I was thinking of all these movies that have been invading my streaming services as of late. As we get further and further away from top-level Hollywood films, I’ve gotten used to “average” being the new “good.”

A lot’s been made of Netflix’s new “Top 10” list, which I admit I like. It helps me spot movies every once in a while that I, otherwise, would’ve missed. Like The Platform. But mostly what it’s told me is that America’s bar is getting lower by the day. Big splashy headlines touted The Old Guard taking the number 1 slot on Netflix a couple of weeks ago. “A sequel is coming!” we’re told, emphatically. But should we really trust a system that has The Kissing Booth 2 as its current champion?

I’ve even seen articles trying to convince me that a Dave Franco directed movie about an AirBnB rental that stars his wife is worth checking out. I don’t wanna be mean here so I’m just going to say, I’m not checking out a bored married couple’s weekend filmmaking experiment.

All this got me thinking about what projects are floating in the Development Hell netherworld that would be SO MUCH BETTER than anything we’re getting at the moment. It might surprise you that I wouldn’t put many of my [NEWLY UPDATED!!] Top 25 scripts on that list. The reason a lot of those scripts remain unmade is because they have certain challenges that are hard to overcome.

Desperate Hours is stuck over at Johnny Depp’s production house and will only ever get made if he decides to make it. Executive Search is a thousand years old and people in Hollywood always assume old scripts that never made it through the system have something wrong with them. Origin of a Species is a really weird script that doesn’t fit into any marketable genre. The writer of Dogs of Babel told me himself that it’s such an oddball premise, everything has to line up perfectly if it’s ever going to get made.

Hollywood is such a weird place that you never know what’s going to get a project through the system. The only reason a movie about a kid who idolizes Hitler got made is because the writer became the hottest name in Hollywood. Would we have ever seen JoJo Rabbit had Waititi not directed Thor: Ragnarok? My guess is no.

This leads us to today’s question, which is, what script have I read in my ten years at Scriptshadow that I am still SHOCKED hasn’t been made into a movie yet? We’re talking a movie I’m POSITIVE would make at least 750 million worldwide. Does that help any of you? It’s likely only Scriptshadow OGs know the answer to this one.

This clue might help. There are three famous movies/franchises that EVER SINCE THEY CAME OUT, Hollywood readers have been desperately looking for the “next” version of. Those three franchises are Goonies, Raiders, and Ghostbusters.

I’m always on the lookout for the next version of those. But there’s a reason we haven’t gotten one. It’s because if you veer too close to the star that is Raiders/Goonies/Ghostbusters, you’re accused of copying. “This is exactly like Raiders,” the reader tells you. I cannot convey the sheer number of Goonies-wannabe scripts that have come across my desktop. And they’re all exactly the same – they’re “Goonies.”

On the flip side, if you write something *too* different, people don’t associate it with the original film, which is the whole point of writing something similar, so that people can say, “This is the next Raiders!”

Well, in all the years I’ve been reading, one spec script has managed to do it. And that script is… DRUM ROLL PLEASE… anybody know? Anyone? Anyone?

Roundtable by Brian K. Vaughn.

The logline is, “Merlin assembles a group of modern-day knights to battle a resurrected ancient evil, but all that’s available are an alcoholic ex-Olympian, a geriatric actor, a grumpy billionaire, and a nerdy scientist.”

This supernatural comedy has the goofy sensibility of a team of inexperienced guys tasked with achieving something otherworldly. But it substitutes fantasy in place of ghosts. This allows it to fall squarely into the “the next Ghostbusters” bullseye without being exactly like Ghostbusters.

So why hasn’t it been made? I don’t know. I once spoke with a prominent director who looked into making it and he told me there were too many people attached due to lapsing rights and a new team coming on and then that team leaving then a new team coming on. So it had eight million people attached to it. It gets hard to make a movie when you have that many people who have a say and that many people you have to pay.

Still, this seems like such a slam dunk to me, I’m surprised it’s still languishing in Development Hell. I mean, with all these Streamers now in the picture, you would think it’d be a drop in the bucket to commit $150 million to the film. All Apple has to do is announce a new iPhone and they’ll have that money in five minutes. Five minutes gets you the next Ghostbusters!

