Scriptshadow 250 Contest Deadline – 85 days left!

Genre: Biopic
Premise: The story of Joy Mangano, the creator of the Miracle Mop, one of the most successful products in history.
About: The winning combo of David O’Russell and Jennifer Lawrence is back. And talk about a strange writing twist as Annie Mumolo, best known for co-writing the hit comedy, Bridesmaids, with Kristin Wiig, has taken on scripting duties. Joy will be hitting theaters later in the year, smack dab in the middle of Oscar season, and will secure Lawrence her second Oscar (yes, I’m calling it right now – this is a foregone conclusion).
Writer: Annie Mumolo
Details: 136 pages (First Studio Draft – May 17, 2013)

Chant it with me: Bi-o-pics! Bi-o-pics! Bi-o-pics!

Are biopics becoming the new indie superhero movie? Everywhere you look, here comes another one. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before these indie studios find a way to create “universes” out of biopics. Like maybe Nikola Tesla can appear in a movie about River Phoenix. Or Erin Brokovich can cameo in The Imitation Game 2. Can somebody say “bank?”

In all seriousness, I’m shocked that no one’s made a story about Joy Mangano before. If everything I just read is true, this is one of the most amazing true stories ever. I’d go so far as to say if you want to enjoy this script (or the film), don’t read this review or research Joy. The joy (no pun intended) of this script comes from experiencing all the little twists and turns in Joy’s life as she pursues her dream.

However, seeing as this is a textbook example of how to write a great biopic, I would encourage anyone writing one themselves to seek the script out and study it. I’ll talk about why this is such a great script in a second. But first, here’s a quick breakdown of the story.

When Joy marries the perfect man in Tony Mangano, the Long Island native is floating on Cloud 9. After having three kids, you couldn’t draw up a better dream life than if you manufactured white picket fences for a living. But all that comes crashing down when Joy finds out Tony’s been cheating on her.

Most women would’ve swallowed their pride and kept their husbands after this news. But Joy is not “most women.” She divorces Tony and attempts to raise her three kids on her own. That proves tough, but luckily, Joy’s been working on an idea she’s come up with. A mop that magically picks up everything when you use it, the water AND the gunk.

Soon she’s selling these mops outside K-Marts before finally getting a shot to do a run on HSN. After some doofus screws up the pitch on the mop’s first run, Joy gets a shot to personally pitch the product. The result is shocking, with her selling out every single mop she’s produced.

With the help of her father, who secures a manufacturing deal in California, Joy soon has a fledging business. But when the manufacturing company suddenly raises her prices, she suspects something foul is afoot. Being Joy Magano, she personally flies there to find out what’s going on. What she finds out is shocking not just because she realizes everything about her business is a sham, but that it was her own family that did it to her.

Annie Mumolo

This script is a testament to the power of the ACTIVE MAIN CHARACTER. We talk about that all the time. But you really see it in action here. An active main character GOES AFTER THINGS. And we like people who go after things.

For example, when Joy’s product gets picked up by HSN, they have some actor who doesn’t know the product demonstrate it. And he does it all wrong. Naturally, the mop doesn’t sell. So what does Joy do? She personally goes to the HSN headquarters and demands to speak to the president. That’s what I mean by ACTIVE.

Again, later, when Joy can’t get anyone from the manufacturing company on the phone as she’s trying to figure out why they’ve raised her prices, she FLIES TO CALIFORNIA to confront them. Again, that’s an ACTIVE character. Audiences LOVE watching characters do this. And it makes stories so much more exciting. Wouldn’t you rather watch someone who’s passionately purusing something than someone who’s sitting around letting life pass them by?

I suspect a lot will be made of how powerful a role this is for a woman, and they’re right. There should be more roles like this for women. But again, this kind of role needs to be written for EVERYBODY. There aren’t enough roles written with characters who are this active. That’s the main reason “Joy” works.

