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In this month’s newsletter, I talk about Warner Brothers giving Christopher Nolan the heave-ho. Francis Ford Coppola finally making his Citizen Kane with his own money. I give a Kinetic update. I exclusively announce THE NEXT SHOWDOWN. Something tells me it will be a ghould ole’ time, wink wink. I discuss a new unexpected million dollar spec sale, my strange obsession with Dear Evan Hansen, my ongoing infatuation with everything White Lotus, the latest Marvel show trailer, and a script review of the project John Boyega just walked off of set on. You’re not going to want to miss it!
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Today’s script takes cues from both A Quiet Place and Pitch Black. Is it on par with those screenplays?
Genre: Sci-Fi Horror
Premise: When a photosensitive alien force blacks out the sun, a dysfunctional family must survive together in a perpetually dark world full of predatory creatures, while trying not to lose the only thing that can protect them: the light.
Why You Should Read: Black Sky is my first sci-fi screenplay, though it’s as much a horror/thriller and family drama as it is sci-fi. Definitely a sci-fi concept though. I see Black Sky as a possible franchise, and/or a TV series. It’s in the vein of A Quiet Place, Signs, Bird Box, and The Walking Dead. I wrote it to be produced on a low-budget, but ironically a couple of people who’ve read it compared it to War of The Worlds. I’m not sure about that but I was pleased by the comparison and in any case I believe it can be produced low-budget regardless of that comparison. My last two screenplays, both set in a car and written to be made for a micro-budget, were recently #1 and #3 on the black list paid platform top list and consequently I have a shopping agreement with a great company in LA for one of the scripts, and I’m in negotiations with a producer who’s made more than a dozen movies on the other script, so being high on the black list really made a difference and hopefully I’m on a bit of a roll and can get representation now. In the meantime, it’d be great to get feedback from Scriptshadowers and possibly Carson if it were selected for Sci-fi Showdown.
Writer: Sean McConville
Details: 107 pages
Readability: Medium to Fast
After months of waiting, we FINALLY have our Sci-Fi Showdown winner! BLACK SKY. I like everything about this submission. I like the title. I like the logline. I like the marketability. I could see the poster and the trailer for this script. But the submission still has one last test to pass. Do I like the script itself? Let’s find out!
38 year old Aiden has taken his family on a vacation into the Moors, a remote rural area in England (I’m assuming). Aiden’s family isn’t doing so hot. He’s got a wife, Lara, who’s wanted to leave him ever since he cheated on her. He’s got a 17 year old step-daughter, Riley, who’s never liked her fake father. The only drama-free member of the family is 8 year old Conor, who very well might be the smartest of all of them.
While Aiden and Conor are out fishing, they see a strange black substance slowly move across and block the sun. Spooked, they head back to the cabin, where they find that all of the electricity has been turned off, as well as all access to the rest of the world. Freaked out, Lara demands that they drive back to London. Except that the always lazy Aiden hasn’t filled up the gas tank. Pissed off, Lara says they’ll just sleep here tonight and see what’s up in the morning.
But then the morning never comes. Or, it does come, but there’s no sun. Just blackness. Just night. Confused, the family decides to go into the nearby town where they find all the stores have been raided. Now that they know it’s bad, they head to the gas station, but the gas station is closed. Out of options, they drive back to the house. As they scramble around the property to get supplies to hole up, we see black inky creatures in the shadows that seem to dart away whenever there’s light. Unaware of these camouflaged aliens, they start a fire in the fireplace so they don’t freeze to death.
After a while, they notice that the military has blasted a hole in the dark sky above the town of York (about 60 miles away) so light shines down on it, keeping the people safe. Aiden and the family think if they can get to that town, they’ll be good. But that means finding gas! So they set about going to the neighbors’ houses to steal their gas. However, guess who’s waiting for them? That’s right. Aliens!
I’m really torn by Black Sky because, from page 65 on, it gets pretty darn good.