Getting back to the original question I posed above – about how the bar has gotten so low – I’m sure many of you are frustrated that you continue to struggle. “If Hollywood is so comfortable with average,” you’re probably thinking, “how come my average (or slightly above average) screenplay isn’t getting noticed? Shouldn’t what I’m writing be good enough for their low bar? My script is certainly better than The Kissing Booth 2.”

And this is where aspiring screenwriters get it wrong. You don’t get noticed by writing something just as average as that average film you saw last week. Hollywood doesn’t reward, “I can do that too” writing. They only notice when somebody is above and beyond the other writers.

Think about it. Let’s say you’re in fashion. And you’re standing in a crowd of other fashion hopefuls. If you’re dressed like them, why would anybody notice you? The only way to be noticed is to dress in a way that’s above and beyond what everyone else is wearing.

You have to STICK OUT.

You have to blow people away.

Do it with your voice (Christy Hall). Do it with your concept (Roundtable). Do it with your mythology (Street Rat Allie). Do it with your excellent plotting (Fargo). Do it with your dialogue (Diablo Cody). Write a script that takes advantage of that big strength of yours and then show us why you’re so much better than everyone else.

Because as someone who is currently reading a lot of amateur screenplays, I continue to see the same critical mistake. Writers are aiming for too low of a bar. But it’s even more specific than that. There are two types of people who make this mistake. The first type don’t know any better. They’re newer writers who’ve written less than three screenplays. These writers haven’t gotten enough feedback or studied the industry enough to learn that the goal of a script isn’t to be “just as good” as the lowest common denominator.

The second type, however, do know the bar is higher for those trying to break in. And therefore, they’re the ones I’m worried about. Because if you’ve heard me say this before and you’ve discovered on your own that it’s the case, yet you’re still trying to break in with average material – shame on you. You should know, at this point, that that won’t get you anywhere.

I just finished a screenplay consultation and I only noticed afterward that I had used the phrase, “liked it didn’t love it” in the notes. “Liked it didn’t love it” aren’t bad scripts by any measure. But they’re not what you’re aiming for because it’s rare you’re going to get people interested in “like.” In my experience, people only ever get excited about “love.” And if they do like a “like,” it’s usually not long before they’ve moved onto something else. Cause it’s a lot easier to fall out of like than fall out of love. Just ask all my ex-girlfriends.

I know this all sounds harsh and depressing but don’t think of it that way. All I’m trying to do is be that voice in your head that says, “push harder.” There are so many times I read a scene and I think, “This scene could’ve been so much better if the writer had just pushed themselves.” Cause that attitude of not settling for average is the starting point for success in ANY endeavor. Not just screenwriting.

So keep on writing, my friends. And if you have the next Raiders, Ghostbusters, or Goonies, send it my way. :)

I was having a rough go of it with the Last Great Screenplay Contest entries this week.

There was one point where I read 23 “no’s” in a row.

One of the biggest mistakes continues to be starting with the wrong scene. I say “wrong scene” because you can write a scene that’s technically well written and shows that you’re a good writer, but if it’s a boring scene, it was the wrong scene to start with.

An example of this would be a scene that sets up a location. So if you’re writing about a small town in the middle of nowhere (think “It”) and you want your first scene to describe this town, you might describe the general setting (it’s hidden inside a vast forest), the main strip (all the cute buildings along the street), the people (what people in this town generally look like and how they act). As well as any other interesting details.

Here’s the problem with that, though. That’s a MOVIE first scene. It’s not a SCRIPT first scene. The scene I just described would be perfect for an opening credits scene in a film, the kind of scene you see at the beginning of a lot of movies.

But you don’t want to do that in a script. Because readers lose interest quickly. A bunch of description – unless we’re talking about an INCREDIBLY UNIQUE world – is only going to lure the reader into a bored state.

Look at Street Rat Allie Punches Her Ticket. You could’ve written ten pages of description on that city alone it was so unique. But, instead, the writer starts with a scene where something is happening. Our hero’s best friend is leaving her forever.