Speaking of the active stuff, there’s another great screenwriting tip buried in the “go to California” scene. I’m going to guess that, in real life, Joy didn’t go to California. I think she probably made a lot of phone calls and figured out they were screwing her over. However, as a storytelling device, phone calls are boring.

So instead, Mumolo had Joy go to California, and we get a much better scene as a result. While Joy is questioning the people at the company, her friend is outside and sees men sneaking Joy’s mop molds into a truck. Her and Joy then follow the truck, and eventually get an officer to stop it, and confront the man driving. This is way way way more entertaining than any scene you could’ve gotten on a phone call.

There’s other things about this script that make it stand out as well. Take Tony, the cheating husband. What are most writers going to do with this character? They’re going to vilify him, right? It’s the obvious thing to do so it must be the right choice. Well, instead, after their initial break-up, Tony actually becomes a supporter of Joy’s. He wants her to succeed.

This minor unexpected touch made the movie feel more like reality. Because if every character follows the typical movie blueprint, people become aware that they’re watching a movie. When characters act unexpectedly – outside of stereotypes or clichés – it tricks the viewer into thinking they’re watching real life.

And actually, I loved who the villain ended up being (major spoilers ahead). The villain was the father. He ended up deceiving Joy and stealing her patent in order to make a buck. And when you think about what you want out of a villain – which is to infuse frustration and anger into the audience – there’s really no better person to do that than family.

I mean, who the hell cares if Ultron screwed you over. You don’t even know the guy. But your own father?? The person who raised you?? The person who you trusted more than anything?? When it’s THAT person who deceived you, it’s going to hit on a 100x deeper level than any villain Marvel can come up with.

With that being said, the father is the only element here that needs further development. He only becomes a major player late in the movie. Before that, we saw bits and pieces of him as well as hearing about him peripherally (he divorced Joy’s mom so she always complained about him). We needed to see a couple of more scenes with him and Joy early so his deception at the end hits harder.

But other than that, this script is the bee’s kneecaps. And I have to give props to both Russell and Mumolo. Russell gets a lot of heat for his activities on set. But there isn’t a director out there right now who understands storytelling better than him. And I’m not going to lie. I totally pegged Annie Mumolo as a lightweight after Bridesmaids, someone who benefitted greatly from a friendship with Kristin Wiig. But this script proves she’s the real deal, and might even win her an Oscar.

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (Top 25!)
[ ] genius

What I learned: Montages are often boring and skipped over by readers. People aren’t interested in reading through a bunch of random shots. So I love what Mumolo does here. She NAMES her montages. This instantly gives the montage a theme and therefore strips away their randomness. So for example, on page 31 we get the “Joy Without Tony” montage, to signify her new daily routine after her divorce. Then later the “7000 Mops” montage, where she must somehow produce 7000 mops. It’s a small thing, but for someone who hates montages, I found it clever.

Scriptshadow 250 Contest Deadline – 87 days left!

Genre: Superhero
Premise: When Tony Stark accidentally unleashes a villainous robot upon the world, it’s up the Avengers to send him back where he came from.
About: Avengers: Age of Ultron was supposed to break all box office records this weekend. However, Disney never could’ve predicted when they snagged the date two years ago that Floyd Mayweather would finally stop ducking Manny Pacquiao. And hence, the Saturday ticket sales for Avengers were way lower than expected. This meant that Avengers finished below one of the 37 Harry Potter movies for the single-weekend box office record, although analysts are still trying to figure out which Harry Potter movie it actually was (because of, you know, how many there were). Still, the film made 8 quatillion dollars so Disney’s not fretting too much. This completes Joss Whedon’s contribution to the series. The next two Avengers movies will be passed off to Captain America 2 directors Joe and Anthony Russo. After that, things become interesting. The Marvel Universe will likely choose to reboot everything (from the actors to the films themselves) which is a phase they haven’t had to deal with yet. Until then, though, viva la superheroes!
Writer: Joss Whedon (based on the comic book by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby)
Details: 141 minutes

In a recent Scriptshadow Newsletter I commented how we were moving away from the dark serious world of superheroes that Christopher Nolan initiated into more fun-filled fair. If Avengers: Age of Ultron is any indication of the kind of fun we’ll be getting, please bring back Nolan.