But I’m not going to lie. I fell asleep twice while reading the first 65 pages. And that’s because those 65 pages are too casual an exploration of the idea. To put it in analogous terms, the first 65 pages never go above third gear.
You have to remember this simple rule as a writer: Make it so they CAN’T NOT KEEP READING. Make it impossible for them to say, “Eh, I’ll get back to it another time.” You have to yank them in and never let them go, especially in this genre, which is built on suspense, scares, and thrills.
We see aliens throughout the first 65 pages of Black Sky. They’re usually in the shadows, watching from afar. But they never DID anything. They just sat around and watched. So why would I be afraid of them? Let’s not forget the very first scene in A Quiet Place has a 7 year old boy getting eaten within a second of making a noise. That’s how you create fear.
The plotting here is too slow and too unimaginative. We hang out at the house. Then we go out to the tree. Then back to the house. Let’s go to bed even though the world is ending. Let’s go get some gas. Eh, we couldn’t find any. Let’s go back to the house. Let’s go back out to the tree. It felt like a writer trying to come up with the next scene location on the spot. It didn’t feel like the story was being planned. Have I had a scene in the bedroom yet? No. Okay, let’s go there.
My guess is that Sean was a lot more interested in the family drama than he was the alien drama. He puts a lot of emphasis on this dysfunctional family. In theory, this is a good idea. You want your characters to be complex. You want your relationships to be complex. To that end, Sean did a good job.
But here’s the irony. Everyone was so miserable in this family that I didn’t really like any of them (besides Conor). I definitely didn’t like the wife. The teenaged daughter was ungrateful and couldn’t stop complaining. And Aiden I could never get a feel for. He’s a good dad to Conor. But he cheated on his wife. He’s also such a schulb that he doesn’t fill up the car with gas.
And that’s another big problem with the script. The entire plot hinged on them finding gas. I don’t think this is the kind of movie where finding gas should dictate everything. Cause let’s be honest. Gas is everywhere. Nobody’s alive anymore so you can steal it from a car. We also find out they have gas in their generator. That irked me because everyone’s desperately running around trying to find gas when all I’m thinking is, “It shouldn’t be this hard to find gas. The only reason it is is so the writer can have a story.”
We do this all the time as writers. We convince ourselves that a plot thread works when, deep down, we know we need something better. Black Sky is so dependent on this finding gas storyline that it easily could’ve been titled, “Gas Search.”
What’s so frustrating about Black Sky is that the moment I was about to mentally give up on it – on page 65 – is the exact moment where it starts to get good. The aliens start attacking them which means now they’re not just walking from room to room talking to each other. They’re actually fighting for their lives. They’re actually having to make choices that affect their immediate safety.
But it was a case of too little too late. I can’t be bored for an hour in a movie then just turn on my interest. Actually, that’s not true. It just happened with Malignant. But that’s because Malignant had a killer twist and the best third act ever.
If Black Sky wants to be a good script from start to finish, Sean needs to rethink those first 65 pages. I’m guessing he’s banking on the slow-burn approach but like I’ve told people here before, there’s slow burn good and there’s slow burn boring. This is slow burn boring. We need more going on at the cottage so it isn’t just a bunch of boring scenes with people talking. And we need a much better goal than to find gas. It just feels too tiny for the situation.
Black Sky has its moments, especially later on in the script. But everything that comes before page 65 needs to be turbo-charged. We need a lot more going on. I wish Sean good luck with it. What did all of you think?
Script link: Black Sky
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Give your creatures the advantage. One of the subtle differences I noticed between this and A Quiet Place was that the Quiet Place creatures seemed to have a strong advantage over the humans. If you made even the tiniest sound, they could kill you within seconds. Conversely, the monsters in Black Sky always seemed to be on the defensive. They’re always hiding in the shadows. Scared of even the tiniest amount of light. I didn’t fear them much at all (until the end, when they all of a sudden become aggressive). Had we given them a stronger advantage, this script would’ve been a lot scarier.
These sci-fi submissions did not make the Science Fiction Showdown. Find out why!
