can still get a theatrical release. Write an action-comedy. And to the writer’s credit, this is an action-comedy concept I haven’t quite seen before – an action comedy built around Hollywood. To that end, I guess you can say it checks the “same but different” box.

With that said, something wasn’t working for me. I tried to figure out what it was. The script had plenty of the fun outrageous moments you want from a movie like this. For example, at one point, they go to The Rock’s house for help, which reminded me of the guys in The Hangover going to Mike Tyson’s house.

But then it hit me. The central pairing in this movie isn’t interesting. And it’s not interesting because it’s not easily definable. Last Wednesday I reviewed a buddy comedy called “Drive Away Dykes,” and in that one, the relationship was easily definable. One woman was the most overtly sexual lesbian on the planet. The other was the most conservative lesbian on the planet. They fit together because they were so clearly on two different ends of the spectrum.

There isn’t enough of a difference between these two. For starters, they’re both assistants. So right away, they kind of feel the same. Sure, Chelsea is brave and Teddy isn’t. But these aren’t their defining traits, like the fact that the woman in Drive Away Dyke was a slut and the other was a prude. Here, the fact that one character is brave and one isn’t just seems to be a convenience thrown in there to get some laughs.

The dynamic is off as well.

The script introduces Chelsea first.

Then it introduces Teddy. Yet Teddy, in our first 10 pages, is the hero. He’s the one we’re focusing on. Chelsea is barely mentioned.

But then, as soon as they go on the run, Chelsea takes charge. She’s the one making all the decisions. So it’s apparently her movie, which I guess is why she was introduced first (usually, the character you introduce first is the hero).

But it’s super confusing because all the stakes are attached to Teddy. Not Chelsea. Chelsea’s the comic relief. Except she’s also the hero??

I didn’t know what was going on there.

Also, I want to take a second to vent about something. Because I’m seeing this in more and more scripts.

So, this is how Chelsea is introduced: “We WEAVE THROUGH a threadbare office: an assistant, CHELSEA HAMAMURA (mid-20s, half-Japanese, ASD that manifests as droll), orders office supplies on an Amazon-like e-commerce site named Everest while an INTERN runs from the kitchen with mugs of coffee in hand.”

You may notice that there is very little description of what Chelsea actually looks like. Why does this matter? Well, later, we’re told, rather vaguely, that Teddy is infatuated with Chelsea. And through very minor clues here and there, we learn that she’s really freaking hot. Which is a big reason why Teddy likes her so much.

But for some reason, all writers are terrified to label female characters as attractive now because people on Twitter occasionally highlight these descriptions and say, “Typical male writing. Only focuses on how the girl looks.” And female writers don’t want to perpetuate these dated practices so they don’t tell you either. So now we get these very vague descriptions and the reader is just supposed to figure out on their own if someone is good-looking or not.

While there are situations where a characters’ looks don’t matter, it does matter if you have a love story. A movie about a person who is attracted to a really ugly individual, for example, is a completely different movie than one where they’re attracted to a beautiful individual. I guess this is a long way of saying, don’t listen to all these Twitter losers. Tell us what your character looks like. Don’t be afraid. There are ways to convey a person’s attractiveness tastefully. And you should do so so you don’t leave all your readers confused as hell.

If you decide to keep things vague to win Twitter points, you run the risk of what happened to me in this script. Which was, halfway through, I realized that Chelsea was gorgeous and Teddy was in love with her. That means I missed 40-some pages of potential subtext and sexual chemistry because I didn’t know who was attractive and who was attracted. None of that was explained clearly.

I wish I could say I liked this but it just had too many problems.

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

What I learned: In a Harvard interview back in 2018, Lillian Yu gave two pieces of advice. “First, work as an assistant. Get the lay of the land, and learn the players. See how this weird system works. I can’t tell you the number of seasoned writer-friends who have asked me, a lowly baby writer, for advice on this kind of thing. My only leg up is knowing the industry—who the good agents are, which producers won’t steal your idea, which executive is looking to buy a project about a deaf Tibetan Mastiff, etc. Second piece of advice: work in development. Working as a development exec was basically my grad school in screenwriting. You get to peek behind the curtain and see how everything works from the buyer’s side—what executives look for in a pitch, the note behind the note, meeting etiquette, standard story structure, etc. This was the best investment of my time I could have made, and I actually got paid to do it.”

Don’t worry. I give you five genres that you, as a spec screenwriter, can still write that get released in movie theaters!