I purposefully avoided all details about this movie going in as I wanted to see it fresh. And I noticed something curious almost immediately. “Man,” I thought, “Joss Whedon sure did an aggressive director’s pass on this screenplay.” How did I know this? Well, because literally every fourth line of dialogue was a quip. So Iron Man would say something like, “Everybody needs to loosen up.” And Captain America would reply with something like, “Says the man encased in metal.”

This would’ve been fine had it happened, oh, I don’t know, three? Maybe four times? But when it happens SEVENTY-FIVE F***ING TIMES, it’s a little overboard, don’t you think? Screenwriters all have their go-to moves. For Tarantino, it’s his long dialogue scenes where the characters appear to be talking about nothing. For Woody Allen it’s a character who drones on about the meaninglessness of life. And with Joss Whedon, it’s quips.

Part of being a good screenwriter is restraining yourself so you don’t keep going back to the well. Cause if you start doing the same thing enough, the audience begins to notice it, and then you’ve done the worst thing a writer can do, which is break the suspension of disbelief.

After the film, I checked online to see that Whedon didn’t just do a director’s pass, he’s got sole screenwriting credit! Which explained this and so much more. And by “so much more,” I mean that Avengers was basically an extended episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Heck, he even found a way to sneak a witch into the plot!

“Ultron” centers on Tony Stark’s continued obsession with pushing the boundaries of technology. He’s created an artificially intelligent being inside his computer, which quickly finds itself an exterior robot body to jump into. This robot’s name is Ultron and he really hates Tony Stark and the Avengers because… okay, let’s just be real here, because they wouldn’t have a movie otherwise.

Ultron decides that he’s really into meteors for no reason and rigs the underside of a small Eastern European city to break away from the earth, fly up into the stratosphere, then shoot back down to earth like a meteor and – I guess – destroy half of earth in the process. Although it’s never made clear how this would actually destroy half of the earth.

Despite the Avengers having the strongest God in the universe, the strongest robot in the world, and the strongest monster in the world, they determine they can’t defeat Ultron alone, and so they create… something I can only describe as a dull-colored caped crusader. Despite a lot of the superheroes trying to explain what this man is (“He’s a biological extension of an A.I. program with Tony Stark’s virtual assistant’s voice?”), nobody knows for sure. What we do know is that he’s the strongest man ever. Which gives them a fighting chance to defeat Ultron.

Putting my quipping issues on hold for the time being, I noticed a few things about Avengers 2 that I hadn’t thought of going in. First, it LITERALLY has something for everybody. It has a great actor in Robert Downey Jr. to bring in the older crowd. It has Chris Hemsworth to bring in the swooning female Fifty Shades crowd. It has Scarlett Johannson to bring in the internet-distracted teenage boy crowd. It has superheroes to bring in the kid crowd.

There’s a reason this movie will make more money than any other movie this year (yes, probably more than even my beloved Star Wars). It’s the PERFECT STUDIO MOVIE. It gets every single demo into the theater. And it does so ORGANICALLY.

By that I mean it’s not adding these things to the film specifically to bring in certain demographics. Audiences can smell when studios do that from a mile away. The premise of a team of superheroes trying to save the world naturally hits every demo out there. Which is really rare.

And yet, as a standalone story, Avengers: Age of Ultron, fails. It wasn’t as bad as the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, but it makes that classic mistake all superhero sequels make – that MORE must be better. More superheroes. More villains. More battles. More storylines. And that NEVER works. And I know that Joss Whedon knows this. I’ve heard him talk about it before.