One of the most frustrating things that writers go through is sending their scripts out there only to get rejected time and time again, and having no idea why. I had two instances this week where writers e-mailed me and wanted to know what they were doing wrong.
In one instance, a writer said they had sent their script out to half a dozen contests but that it didn’t advance in a single one. What was wrong? The other writer conceded that his concept wasn’t very good but that if I’d read the script, I’d realize how amazing it was. I sympathize with both of these writers. You spend months, sometimes years, working on a script and then nobody seems to care. You feel like you’re doing something wrong but you don’t know what.
Well, I’m going to clear it up for you. There are two areas you have to execute to break into this business and they must be completed in order. One, you must execute the concept (come up with a compelling concept that makes people want to read your script). And two, you must execute the script (write a script that entertains from the first page to the last). Except for rare situations, it doesn’t work when you only execute one of these.
The reason you need to execute the concept first is because it doesn’t matter that your script is genius if nobody wants to read it. A lot of writers turn a blind eye to this reality. They convince themselves that as long as they write a great script, it won’t matter. Well, it does matter because you need to get people to read the thing and they’re not going to read the thing if it sounds boring.
If you pass that test, the hard part begins because, now, you have to keep people entertained for 110 straight pages and even the best writers in the business struggle to do that. Most amateur screenplays I read fall somewhere between “sub-par” and “average.” That won’t do. I’ll say it again. As an amateur writer – someone who isn’t getting the benefit of the doubt – you have to entertain the reader on page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4, page 5, all the way to page 110. You don’t get any pages off.
But again, none of that matters if you don’t get the concept right because people aren’t even going to give you their time if you don’t do that. Look at the concept that won Amateur Showdown last week. “When a photosensitive alien force blacks out the sun, a dysfunctional family must survive together in a perpetually dark world full of predatory creatures, while trying not to lose the only thing that can protect them: the light.” That’s a movie concept right there. You can see that trailer. You can see that movie making money.
I don’t think enough writers think of concepts that way. They come up with something they think is cool and turn a blind eye towards what anyone else thinks of it. To that end, I’m going to go through some of the sci-fi concepts that were submitted to me for Sci-Fi Showdown and take you into my head as to why they didn’t pass the “concept” test. I’m hoping to not only help the writers who sent these in. But to show you, the readers, how people receive ideas and what makes them say yes or no. Let’s take a look…
Title: The Billionaire Battle Royale
Genre: Sci-fi, Action, “Dystopian”
Logline: 2045–in a world that has combated wealth inequality by hosting an annual fight to the death between billionaires, the inner circle of the world’s richest man tamper with the event to ensure he loses.
Analysis: This one falls under a category I occasionally see with concepts which is that it’s presented as a serious story when it sounds like it could be a comedy. I imagine 2045’s version of Elon Musk fighting 2045’s version of Jeff Bezos and there is nothing in that scenario that makes me think I could take it seriously. On top of that, the central conflict isn’t very interesting – one of the teams ensures their guy loses. Feels like you could come up with a way bigger conflict than that. There are shades of The Purge and Hunger Games here that might entice some. Curious what others think of this idea.
Title: Surrogate
Genre: Contained Sci-Fi/Thriller
Logline: To pay for an exhibition, a starving fine art photographer agrees to be a surrogate for a wealthy couple, but confined to a lavish house, her mind and body start to unravel.
Analysis: One of the more common movie concepts I get sent is characters going crazy. What I’ve found is that these scripts are extremely execution-dependent. Coming up with a story where someone gradually loses their mind for 100 pages is a lot harder than you think. In my experience, almost all of these scripts go off the rails, becoming muddy and uninteresting the further the protagonist progresses into crazyville. Also, this logline isn’t doing the concept any favors. It doesn’t tell us WHAT is going on in the house to cause her descent into madness. Which means that the only thing we have to go on is that she’s stuck in a house. That isn’t very compelling to me which is why I didn’t pick this.