So I want to remind everyone that your best bet for capturing the reader’s attention is to write a SITUATION. What is a situation again? I’ll tell you in a second. But it just so happens that after those 23 “no’s” in a row, just as I was about to give up for the day, a script came around and pulled me in. Here is the first scene from that script…

**THIS** is a situation.

We have a deliveryman who’s hiding inside his truck. We have a cop outside that truck who wants to break in for some reason. That’s a situation, folks. It’s a situation because the character has been presented with a problem that they must deal with. It’s an interesting situation because the stakes seem to be high. Our deliveryman’s life may be in danger.

Also, this scene has some interesting questions attached to it. Why is a presumably American Amazon truck in Mexico? Why is this cop so lackadaisical at first? Why is a cop threatening this person? What does the cop want? When he gets into the truck, we expect an immediate attack but instead the cop starts looking through the packages. This tells me the writer is going to constantly surprise me. Cause I thought for sure he was breaking in there to immediately kill the driver.

There are a lot of reasons why this opening scene caught my interest. But the main reason was that the writer set up a situation.

Does that mean this is the only way to pull a reader in? Of course not. Some readers are more patient than others. They’re more willing to sit through non-active description. And if you have an amazingly original voice, you can probably rope readers in just on that alone.

But my question to you would be, why risk it? Why not pull ALL your readers in as opposed to just the patient ones?

And remember, a situation doesn’t always have to be this pulse-pounding explosion of a scene. All you have to do is create a situation that has some sort of problem for somebody, and pull us in by making us wonder how they’re going to deal with that problem.

The very first script in the contest that got a “Yes” from me had a little girl walking along a field, and she stumbles upon a naked bloodied pregnant woman who has been hanged from a tree and is desperately trying to get down. It’s a problem. It’s a situation that the girl now must deal with.

The thing that frustrates me so much is the ego in a lot of writers in that they believe they’re above that. They believe they’re above a splashy situation. They’re such good writers that they’re going to describe their world and their characters and any other exposition they need to get to and you, the reader, are going to take it because you owe them that. You owe them, the writer, that attention because they worked hard on this script and they deserve it.

I got news for you. That’s not how the real world works. It’s definitely not how Hollywood works. People don’t owe you anything. It’s the other way around. You owe them entertainment or they’re moving on.

By the way, I am not saying you have to write some whiz-bang real-time thriller where something’s happening every second to keep the reader invested. You can write a slow story and as long as you understand how to create a series of situations that are interesting, we’ll be right there with you. Even in the first scene.

A Quiet Place starts out very slow. It’s a family going to get things from a store. The big OMG moment doesn’t come until five minutes into the movie. But the writers knew how to create a suspenseful mysterious situation, they knew how to hint at danger even if we didn’t yet understand what that danger was, and hence, we were pulled in.

Look at the beginning of Parasite. I mean how much more artsy can you get than a subtitled Korean movie. And yet that script starts out with a problem the characters have to solve (the wifi they were stealing doesn’t work anymore so they can’t get internet and they need it to do their job). That then segues into another problem, which is that the family needs to hurry up and fold a bunch of pizza boxes.

The scene isn’t going to win any opening scene awards but something is HAPPENING. There are issues that need to be resolved which put your characters into action. And characters in action will lead to more interesting situations than characters who don’t have to act.

The reason screenwriters continue to struggle with this is that sometimes you go to movies and the first scene ISN’T a situation. The scene might even be agonizingly slow. And you get to say, “See Carson! You’re wrong!” But, remember, not all movies start as a spec script. A lot of them don’t need to go through the process of grabbing a reader. So they don’t have to worry about that part of the story.

There’s a reason that one of the most famous spec scripts of all time, Scream, starts with one of the greatest scenes of all time. The writer, Kevin Williamson, knew he had to do that because he’d spent years upon years sending scripts out to people, getting no traction, and through that process, learning how important it was to grab a reader right away.