Look at a movie like Captain America 2, which many consider to be the best Marvel film so far. It’s no coincidence that that film was one of the smallest in scope of all the Marvel movies. This forced them to be more creative and come up with better ideas (instead of bigger ones). Two of the most memorable sequences in that film took place in a) an elevator. And b) a stopped car! And both were FAR more compelling than Ultron’s giant city floating up into the clouds.

Or take Ultron’s best set-piece: Hulk vs. Iron Man. That was a cool fucking set piece! I loved this “Iron Man Emergency Pack” that shot down from a satellite and kept equipping Iron Man’s suit whenever the Hulk would bust it up. Genius idea there.

And yet I FELT NOTHING during the fight. Why? Because it had nothing to do with anything. There were no stakes attached (story or emotions-wise) at all. Let’s say Iron Man loses the fight. The Hulk then what? Kills 700 people instead of 500 before turning back into Bruce Banner? I didn’t even know what city they were in so why would I care about who died? It’s clear the sequence was put there for one reason and one reason only – because it was cool. And that’s the worst reason to put a set piece into your screenplay. You add something to your story first BECAUSE IT MATTERS. Then you figure out how to make it cool.

I’ve said this before – it’s very difficult to steer a screenplay for a movie this big into any sort of creative vision. You’re dealing with too much money and too many powerful forces wielding their influence over the final product. Still, I was hoping for something a little better than what I got. Here’s where I’d rank Ultron along with the rest of the Marvel films.

1) Iron Man
2) Guardians of the Galaxy
3) Captain America 2
4) Avengers
5) The Incredible Hulk
6) Captain America 1
7) Avengers 2
8) Thor
9) Iron Man 3
10) Iron Man 2
11) Thor 2

[ ] what the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Avoid using premonitions at all costs. They’re the sloppiest most hackneyed storytelling device there is, and are almost always used as a cheat. In screenwriting, you must constantly come up with REASONS for why your characters do things. And the clearest most powerful reasons are always the best. Indiana Jones needs to find the Ark because if he doesn’t, Hitler will. A premonition is the opposite of that. It’s a vague vision that holds no weight in reality. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won’t. So it doesn’t carry nearly the punch that REAL motivation does. Look at a couple of really bad movies that have used this device in the past. Matrix: Revolutions (Neo has a premonition that Trinity will die). Star Wars: Episode 3 (Annakin has a vision that Padme will die). And here in Ultron, we have Thor going off on some tangent adventure because he had a premonition. It’s no coincidence that that ended up being the most pointless thread of the entire movie. — The one genre premonitions can work in is horror films. But they must be intricately woven into the story. They can’t just be slapped in there to get your character to do something you’re too lazy to come up with a reason for otherwise.

Keep those Scriptshadow 250 entries coming. In the meantime, here’s another batch of scripts to check out. The amount of horror scripts sent in this week outranked all other genres 4 to 1. You guys really like horror! I was able to slip in a few non-horror scripts though, for those who don’t want to get their scare on. Make sure to give the writers feedback in the comments section!

Title: Vampires in Sunland
Genre: Horror
Logline: A young girl coming into adulthood must battle a motley group of vampires who have taken her boyfriend hostage.
Why you should read: I wanted to try my hand at something more commercial, for my scripts usually are not, and so “Vampires in Sunland” (Sunland, California) was the result. As a fan of the film Lost Boys, I wanted to bring a little of that flavor back into the vampire genre, but not without adding my own dash of spices. In this case a demonic element. I also wanted to play with gender roles, in this the female is the heroic action star and the male is the “mansel” in distress she must save. As well as a main villain who can change genders whenever it wants to best suit its victims.

Title: Ghostlight
Genre: Horror
Logline: When a series of strange murders occur during rehearsals for the school play, an awkward drama geek must find out who or what is behind the killings- or there will be no opening night!
Why You Should Read: I’ve been a drama teacher for the past ten years, and been in the theatre for over twenty- I know theatre, it’s superstitions and mystery. I also know teen agers, what they like and how the speak. I have had my students read the script, and across the board they love it and are begging me to get it made. Think “Cabin in the Woods” meets “Glee.”