A question I get asked a lot is, “How does a good script become a bad movie?” The prevailing thought is that if it’s on the page, all you have to do is point the camera and get out of the way. Unfortunately, reality doesn’t work like that. From actor rewrites to budgetary rewrites to a director shifting the script’s tone to miscasting… a lot can happen between great script and cameras rolling.

I bring this up because I loved the Ambulance script by Chris Fedak. It was such a fun ride with all these cool twists. Most action films are pretty bland, plot-wise.  This one was constructed in such a clever way. So I was rooting for the movie. However, it did not do well this weekend, not even breaking 10 million at the box office.

That is not to say Ambulance is a bad movie. I don’t know if it is or isn’t. It seems to be getting good reviews for a Michael Bay film. But its failure at the box office is concerning considering that “theatrical” has become such an unknown in 2022.  It feels like every movie’s success or failure is redefining the box office on the fly.

The first thing we have to take into account is streaming’s rise and theatrical’s fall during the pandemic, and how that reset audience’s expectations in regards to what they would and wouldn’t pay for. I lump both those in together because if they hadn’t happened at the same time, I believe theatrical would’ve weathered the storm. But because the streaming wars forced streamers to come up with bigger and better product to jack up those subscription numbers, along with people getting used to not going to the movies, it created a perfect storm scenario for a box office apocalypse.

I think people looked at “Ambulance” and they said, “Hey wait a minute. Didn’t I just see that action movie on Netflix for free that had a bigger budget and a bigger star in “Extraction?” Once you give people something bigger for “free,” they no longer value paying for it. I mean, hell, we even got a bigger budget Michael Bay movie on Netflix not too long ago, “6 Underground.” So why would you go to the movies and pay for a Michael Bay movie?

Another problem is the budget. The movie only cost 40 million dollars. Considering that the average Bay movie cost north of 200 million, the movie couldn’t help but look “Bay-light.” Why am I going to the movies to check out a small film by a filmmaker who makes big movies? Or, if that question seems too industry-coded, look at it from the average moviegoer’s POV. They see a trailer for a movie called “Ambulance” and all it contains is a bunch of shots of an ambulance car chase and it’s kind of like, “So what would normally be one scene in a Michael bay movie is now…… the entire movie?”

A third factor I haven’t heard a lot of people talking about is the fact that Bay’s style is starting to feel dated. The sweeping dolly shot at sunset where the actress or car is bathed in golden sunlight… it feels very 1999. You’ve got these newer action filmmakers, guys like Sam Hargrave, the Russo Brothers, Chad Stahelski, and David Leitch, who have a darker grittier more inventive style with much fresher action choreography. These guys are more interested in making you feel the visceral physicality of two men beating each other to pieces than they are making sure that every strand of those actors’ hair is in place.

This is a long way of saying, you see the Ambulance trailer and think, “What’s new here?” That’s what sucks about good scripts that don’t have their goodness baked into the concept. The goodness is in the way the story is executed. And you don’t know that unless you see the film.

What Ambulance’s failure says is that the mid-to-high range action movie may no longer be worthy of a theatrical release. Seeing as this is a screenwriting site, I’d like to discuss what this means for screenwriters and how you can adapt. Because what everyone fears is that theatrical has become, exclusively, a superhero industry.  And that it’s only a matter of time before all the other genres slip down the slope into that large gargling mouth belonging to the streamers.

Let me alleviate those fears by first giving you some non superhero genres that still get theatrical releases and then giving you scripts written on spec that can still become theatrical releases. Because, as of this moment, there are still options. Let’s look at them.

NON-SUPERHERO MOVIES THAT STILL GET THEATRICAL RELEASES

Giant IP Action Movies – Fast and Furious, James Bond, Mission Impossible – With these movies, you have to give the audience a combination of 3 things – a big movie star, wall-to-wall giant set-pieces, and at least one major thing in the movie that people haven’t seen before that you can build a marketing campaign around. Mission Impossible is famous for this. They put Tom Cruise on the side of a plane while it’s taking off. To get into this space is tough because the first time you try to do it, you don’t have as much money as the established IP does. So you’re already at a disadvantage. We saw this with Uncharted. It was a boy amongst men and even though Sony put a lot of money behind the marketing, it only barely snuck into the “BIG IP ACTION MOVIE” conversation, with a 51 million dollar opening. Giant IP Action is probably the most competitive space in theatrical movies at the moment.