I think it was William Goldman who said the thing that kept him up at night most was, “Are they bored?” He said in every scene, at every juncture in his scripts, he is thinking, “Are they bored?” It’s a good mindset to have as a writer. Cause we can trick ourselves into thinking that anything we write is necessary. But if you take that second to put yourself in the reader’s head and ask if there’s a possibility they’d be bored by this scene, and the answer is yes, you should go back and rewrite the scene to make it better. That’s true for every scene. But there’s nowhere it’s more true than the first scene. I know that because it was proven to me 23 times in a row.

It’s time to find out what that 200 million dollar Russo Brothers Netflix project is all about!

Genre: Action
Premise: The world’s number one killer, The Gray Man, is targeted by a giant European corporation when their business model is threatened by one of his hits.
About: Last week, the Russo Brothers signed a deal with Netflix to make their highest budgeted project yet, The Gray Man, which will star Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling. The movie is based on a relatively successful series of novels by Mark Greaney. To be clear, the Russo Brothers are rewriting the script for their iteration of what, they hope will be, a major franchise for Netflix. The script I’m reviewing today was written by Adam Cozad and made the Black List in 2010. Yes, that’s how long they’ve been trying to get this made. By the way, this is why so many people quit Hollywood. They don’t have the patience!
Writer: Adam Cozad (based on the book by Mark Greaney)
Details: 122 pages (Cozad 2010 draft)

Yesterday was awesome.

A great Top 25 script came out of nowhere. Not only that, but it’s one of the rare Top 25s that didn’t have people rushing to the comments declaring, “This sucks. You’re so wrong Carson!” Imagine that. A good script that people actually agree on. A true rarity in this business.

Point is, I was riding a script high. And The Gray Man was the comedian who comes out after Jerry Seinfeld. There are tough acts to follow. And then there is Street Rat Allie Punches Her Ticket. Could this 200 million dollar behemoth and hopeful franchise starter hang with yesterday’s Nicholl winner? Let’s find out…

A mysterious super-assassin takes out the Nigerian president on a visit to Syria. The president’s brother, under Nigerian law, assumes his position. But he knows he won’t keep the presidency long unless he demonstrates an act of power. So he calls up Madame Laurent, a businesswoman who has billions of dollars of interest in Nigeria and informs her that if she doesn’t find and kill the assassin who killed his brother in seven days, he will denounce her business, effectively destroying the company.

So Laurent enlists her fixer, Kurt Reigel, a nasty German man, to find the assassin. Reigel traces the assassin to Iraq and puts in a call to a CIA rep there named Trent Archer. Reigel suspects the assassin is CIA so he needs Trent’s help. Trent does everything in his power to figure out the killer’s identity and comes up with a theory that turns to be right – he’s Court Gentry, a former CIA agent who went ballistic on his superior, killing him.

Reigel is able to identify Court’s handler, an older rich British gentleman named Fitzroy, and raids his house to kidnap Fitzroy, his adult daughter, and his two granddaughters, aged 7 and 6. Reigel takes them all to a command center and teams Fitzroy with Archer to find and kill Court Gentry. If they fail, Reigel kills the grandkids.

Fitzroy immediately enlists four kill-teams with a ten million euro reward for whoever gets the kill. These teams include the Lebanese, the Serbs, the Russians, and The Korean (yes, this guy’s so good they only need one of him).

Problem is, Court Gentry is next to impossible to kill. When he gets to his excavation team in Iraq and they fly out, he realizes that they’ve all been told to kill him. So he has a battle to the death with them on the airplane and, of course, Court wins. Court now knows that Fitzroy set him up. Fitzroy setting him up can only mean one thing. That Fitzroy’s granddaughters are being used as leverage. And this is when we’re hit with a shocking twist. Court is their father!!!

The plan changes. Instead of running away from Reigel’s plan, Court’s going to find where they are and save his daughters. This is a challenge Reigel enjoys. He’s got tens of millions of dollars worth of the world’s best assassins at his beck and call and he knows exactly where Court is headed. Of course, Reigel has never dealt with someone as lethal as Court Gentry before.

I’ve always struggled with the straight action globetrotting genre (Bourne, Mission Impossible, Bond). I just find it cliche and obvious and there’s nothing new anyone’s brought to the table in 30 years. That’s why I favor Fast and Furious over these franchises these days. I know that, at least with them, I’m going to see something new every movie.