Title: Inspired
Genre: Crime/Drama
Logline: During the hedonism of 90s Hollywood, a desperate writer’s career unexpectedly blows up when he starts writing about the crimes he’s committing, putting his Hollywood success on a collision course with the law.
Why you should read: My previous submission (Devil in You, Oct ’14) was relatively well received, “the minimum level of quality required to get made” is basically how it was described. So not outstanding, but still readable. — I believe I’ve progressed with this script. Hopefully I’ve been able to take on board some of the notes from yourself and the SS community about issues in my previous script in order to take ‘Inspired’ to the next level. — 1990s Hollywood was a crazy time, the town’s wealth was reflected in the insane ‘spec wars’, huge actors salaries, and notorious parties. I hope all of that and more is reflected in the script.

Title: The Big Decay
Genre: Film Noir/Horror
Logline: A private detective finds himself embroiled in a scandal that involves junkies with zombie-like behavior.
Why you should read: Some of my favorite films are classic film noirs such as Out Of The Past, Double Indemnity, and The Asphalt Jungle. My other favorite genre is horror movies. I thought to myself, “What if I combined these to create something unique?” With that as my basis, The Big Decay was born. I’m not sure if I’m considered a professional, or amateur. I’ve written and produced a straight to DVD horror film, and I’ve produced other feature films. Technically, I guess I’m a professional. However, I have no industry contacts, and no agent.

Title: Universal Love
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Logline: A female writer suffering from writer’s block develops a romantic bond with a man who she thinks is perfect, unaware that he is the alien from her story.
Why You Should Read: I am Kristopher M. Newcome. I enjoy writing and reading screenplays. The film’s logline took second in the Ultimate Logline contest. It won in March under the title, “Space, Time, and Beyond.” The category was female protagonists. I get to attend Scriptfest at the end of May. I get to listen to several speakers including Diablo Cody, and pitch my script to Twenty executives. I think it is really amazing what you do, and I hope you enjoy the script if you pick Universal Love to review.

While everyone clamors to perfect their Scriptshadow 250 entries, a bold group of screenwriting gummy bears choose to place their letter spaghetti in front of the interconnected computer sphere in hopes of rainbow transformation. May we wish them a transition to a higher state of being.

Title: To Boldly Go
Genre: Biopic
Logline: In 1964, writer Gene Roddenberry struggles to get his vision on television – a show called “Star Trek”.
Why you should read: Three reasons. One – unlike other biopics which give you the whole Wikipedia routine, my script focuses on a year-long period in a man’s life, during which he has a clear goal. Two, it could generate a discussion on the act of using licensed properties you do not own in a spec written as a sample. (Like “Wonka”, which I am certain will not be made unless Roald Dahl’s zombie corpse approaches a production office, gobstopper in hand, and signs off on it while offering casting notes: “Two words: Get Gosling.”). And, three, my script comes from the heart. My father passed on in ’91, when I was kid, and one of the things he instilled in me was a love of science fiction, particularly “Star Trek”.

Title: The Camelot Club
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A religious man and his sexually deviant cousin unexpectedly inherit a run down strip club and have two weeks to make fifty thousand dollars or be killed by a seven foot transsexual pimp.
Why You Should Read: What do you get when you add together a 6’3” ginger Pole and an average height, golden tan Croatian? The Camelot Club, a combination of tanned, god-like overconfidence and the inherit self-loathing that comes with being orange and pale. We came together to write this script so we could split the crushing despair that comes when someone inevitably tells you your scripts reads like German is your native tongue (an actual criticism I received on my very first script, which hurt even more considering the only language I know is English). In the end we are just a couple of struggling artists looking to be accepted into the soft, voluptuous bosom of the screenwriting community (an agent and management would be nice, too). After learning the English language more better, and getting the screenwriting turds out of our systems, we put our minds together and produced The Camelot Club. And now I would like to end on a testimonial from my bi-polar, alcoholic brother, “…this script was so good it made me wish I was tri-polar…”. Enjoy!