Title: Astaroth’s Children
Genre: Sci-Fi/Horror
Logline: When stranded on an abandoned space station, a crew of military freelancers encounter the survivors of a horrific scientific project gone wrong. Unable to contain the effect, an agoraphobic engineer must destroy this threat to humanity’s existence.
Analysis: The reason I passed over this is pretty simple. It sounds like every video game ever. Resident Evil. Doom. Halo. You can’t just repackage the same movie (or game). You gotta give us something different. There wasn’t anything in this concept that made me think I haven’t already seen this story before. That’s something you gotta think about when you’re putting together your logline (preferably before you write the script). Does this sound too much like other movies we’ve seen? If so, you may want to think twice about writing it.
Title: Infiction
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: A female con artist is allowed to ply her trade against an alien group in human form to help them grasp humanity’s evolutionary need for fiction.
Analysis: I read this logline several times and struggled to understand it. By the way, this is one of the biggest reasons to get a logline consult. To see if your logline is clear. A female con artist is allowed to ply her trade? Her trade of con-artistry? Or a different trade? “against an alien group in human form” – had to read that several times to understand it. “to help them grasp humanity’s evolutionary need for fiction.” The stakes of the story are that aliens want to know why we write books like Harry Potter? The stakes need to be much higher than that for a movie.
Title: Future Shock
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: New York’s last ‘accountable’ cop has one night to find four prison-escapees fitted with pacemakers designed to kill them if they leave the city.
Analysis: The idea seems to contradict itself. Four people have escaped prison. Presumably, their goal is to flee the city. A cop must stop them from fleeing the city. But why is he needed if they’re all going to blow up the second they try to leave the city anyway? Problem solved, right? Unless this is a movie about saving bad people from dying. But that doesn’t seem to be the writer’s focus. Wouldn’t this work better if one of the prison escapees was the protagonist? Also, don’t put quotes around words unless it’s clear why you’re doing so. I’m not sure why ‘accountable’ needs quotes around it. This may seem like a nitpick, but every single script I’ve read where someone has put quotes around a random word in a logline has been bad.
Title: E-TEN
Genre: High concept/Sci-fi/contained thriller
Logline: An insecure hotel janitor and 5 other guests are held captive in a small library where a mysterious voice tells them to find the perfect political system for humanity under 90 minutes if they don’t want to be gassed to death. Things get out of control as they soon realize the game is hiding a traitor…and an axe.
Analysis: There’s nothing realistic about this setup. Why would someone pick six random people and tell them that if they don’t solve something that nobody’s been able to solve in 4000 years, they’re all going to die in 90 minutes? Why would you think these people were capable of doing this? And why so dramatic? If coming up with the perfect political system is important to you, wouldn’t you want to give them an adequate amount of time to do so? This concept didn’t make sense to me.
Title: Earthbound
Genre: Sci-fi
Logline: When an inmate in a prison orbiting Neptune finds that she’s pregnant, she begins a desperate attempt to escape and reach Earth, a place she’s only heard rumors about.
Analysis: This is one of those ideas that kind of sounds like a movie. But my first question after reading it was, “Why did you wait until now?” If getting to earth was important to you, then try to get to earth regardless of whether you’re pregnant or not. Now, if what you’re saying is that she needs to get to earth because they’re going to terminate her baby the second they realize she’s pregnant? Or if she knows the only chance her child has if she raises it on earth, well then that needs to be included in the logline. And the fact that it isn’t included in favor of the vague, “a place she’s only heard rumors about,” indicates to me someone who hasn’t written enough to know how to craft an effective logline. I know every writer hates writing loglines because of this very reason. What do you choose to include or not include? But the thing about loglines is that if you stay in the game long enough, you figure out how to write them effectively, and so when I read a good logline, I know that’s a writer who’s been at this for awhile and knows what they’re doing. In the past, when I see little mistakes like this, I’ve found that the script reflects those mistakes. It has problems as well. And while “Earthbound” may very well be the exception to the rule, I’ve been burned too many times to take a chance on it.
Title: REMOTE
Genre: Sci-fi Drama
Logline: A dysfunctional family’s devoted android confronts the true nature of his role in humanity’s impending demise.