But I decided that since this project has such big players attached, I wanted to give it a real shot. I want to know what makes an entry into this genre special enough that it gets a 200 million dollar price tag.

I’ll tell you the first thing I noticed about The Gray Man, and it’s something I love. The plot is simple. Kill Court Gentry. One of the reasons I dislike these movies so much is because I can never keep up with what’s going on. I think there were 974 double-crosses in the last Mission Impossible movie. If I had to explain that plot to save my life, I would be dead.

But The Gray Man keeps it simple. Kill Court Gentry. Even when they start talking about Nigerians and Syria, things that typically put me to sleep, I’m able to follow what’s going on because they made the goal clear. And when the goal changes at the midpoint, it also remains clear. Court Gentry is now coming to save his daughters.

I also like how Cozad and Greaney built up the legend of Court. We see him kill this Nigerian president in an impressive way. But we never quite see his face. We hear about his past – killing his superior. He both left the CIA but is so good they hire him for big jobs like this. He seemed like such a badass that I couldn’t help but root for him.

And they take a page out of what worked for John Wick 3 here (despite this being written eight years earlier, lol) where they assign these awesome international kill teams to come after Court. I mean we talk about making things difficult for your hero. There isn’t a step that Court takes in this movie that isn’t dangerous. He can’t trust anybody.

The only thing that disappointed me was that there weren’t any fresh set pieces. But I will tell you this. And this is a screenplay secret here folks so pay attention. If you get your protagonist right – if we like him and want him to succeed – your set pieces won’t matter as much. You still want to do the best you can. But if you can’t think of anything new, it’s not going to be a script killer because we’re so attached to your hero’s journey. Court is a cool character, no doubt. So I let the set piece issue slide for the most part.

So what do I think they’re going to change in the Russo version? Clearly, they’re going to make Trent Archer a bigger presence. Archer is the third most important guy in the control room. And even if he was the number 1 guy, he’s still in a control room. That’s boring. I’m guessing they’re going to get Archer out of that room and after Court, maybe even turn him into a fellow assassin. Or else I don’t know why Chris Evans or Ryan Gosling would take that part.

But the good news is, this should be a fun movie. And that’s all you’re looking for. It doesn’t have to be awesome. It just has to be fun. And it definitely has the makings for it.

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

What I learned: Another thing that they’ll probably change is the ticking time bomb in the movie. Right now, the Nigerian brother has given Laurent one week to get the job done. That sort of timeline works in a novel. But a movie is only two hours. So, usually, whatever your gut instinct is on your ticking time bomb, you should probably cut it in half. I am willing to bet six months of not being able to eat In and Out that the new ticking time bomb length in The Gray Man will be 72 hours. Mark my words!

Today’s script is the best Nicholl winning script I’ve ever read. And it’s not even close. A new Top 25 Scriptshadow Screenplay!

Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Premise: An 18-year-old skateboarding “rat” named Allie finally gets her chance to leave the garbage dangerous futuristic city she’s grown up in. But will she be able to leave her fellow “rats” who must now fend for themselves?
About: This script was one of the five winners of the 2019 Nicholl Screenplay Contest. It beat out over 7000 screenplays.
Writer: Walker McKnight
Details: 109 pages

One of the most frustrating things about the Nicholl back in the day was that when you didn’t advance, there was no way to read the scripts that beat you. I mean how are you supposed to improve if you can’t study what made the winners better? It made the contest feel elusive and, at times, pointless.

Flash forward to today and you can usually find the winning scripts if you’re resourceful. From there, you get to do a little reconnaissance action for next year’s competition.

The general consensus is that Nicholl celebrates a few common things. Deep intense themes. Social issues. Stories centered around far off places and distant times. Nicholl thinks of itself as serious. So you gotta bring the serious to win.

However, they usually reserve one selection every year for something offbeat. The voice is wild. The writing is unconventional. The mythology is exotic. I remember one winning screenplay that was told in all first person. They reluctantly celebrate one of those scripts a year mainly because they don’t want to be labeled as the contest that only likes Manchester by the Sea scripts.