IP Horror – The reason horror is always going to be in the conversation is because 12-18 year olds love to be scared. And that demo, despite what some may say, is still showing up to theaters if the brand is big and exciting enough. IP horror has been a rather recent development as the Blumhouse formula made it seem like you only made a ton of horror movies for 5 million bucks each and hoped one of them broke out. But ever since The Conjuring and It, they’re sinking a lot more money into these films so that they feel more like events.

Animation Movies – Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks. These are always going to do well because they spend a ton of money and time on them. Because animation is something that can be manipulated up until the last second, they can test the sh#t out of these movies internally, figure out what’s wrong, then go back and fix them. With a regular movie, you’re sort of locked in once you finish production. Yes you can reshoot, but reshoots cost tons of money and don’t allow nearly as much flexibility as animated productions. Long story short, they don’t release these things until they know they’ll print money. That and parents want to get out of the house with their kids every once in a while and movies are one of the cheapest forms of entertainment out there.

Action-Comedy – Action Comedies are right on the brink of becoming streaming movies. I think Red Notice made the industry believe that was the direction we were headed. But as of now, if a studio loves an action-comedy idea, they’ll still release it theatrically. The more I dig into this, the more I think it might become one of the rare genres that live in both universes. Netflix may just act as a de facto studio in this case, releasing action-comedies to compete with theatrical action-comedies. Free Guy, Jungle Cruise, The Lost City, The Hitman’s Bodyguard, Spy.

Biopics/True Stories/Book Adaptations – Hollywood loves to celebrate itself, and these are the three genres it does it with. Movies like House of Gucci, Spotlight, Little Women, Wolf of Wall Street. There’s a chance these could slide into the streaming universe soon but I’m not convinced it will happen.  I don’t think the Academy wants all the movies it nominates to be on streaming.  It should be noted that true stories can be written as spec scripts, so you could place them in that category as well. The only reason I’m hesitant to do that is because studios tend to like when you base your true story on a published work and most non-working screenwriters can’t afford to option those works. But it’s possible to find a great true period story that hasn’t been told before and just write it without any source material. If you can place on the Black List, like Spotlight did, some big people will take notice and, possibly, you get your script produced.

NON-SUPERHERO MOVIES THAT STILL GET THEATRICAL RELEASES THAT ANY SPEC SCREENWRITER CAN WRITE

Clever/Fresh Horror (A Quiet Place, Get Out) – The best bang for your buck option. Basically what you want to do here is focus on smartly written character pieces that center around family and then, for the majority of the screenplay, keep your monsters unseen. Let the horror come out of our imagination. That’s what both A Quiet Place and Get Out did, which is why they became phenomenons. Another thing about keeping these movies character-driven is that they’re cheap to make, which means more buyers. And if the idea is cool enough and you’re lucky enough to get a director who hits it out of the park, you get that big studio release. This is the genre where the most writers and directors come out of.

Guy with a Gun movies (John Wick, Nobody, Sicario, The Accountant) – This one may be confusing as I just said that mid-to-high range action movies are moving to streaming. But here’s the thing. “John Wick” is a formula studios are going to keep trying to replicate because a) the guy with a gun formula has been around forever so studios know that it works, and b) everyone outside of Disney is desperate to find new franchises and this is one of the best ways to do so because you don’t have to spend a ton of money on the first film so it’s a relatively cheap risk. Going back to Ambulance, if there’s one problem with that project, it’s that it’s not a clear “guy-with-a-gun” scenario. It’s not something you can build a franchise on. Another twist to note here is that studios have been trying to create the girl-with-a-gun genre for a while now and it just hasn’t worked. Kate, Gunpowder Milkshake, The Protege, Ava, Atomic Blonde, Proud Mary, Peppermint. I don’t know why these aren’t catching on. It could simply be that they’re bad movies. It could be that they haven’t found an “Angelina Jolie circa 2003” or “Scarlett Johansen circa 2012” actress that elevates these films. But the industry has cooled on girl-with-a-gun movies as a result. That’s not to say you shouldn’t write them. But I think the pendulum in this genre has swung back to the male side. And if you’re looking for someone to write for, Nicholas Cage is about to have a comeback moment where studios start putting him in big movies again. So start there.