Analysis: This logline starts out okay. But then it becomes waaaaay too general. We go from a “dysfunctional family” (a very contained story) to “humanity’s impeding demise.” Where’s all the stuff in between? Remember, a logline isn’t supposed to tell people the generalities of the story. It’s not a teaser. It’s supposed to tell you the specifics of the story and what’s going to happen. I have no idea what happens in this story (which is the problem) so I can’t accurately fix this logline. But here’s an example of a more specific version: “A dysfunctional family’s devoted android must find and destroy its maker before being updated with the latest software, which will have it turn on and kill its family.” That’s admittedly a dumb idea but do you see how specificity in the plot explanation creates a clearer movie than “confronts the true nature of his role in humanity’s impending demise?” There are actual specific tasks being alluded to, something the reader can visualize.
Obviously, subjectivity plays a role in picking loglines. So my analysis here should not be seen as the end all be all. But this is a pretty accurate breakdown of how your loglines will be received. Do some market research BEFORE you write a script. Send your friends five loglines and ask them to rank them 1-5. What happens when you’ve spent 6 months on a script is that you become emotionally attached to the idea and can’t see it clearly. Whereas when you’re still in the idea stage and several people tell you the idea isn’t good, it’s easier to let it go.
Curious to see what you guys thought of these loglines. Did I overlook any?
Are you sending your screenplay out into the world without getting professional feedback? That is dangerous, my friend. I can tell you exactly what they’re going to criticize you for and help you fix those problems ahead of time. I do consultations on everything from loglines ($25) to treatments ($100) to pilots ($399) to features ($499). E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line “CONSULTATION” if you’re interested. Chat soon!
The Brigands of Rattleborge meets Water for Elephants meets Deliverance?
Genre: Drama/Dark/Thriller
Premise: After a 1976 traveling carnival sets up in a small town in Louisiana, the locals become enraged with the actions of the carnival workers, and set about taking the carnival down.
About: S. Craig Zahler needs no introduction on this site. He is the writer of The Brigands of Rattleborge, one of my top 5 scripts (and soon to become a TV show). Fury of the Strongman is a script that he’s been pushing for quite a while and, according to the trusty source, “the internet,” he’s still actively trying to get it made. I hope he succeeds! This is probably the most interesting of all his projects.
Writer: S. Craig Zahler
Details: 155 pages
Readability: Slow
No reason to beat around the bush. If you like Zahler, you’re going to love this script. If you hate Zahler, you’re going to detest this script. Since I like Zahler, you probably know where I stand. :)
The year is 1976. A carnival led by a midget named Nickel is enjoying a long stay in a Wisconsin town. Our cast of characters includes Woodburn, the strongman. Laughy, the clown. Wendy, the pretty girl. Young Mountain and Paloma, the husband and wife knife throwing act. Harry the Human Crab (who looks exactly like you’d imagine him to). As well as a host of other oddballs who specialize in unique skills.
Our main focus, though, is Woodburn, who’s furious that his girlfriend, Wendy, wants to do a topless act. Woodburn has seen one too many women from his past go down that route, and when it happens, they keep going, right into prostitution. Despite Wendy’s insistence that she’d never do that, he breaks up with her.
Later that night, a horny teenage couple gets drunk at the carnival then crashes their car into a tree, killing them both. The dead girl happened to be the daughter of the governor, so they get kicked out of Wisconsin. The only place Nickel knows he can go is Louisiana, so they get the caravan together and drive south.
As it so happens, they set up in the very same town Woodburn grew up in, a town that he ran away from the second he was old enough. When he heads into town to get a drink, he’s spotted, and we learn that before he left town, he gave his father a present – he broke his spine, turning him into a paraplegic. People in town like his dad. Which means they don’t like Woodburn.