Even then, they usually blow it. The “weird” winner always feels too messy or too raw. Well, I can finally tell you that Nicholl, that old rascally devil, got it right. It took him 30 years. But he picked a weird script that’s actually awesome. And you’re probably looking up at that logline and thinking, “Really, Carson? That logline resulted in a great script?” Yes it did.

Yes it did.

18-year-old Jammer is a street rat. Part of a small crew of teenage girls who lives in a domed city that was once inhabited by humans. But hundreds of years have passed and there are only a scant number of humans remaining. Most of the populace is made up of robots and creatures, the latter of which came about via too much DNA splicing.

Jammer is explaining to 16-year-old Allie that she, now, is in charge of the rats. Jammer secured one of those impossible-to-get train tickets for herself which will allow her to travel to other cities where humans still thrive. Allie is devastated. She’s not ready, she pleads. But Jammer assures her that she didn’t think she was ready either. You have to trust yourself, she assures Allie, and leaves.

Cut to 2 years later and Allie has become the leader Jammer knew she could be. She’s able to scrape together food for her tiny crew of skateboarding rats. There’s 16-year-old Moonpie, who’s terrified of the day Allie leaves her in charge. There’s Pushpop, a tough girl with only one eye. And there’s the youngest and most naive of the group, Guppy, who swears every new food she tastes is her favorite (mainly because they barely ever eat).

The day finally arrives where Allie receives her ticket from a sneaky ladybug bot. Jammer sent the ticket. Allie’s on the next train out, which is rumored to be the last train ever. Moonpie is devastated. She’s not ready for this. Allie has to keep reminding her that while it’s scary, she’ll be ready. However, deep down, Allie is worried that if Moonpie isn’t ready, the girls will starve to death.

But before Allie can worry about that, her ticket is stolen! And the thief is the worst possible… thing it can be. Big Green. A mafia head. Allie goes to Big Green to ask for her ticket back. Sure, he says. But first you have to deliver this item – an innocuous silver sphere – to the Ticket Taker at the train station. Do that and you get your ticket back.

Allie does so reluctantly but barely gets halfway across the city before she’s attacked by one of the many gangs working the streets. They take the sphere, which means she now has to find the sphere to deliver it to get the ticket to get out of here. She enlists the help of her fellow rats to do the job. All under the guilty cloak of, if they succeed, she’s leaving them to fend for themselves. Is that what Allie really wants? I guess we’re going to find out.

When I started reading the script, I was skeptical. There was a fun little set-piece with a street food vendor named “Gog,” (who sold ‘gog,’ tentacles he chopped off of himself). But it was eye candy. Silly stuff you could see in any video game cut scene.

But I’ll tell when I knew the script was going to be good. It was when Allie had a REAL CONVERSATION with the other rats. She brought back the food, they all ate, and they talked about their situation. Guppy, the youngest, is scared that Allie is going to leave them. She voices that fear. How are they going to eat when she’s gone? Allie explains that Moonpie will take over. It’s a difficult conversation because it’s REAL.

In this moment, the writer ignores this world that he’s created – an extensive that’s easy to get lost in – so that he can have a real conversation between humans dealing with real issues. They’re all alone. Allie takes care of them. What happens when Allie is no longer there to do so? We see the fear in the gang. And we see the guilt on Allie’s end. It’s a genuine conversation.

Most writers who write these big expensive genres never write a REAL CONVERSATION. Everything between the characters has to be cool or elevated or ultra-melodramatic. “Movie-logic” dialogue. Which is exactly why it reads false. When you’re writing these screenplays, you have to put, somewhere in your first act, a REAL CONVERSATION. Because these conversations are the ones that convince the reader these are real people with real problems. Which is exactly why the reader starts caring.

Without that scene, I don’t care nearly as much as I do with the scene.

I also want to draw your attention to a save the cat moment. By the way, for screenwriting purists, this script hits the Hero’s Journey stuff to the T. Every beat is hit exactly when it’s supposed to. But like every great screenwriter is able to do, that structure is invisible. We don’t see it because the characters are so good and the sequences are so creative (and fun).