Action Comedy (Free Guy, Jungle Cruise, The Lost City, The Hitman’s Bodyguard, Spy) – Yes! We have a crossover here! Action-Comedy is one of the best genres that spec screenwriters can write because it’s one of the few genres that if you nail it, you get the full Hollywood treatment. You get the big stars, the big budget, the big marketing push. You could end up as one of the top 15 movies of the year with a smart concept. I just wrote in my last newsletter how the 80s and early 90s are filled with high concept movies that you can draw inspiration from. People under 35 don’t know that much about this era. So you have advantage if you’re older and know this time well. Cause these types of flicks were huge back then.

World War 2 Movies (Dunkirk, Hacksaw Ridge, The Imitation Game, Flags of Our Fathers) – Sometimes I think the best advice I could give a new writer is to write a World War 2 script. There are just so many stories from that war and Hollywood never tires of them. They absolutely love that war. Not “love” it. But you know what I mean. And if I were you, I would look to create a contained time scenario in order to make it a really tasty spec. Someone just wrote one of these that I reviewed. I can’t remember what it was called (can any of you find it?). It was about a soldier who had to make it through a forest swarming with Nazis in a couple of hours to deliver a message or something. Something like that hits all the beats because you not only have the draw of World War 2 that Hollywood loves, but you have that tight clean exciting read by making it real-time.

Zombies/Vampires (World War Z, Zombieland, I Am Legend, upcoming Nosferatu, Let The Right One In) – I might get some pushback for this one because there hasn’t been a big zombie or vampire movie in a while. But you know what that tells me? THE NEXT WAVE OF ZOMBIE AND VAMPIRE MOVIES ARE COMING. These two genres never die, no pun intended. As is the case with every new iteration of these sub-genres, don’t bother writing them unless you a) love these movies, and b) have a fresh take on them. Cause in order to reboot a genre, you need to be the person with a new take on it.  A quick concept trick on how to create “fresh takes.”  If a genre has been really serious for a while, create a light/comedic take.  If a genre has been really light/comedic for a while, create a serious take.  That’s what Zombieland did on the heels of those Dawn of the Dead type movies and it became a phenomenon.

Bonus: Any Really Clever Premise – If you have a truly great idea or a truly ironic idea (Jurassic Park, Yesterday, Good Will Hunting, Source Code, The Hangover, Back to the Future, The Sixth Sense, Rear Window, Memento), these can get into theaters. The reason is that, when a truly great idea hits Hollywood, everyone in town gets excited about it, and they all start competing to work on it. So you end up getting an amazing director and an amazing actor and, if you do that, there’s no way they’re not releasing the movie theatrically. Since everybody thinks their idea is amazing, here’s a quick test. Send your logline to three people. If all three of them don’t say, “Oh my god, that’s an amazing idea,” it’s not an amazing idea. Or you can just come to me for a logline evaluation and I’ll tell you ($25 – carsonreeves1@gmail.com). That doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. It’s just not a great idea and, therefore, it’s probably not theatrical-release worthy.

Let me be clear that there are always going to be exceptions. If you can write a script that wins over a revolutionary director like Darren Aronofsky, the Safdie Brothers, or the Daniels, yeah, you can be one of the rare lottery winners. Hell, that’s arguably what happened today. Ambulance won over Michael Bay, which means a script that normally wouldn’t get a theatrical release did.  The only problem with this strategy is that you’re basically betting on the fact that one of ten directors in the world has the exact same interest as you do with your rare weird screenplay concept.  If you have information on a director and know they’re looking for a specific subject matter and it just happens to be subject matter you love as well, writing that script makes more sense.  But if you’re just hoping, you’re playing the lottery.

Just to be clear about today’s post, this is what you should write if you want to get a THEATRICAL RELEASE. It’s not necessarily the best way to break in. The best way to break in is, unfortunately, less glamorous and takes more time.  You write a really powerful script that you’re extremely passionate about, hope to get on the Black List so that people learn your name, those people check out your script, you gain some fans, you get meetings with those fans, and you pitch them on adapting one of their projects. It’s a longer route but it’s the more common route.

I hope this helps!

REMINDER – THE FIRST ACT CONTEST DEADLINE IS MAY 1!!!

I need your title, genre, logline, anything you want me to know about the script, and, of course, a PDF of your first act. You want to send these to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the subject line “FIRST ACT CONTEST.” The contest is 100% free.

What: The first act of your screenplay
Deadline: May 1st, 11:59 PM Pacific Time
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Include: title, genre, logline, extra info, a pdf of the act.
Cost: Free!