Meanwhile, Laughy (in full clown makeup) heads into town to get some whisky but is stonewalled by the angry liquor store owner, Right Hook Ronnie. Ronnie thinks that Laughy is black under that makeup and he doesn’t sell liquor to black people. Laughy refuses to leave until he gets his whisky and things get heated, resulting in Laughy pulling a gun on Ronnie. This ensures that Laughy wins this round. But Ronnie assures him that this fight isn’t over.
Ronnie then gets all the town degenerates together and heads to that night’s show. At first, all they do is heckle. But then they start spreading out, beating up carnival workers in the shadows. And when they find Wendy’s tent, let’s just say things go as bad as they can possibly go. It doesn’t take long for Woodburn to figure out who was responsible for Wendy’s death, and when he does, every single man involved will have to answer to the fury… of the strongman.
Fury of the Strongman is vintage S. Craig Zahler.
A man is wronged. That man wants revenge. And nothing is going to stand in his way.
I’ve tried, over the years, to figure out Zahler’s formula – why his scripts hit harder than others, and there are a couple of things that stand out.
One, he takes his time in the first act to really set up his characters. A lot of writers rush through this part. They’re scared of people like me saying they’re taking too long. Zahler doesn’t care. He makes sure to give every character a proper description (“Lying there upon a bench that is comprised of raw wood and cinder blocks and holding a barbell with two rigid fists is CHAD WOODBURN, a shirtless thirty-nine year-old in jeans who has receding copper-brown hair and the massive muscular physique of a champion weight-lifter. A GRUNT and a thick EXHALATION issue from his mouth as he pushes three hundred and fifty pounds off of his chest and into the air.”)
He then follows that description with an introductory scene that solidifies who the character is. Here, we meet Woodburn breaking up with his girlfriend because he doesn’t agree with her choice to do a topless act. We now have a very good feel for who this character is. The reason that’s important is because the better we know a character, the more we care. I can’t stress this enough. The newer screenwriters always screw this up. They always write vague characters. Maybe Zahler goes too far and gets too specific. But it’s better to know too much about a character than too little.
What’s amazing about Zahler is that he doesn’t just do this for one character. He does it for ten characters. And he doesn’t compromise. Everyone gets a full description. Everyone gets a full scene that solidifies who they are.
Another thing Zahler does is he’ll include two inciting incidents. He has the early inciting incident that jump starts the movie. And then he has the ‘official’ inciting incident that turns the script from a slow-burn into a full-on thriller. The early inciting incident in “Fury” is the teenaged couple crashing the car and dying. That INCITES the local authorities to kick the carnival out of town, which forces them to set up in another state.
The second (official) inciting incident is when Laughy gets in a fight with a local liquor store owner. After Laughy pulls a gun on him, the owner, Right Hook Ronnie, vows revenge. He rounds up all the scum and heads to the carnival that night to cause trouble. This doesn’t happen until page 70 (!!!), by the way, which is halfway through the script.
Once Zahler gets his two inciting incidents out of the way, the revenge storyline kicks in. From there, it’s all about intense blood and violence. This section of the script isn’t just meant to serve the story, it’s meant to leave an impression on the reader, which is why I think a lot of people can’t handle Zahler. He goes “all in” on his violent scenes.
The weird thing about this script is that it’s very similar to The Brigands of Rattleborge. So similar that if I would’ve read this instead of Rattleborge in 2009, it probably would’ve been the script that I gave an [x] impressive to and placed in my Top 10. But these ultra-violent scripts play differently in 2021 compared to 2009. Something about what’s happened in the world since that time – all the movements, all the craziness – makes what happens in this script feel a little *too* real.
So I found myself wincing more during Fury than I would’ve in the past. Also, I think there’s something to be said about creativity in violence that makes it a little more palatable. That’s what I remember from The Brigands of Rattleborge. There’s that famous scene where our anti-hero cuts a hole in a guy’s body then sends a hamster inside of it to wreak havoc. It was kind of fun in a gross way. Whereas here, we just get brute violence. At least that’s how it felt. Maybe I’m becoming a wimp as I get older.