Title: The Stone Addendum
Genre: Action
Logline: An Israeli secret agent has less than two days to prevent a terrorist hostage exchange in the U.S., but he must rely on help from an innocent Muslim woman that he’s ordered to kill once the mission is complete.
Why you should read: This script appeared in AOW a ways back to pleasant but uneventful reviews. Since then, with the help of Carson’s notes, it’s gone through a major makeover, and registered a Page Quarterfinals, a BlueCat Top 5%, and most recently a Top 25 in the Tracking Board. The latter billed it as TAKEN meets THE HURT LOCKER, and “the perfect blend of brains and brawn.” I think I’m in the red zone on this one, but can’t seem to punch it into the end zone with producers. Feedback from the SS community would be more than helpful. Thanks in advance to anyone taking a look.

Title: Tammy
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A young man from a strict religious family awakens from a severe head injury with the personality of a vulgar, slutty party girl named Tammy.
Why you should read: (from Tammy) heyyyy. so like, i didnt write this er whatever. the movie. but its awesome. mainly cuz its about me. myy names Tammy… & yes, im way hotter then that slam pig melissa mccarthy who took my name and shat on it. i like to party & get schwasty, unlike my dumpy foster mom. but seriously. u hafta read this. normaly, id suck u off, but i cant do that thru email… so quit beatin ur ham & open this script. u wont be sorry & if u r… gimme ur address & ill make it up to u. im like UPS… i deliver my box to strangers ;)

Title: Tampa Bay
Genre: Buddy Action
Logline: An old, homophobic, U.S. Marshal must seek the assistance of a gay FBI agent to solve the murder of a neighbor’s daughter.
Why You Should Read: I think it’s about time we had an action hero who just happens to be gay. He should be a badass first, and gay second. So that’s exactly what I wrote.

Okay so when I try and explain to writers what Hollywood is looking for, they often look at me sideways, as if to say, “Well that’s dumb,” and then they go off and write what THEY want to write. They then come back eight months later and say, “Why doesn’t anyone want to read my script?” And I say to them, “Maybe it’s because you ignored me when I told you what Hollywood wants and wrote something only you want.”

So I’ve decided to parade out the cold hard facts. I want you to know the EXACT subject matters that dominate the box office right now. So I’ve taken the top 20 films of last year and I’m going to post JUST their subject matter. Not the title or anything else. That way you can see, without anything else clouding your judgment, what Hollywood is selling.

Now because no one here’s expecting Paramount to offer them their next big comic book writing assignment, I’ve followed this with the TOP 20 SPEC SCRIPTS in 2014 and their subject matter. So you can see exactly what subjects Hollywood responds to in spec form.

What I’m about to highlight is NOT the only way to find success in Hollywood. There’s an entire independent route you can take as well, which requires less splashy premises but more legwork on your part (as we always say here – the less “high concept” your script, the more effort you’ll have to put into getting it sold). Still, I think this gives you a good approximation of the KINDS of things you should be writing about if you want Hollywood to take notice.

2014 TOP 20 MOVIES – SUBJECT MATTER

1) War
2) Dystopian future
3) Space aliens
4) Superheroes
5) Toys
6) Fantasy world
7) Robots
8) Witches
9) Superheroes
10) Robots
11) Dystopian future
12) Superheroes
13) Monsters
14) Undercover cops (comedy)
15) Fighting Animals
16) Space travel
17) Dragons
18) Missing woman
19) Dystopian Future
20) Frat houses (comedy)

Okay, now let’s do the same for spec screenplays! Sometimes categorizing specs can be difficult. A director directing his own spec screenplay is a lot different than a writer selling a “naked” spec to a studio. So I’m going to stay away from writer-director projects in this analysis (i.e. No “Interstellar”). Also, it’s kind of hard to gauge the subject matter of a spec without knowing the genre, so I’ll include that too.