But I want you to think of a save the cat moment for Allie. It should be pretty simple. These girls depend on her to survive. So all you need is a scene that shows her getting them food. Right? Well, that gets the job done. But seasoned writers know how to guss up a cat-saving scene. And what McKnight does is clever.

After her meeting with Big Green, Allie is able to sneakily steal three apples from his stash. She’s starving. When she gets outside, she goes to bite one but manages to stop. Then she gets home and after telling the girls what happened, she reveals the three apples, one for each of them. Again, this is where most writers would stop. But just as they’re about to eat, Pushpop says, “Wait a minute, where’s yours?” And Allies says, “I already ate mine.”

Now THAT’S a save the cat moment. This girl is willing to lie about her own hunger so that none of her gang gives up some of their food for her. I mean, if you don’t like Allie after that moment, you don’t own a heart, my friend.

On top of this, the story is operating with this great dilemma at the center of it. By the way, an easy way to level up your characters is to give them something they’re mentally wrestling with. And here, all Allie has dreamed of is leaving this city. She wants out of here more than anything. Yet, to do so, she has to abandon her family. Not only that. She’s leaving them to fend for themselves. And if they can’t, they’ll die.

If all that were it, this would’ve topped out at an “impressive” for me. But the thing that puts it into Top 25 category is the mythology and the world and the characters were so creative and fun. Every villain in this, I felt like I was at the theater looking at them. And that includes Big Green, who is cleverly not even shown! He’s brought into the room on a box and all we hear is a lot slurping and sliming. We see things spit out into Allie’s shot, but we never see what she’s actually looking at. It’s genius.

This writer basically punched his own ticket to writing the next Pixar movie. Some may say that’s the goal of specs these days. Not to necessarily sell them. But to use as a resume to get their first big job. I always tell you not to write high-budget scripts. But if you’re as good of a writer as this guy, you can throw that advice in the trash.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (**NEW TOP 25 SCREENPLAY!!!**)
[ ] genius

What I learned: THE CONTRADICTORY SOLUTION – It happens once every script. You have to endorse two contradictory elements and make sure the audience doesn’t notice. Here, the stakes need to be high. So McKnight writes that this is THE LAST TRAIN ever leaving the city. Otherwise, it wouldn’t matter if Allie made the train or not. There’s another one coming Friday. However, McKnight also recognized that it doesn’t make sense if Allie leaves the rats in the city forever. The chain of the Head Rat is that they always send another ticket back so the next girl can join them. So what do you do as a writer? Well, McKnight throws in a rumor that this *might* be the last train, but it’s not *for sure.* This allows him to operate on both sides of the fence. It can still be the high stakes last train. Yet there’s hope that when Allie makes it out, she’ll still be able to send a ticket back for Moonpie. Good writers are good at hiding the contradictory solution.

It’s a true Mish-Mash Monday as the television/movie landscape has become more diversified than ever. Do you watch The Old Guard on Netflix? Greyhound on Apple TV? Palm Springs on Hulu? My Spy on Amazon?

In the absence of big juicy Hollywood theatrical releases, the B-movie (or second-tier movie) has become the alpha. The problem is, the places where you can watch these movies are so spread out that you don’t know where to find them, or that they even exist.

How confusing is it for someone who watched Tom Hanks dominate the box office for two decades to see his latest film debut on Apple TV? Your initial thought is, “It can’t be that good or else it would’ve been in theaters.” But is that true? Or is the line between theatrical and home movies blurring so much that a home movie can make a bigger splash than a theatrical one?

The answer may come in the form of The Gray Man, the new Russo Brothers project that will star Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling which will have a budget of 200 million dollars. This signifies Netflix’s first true commitment to a theatrical level experience on the small screen. They’ve dabbled. The Irishman and Extraction being two examples. But 200 million is theatrical level money.

The Gray Man is a book series Hollywood’s been trying to put together forever. I remember Adam Cozad wrote a draft that made the Black List back in 2010. I believe that got him some work on a Bond film but that he didn’t get final credit. He later wrote Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. And while he had a long stretch of no film credits, he recently wrote the sexily-shot sci-fi flick, Underwater. Maybe I’ll review his draft of Gray Man tomorrow.