Despite this, it’s impossible not to be drawn into this story. In a world where we get the same movies packaged in slightly different containers over and over again, “Fury” feels like an original. I’m surprised this hasn’t been more of a priority in Zahler’s extensive screenplay slate. It feels like nothing else out there right now. And it certainly leaves an impression.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Place characters in situations where they’re not welcome. I know this seems obvious. But it’s one of the easiest ways to generate conflict. When Laughy walks into the liquor store, he’s not welcome there. When Woodburn shows up at the local bar, he’s not welcome there. ‘Not welcome’ means CONFLICT and conflict is the key to entertaining audiences. Any time you’re searching for a scene to jumpstart your story, send your characters into a situation where they’re not welcome.
Wait a minute. This script sold for 3 million dollars??
Genre: Comedy/Horror/Blockbuster?
Premise: When a man comes to a psychiatrist claiming to be a werewolf, the psychiatrist attempts to videotape his transformation to prove to him that he’s merely hallucinating, but is shocked to learn that the man is telling the truth.
About: Is Hollywood ruthless or what? It’s 1992. You wrote the crowd-pleasing movie of the summer that got an actress her first Oscar in “My Cousin Vinny.” You struggle for a couple years. But then, in 1997, you write a werewolf script that sells for THREE MILLION DOLLARS to Dreamworks, a deal that Steven Spielberg himself brokered. I’d say life is good, right? Except screenwriter Dale Launer would only get three more produced credits in the next 25 YEARS. Those credits? Eddie. Tom Nu’s Heaven. And The Hustle. Ouch. Might Bad Dog have changed his fortunes had it been made? Let’s find out!
Writer: Dale Launer
Details: 118 pages – 1997 draft
Readability: Medium to Fast
As Scott pointed out to me, this script was purchased right after the birth of Dreamworks, Steven Spielberg’s company. When you’re a new company and have a lot of money, you make big splashy sales to announce yourself. Nobody’s going to put you above the fold if you buy a script for $250,000. But three million? That’s a front page story on Variety right there.
This is a rare look into the minds of two of the biggest names in Hollywood, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg. These two PERSONALLY brokered this deal, which tells you EXACTLY what they like. I bring this up because Spielberg is still involved in his company, Amblin Entertainment, where he’s still buying Spielbergian things, like the Tom Hanks movie, Finch. “Bad Dog” tells me he wants to make a werewolf film.
What often happens with creatives is that once they get their minds set on making a certain type of movie, they *will* make that movie eventually. I saw this with the Russo Brothers. A decade ago they bought a script about a guy who came back from war and robbed banks. After developing it for a while, they abandoned it. A decade later, they optioned the book, “Cherry,” about what? About a guy who just got back from war who starts robbing banks.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you have a great werewolf script, get it to Steven Spielberg. He may want to make it. While you’re taking care of that, let’s figure out why he threw three million dollars down the drain.
45 year old Griffin Black is a nationally renowned psychiatrist whose schtick is to “control your emotions.” One day, Griffin’s visited by a guy named Archie who desperately needs his help. According to Archie, every full moon, he turns into a werewolf. But not just any werewolf, a werewolf that grows bigger and fiercer with every human he eats.
Griffin nods along before explaining to Archie that he’s having hallucinations. What if I proved it to you, Archie asks. Would you believe me then? Sure, Griffin says. Why not. So they go to Griffin’s remote cabin and tie Archie up in preparation for when he “transforms.” Griffin then pops on his video camera and starts taping. Needless to say, Griffin learns fairly quickly that Archie wasn’t lying.
In fact, Archie breaks free of his restraints and the next thing Griffin knows, he’s jumping into his Ferrari and speeding the hell out of the forest – WITH A GIANT WEREWOLF JUST INCHES BEHIND HIM. Griffin gets to a paved road and shoves the car into 4th gear, climbing up to 100 miles per hour. But the werewolf is STILL behind him! It’s only when Griffin gets up to 120 that he’s able to ditch the monster.