2014 TOP 20 SPECS TURNED FILMS – GENRE AND SUBJECT MATTER

1) Comedy – Frat houses
2) Comedy – Cops/Crime
3) Sci-fi – Superhuman powers
4) Thriller – One man takes on gang
5) Thriller – Danger on an airplane
6) Comedy – Pretend cops
7) Fantasy – Dracula
8) Thriller – Stalker
9) Action – Dangerous weather
10) Drama – Returning home (coming-of-age)
11) Romantic Comedy – Vacation in Africa
12) Comedy – Old man takes care of kid (coming-of-age)
13) Romantic Comedy – sex
14) Thriller – Dangerous news coverage
15) Thriller – Terrorism
16) Comedy – Sports (football draft)
17) Comedy – 20s males trying to get laid
18) Sci-fi – The Singularity (artificial intelligence)
19) Horror – dangerous pregnancy
20) Romantic Comedy – Man must raise granddaughter (coming-of-age)

When I finished compiling this list, I noticed two things. First, the subject matter for the top films of the year were extremely predictable. Which is good, in a way. We know exactly what the masses want (aliens, robots, monsters, the future) so we should be able to give it to them. But what I was really surprised about was the variety I found in the subject matter of the spec screenplays. It was way more varied. It seems to me that if you’re okay with not trying to write a 300 million dollar blockbuster, you have a lot of options. What did you guys find?

Oh, and for those of you who were wondering what the actual movies were for each list, here they are, reprinted, film and subject matter…

2014 TOP 20 BOX OFFICE WITH SUBJECT MATTER

1) American Sniper – War
2) The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1 – Dystopian Future
3) Guardians of the Galaxy – Space aliens
4) Captain America: Winter Soldier – Superheroes
5) The Lego Movie – Toys
6) The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies – Fantasy characters
7) Transformers: Age of Extinction – Robots
8) Maleficent – Witches
9) X-Men: Days of Future Past – Superheroes
10) Big Hero 6 – Robots
11) Dawn of the Planet of the Apes – Dystopian future
12) The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – Superheroes
13) Godzilla – Monsters
14) 22 Jump Street – Undercover cops (comedy)
15) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Fighting Animals
16) Interstellar – Space travel
17) How to Train Your Dragon 2 – Dragons
18) Gone Girl – Missing woman
19) Divergent – Dystopian Future
20) Neighbors – frat houses (comedy)

2014 TOP 20 BOX OFFICE SPECS WITH GENRE AND SUBJECT MATTER

1) Neighbors – Comedy – Frat houses
2) Ride Along – Comedy – Cops/Crime
3) Lucy – Sci-fi – Superhuman powers
4) The Equalizer – Thriller – One man takes on gang
5) Non-Stop – Thriller – Airplane danger
6) Let’s Be Cops – Comedy – Pretend cops
7) Dracula Untold – Fantasy – Dracula
8) No Good Deed – Thriller – Stalker
9) Into the Storm – Action – Dangerous weather
10) The Judge – Drama – Returning home
11) Blended – Romantic Comedy – Vacation in Africa
12) St. Vincent – Dramedy – Old man takes care of young kid
13) Sex Tape – Comedy – sex
14) Nightcrawler – Thriller – dangerous news coverage
15) 3 Days to Kill – Thriller – Terrorism
16) Draft Day – Dramedy – a sports draft
17) That Awkward Moment – Comedy – Trying to get laid
18) Transcendence – Sci-fi – the singularity (artificial intelligence)
19) Devil’s Due – Horror – dangerous pregnancy
20) And So It goes – Romantic Comedy – Man must raise granddaughter (coming of age)

And finally, a friendly reminder to sign up for The Scriptshadow 250 Screenwriting Contest. The deadline is now at 3 months and 7 days! And the contest is FREE!