Griffin runs to his new girlfriend, criminal attorney Marcy, and explains what just happened. She, of course, doesn’t believe him, so they set up a SECOND taping session so that Marcy can see what he saw. Unfortunately, as they’re getting the experiment ready, 12 cop cars show up. They’re arresting Archie for his suspicious ties to several dozen people who were killed in a remote town.
Guess what that means. That means Archie is going to be arraigned in court ON A FULL MOON. Griffin does everything he can to convince people that Archie is a werewolf and that if they don’t restrain him, they’re all going to die. But they ignore him. And boy do they regret it. During the court session, Archie transforms and immediately jumps onto the judge and BITES HIS HEAD OFF.
After fleeing, Griffin explains to Marcy that he had a bunch of silver bullets special made just in case this happened. So they locate a gun and off they go to try and find Archie. Except Archie is busy running through Los Angeles, eating everything in sight. He even pops by LAX and eats an entire plane full of passengers! It’ll be up to Griffin now – who’s never fired a gun before – to find Archie, shoot him down, and stop the killing!
Remember how I told you a couple of weeks ago that one great set piece can sell a script? Never has there been more proof of that than Bad Dog. I know EXACTLY why this sold. And, after reading the plot synopsis, you should too. Giant were-beast chases Ferrari going 100 miles per hour. That’s why this sold. Spielberg loves a great chase scene and this was the faster crazier version of his famous T-Rex jeep scene. It’s a really cool scene. But is it the only thing this script has going for it?
Actually, no.
Bad Dog may not be reinventing the dog bowl but it’s a script that understands something a lot of writers have forgotten since the 90s. Which is that you shouldn’t be writing screenplays. You should be writing MOVIES. Ironic, I know, since this never became a movie. But it should’ve. I’m sure the reason it didn’t was the same reason any Spielberg project gets killed – he’s got a million projects he wants to do and he can’t make them all.
I’m going to tell you where this script won me over. It was the point where Griffin was about to prove to Marcy that Archie was a werewolf. I was reading it thinking, ‘Oh boy. Here we go. We’re going to repeat the beat in the story WE JUST SAW when Griffin watched Archie become a werewolf.’ But then the cops showed up and arrested Archie. My mind immediately switched over to, “Ohhh, okay. We’ve got a movie now.”
Why do we have a movie?
Because watching somebody change into a werewolf in a controlled environment with two people around isn’t exciting. But watching our future werewolf be pulled into a courtroom with a hundred people sitting around, none of whom know he’s a werewolf? Now you have some serious dramatic irony (we, the audience, know he’s dangerous, but nobody else does) with some serious stakes (every single person here is in danger of being killed).
You can FEEL the suspense. You can FEEL the tension. If they would just listen to Griffin. Please listen to Griffin! Once the werewolf gets loose, it’s open season in the city of Los Angeles and who doesn’t want to watch that? I know I do.
Okay Carson, but there must be something wrong with the script if they never made the movie. Yes, there are a few things wrong. The love story between Griffin and Marcy is cheesy as hell. And it’s hard to buy into Griffin and his ten silver bullets being the only thing that can stop the werewolf. Oh, and the tone is weird. The first half of the movie is all talking. The second half is all action. But none of these things are script killers. They could be worked out in rewrites.
The reason Bad Dog works is because IT’S A MOVIE. A werewolf that keeps getting bigger the more people he eats running around rough-shod through a major metropolitan area is a movie. I can envision that on the big screen. Now, the question becomes, is it a movie in 2021? To be honest, I don’t know. It’s not perfect. But when it comes to non-superhero IP, this is as good as anything the studios are putting out there these days.
Take a look for yourself and see if you agree!
Script link: Bad Dog
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: As crazy as it sounds, Bad Dog did in 1997 what nobody’s been able to do in the 25 years since – come up with a fresh spin on werewolves. When you’re writing about vampires or zombies or werewolves or Dracula or Frankenstein – you want to look for ways to advance the lore. Creating a werewolf that grows bigger with each kill turns a horror monster into a blockbuster monster. No doubt this is exactly what Spielberg liked about the idea.