The Gray Man appears to be building on the revelation that Netflix’s most popular movies are big splashy action flicks. The Old Guard, Extraction, Triple Frontier, 6 Underground. Who would’ve thought that even on the small screen, action would reign supreme? Why does action reign supreme? Because it’s like the language of love, baby. Everyone in the world understands a car chase.

Hence, if writing an action script has ever tickled your fancy, this is a good time to massage that tickle. All these streamers are global (or thinking global in the future). And since action is global expect Apple and Amazon to copy Netflix’s formula.

The question is, what kind of action script should you write to get Netflix, Amazon, and Apple to take your call?

As we established during Action Showdown and its subsequent winning script, one of the biggest hindrances of the genre is that it’s inherently generic. Extraction is about a guy extracting a kidnapped kid. Triple Frontier is about guys stealing money from drug lords. The Old Guard is about a de facto black ops team that’s immortal (and fights with swords!). Are any of these concepts all that unique?

If the answer is no, which it is, how are they getting made? Well, something to keep in mind is that these movies are being made for a lower barrier to entry. Tenet requires that we plan, drive, park, pay, and watch. The Old Guard requires that we click two buttons. We don’t even have to move our body.

So that takes care of SOME of the reason it’s okay for these ideas to be generic. But not all. Because these projects are still beating out other projects to production. The Russo Brothers of the world are still drawn to these projects over that recent script of yours about a Chicago cop teaming up with the FBI to take out a Ukrainian drug lord. Why?

The only thing I can identify from a story component is that they all have one slightly different angle. Emphasis on the word “slightly.” Extraction was about an extraction in India. We hadn’t seen a big action movie like that set in India before.

Triple Frontier took a similar route. It built its concept around this almost mythical area in South America known as the “Triple Frontier,” which represents more drug dealing per capita than any other place in the world. It was also somewhat of an extraction narrative in that they were extracting money and then had to escape with it. That was kind of unique.

The Old Guard is a black ops movie with a vampire component to it. The group is immortal. It’s a slightly different take on those kinds of movies. I read a lot of black ops scripts. So if one comes along with a twist like immortality, it *will* catch my eye.

And yet, if you sent me of any of these scripts as aspiring professional writers, I’d probably say, “There’s not enough here.” Cause I know from passing on scripts to the people who make these movies they’ll say, “There’s nothing different here. I’ve already seen this movie.”

This is where we get into the stuff aspiring writers hate, which is that most of these projects getting made stem from IP. I know that’s the case with The Old Guard. I know that’s the case with Extraction. There’s something about previously published material that makes creatives and suits comfortable. It allows them to say, “Well, it might not be that original. But I liked the graphic novel so that’s good enough.” You’d be surprised how effective it is to let a bean-counter see what you’re trying to do. There’s something about seeing pictures that helps people understand what the end result will look like. That’s always better than giving someone words.

Which brings us back to aspiring action writers. Since your idea isn’t based on a graphic novel or a comic, how do you compete? This is where the rubber meets the road. Cause the truth is, you are held to a higher standard than the established creative professional! I know that sounds unfair. But it is what it is. You have to come up with an action idea that’s better than these ideas. Or you need to deconstruct the action film in some way. Or you need to find a new angle.

That might sound impossible in the action genre, which has hundreds of thousands of films in the vault but it’s possible. Look at Greyhound. Here’s a World War 2 movie. How many of those have been made? 20,000? I don’t know. Yet they found a cool new angle. A caravan of war ships heading across the ocean for a major battle are led by a sub-hunter — a ship whose sole purpose is to hunt down Nazi subs so that they don’t sink any of the ships in the fleet. Fresh ideas can be found.

I think a trick you can use to come up with a fun original idea is to think in terms of a SITUATION rather than a catch-all action premise. For example, The Hunt. A group of conservatives are dropped into a Hunger Games like playing field and hunted by liberal-elites. Inception. A team of specialists must travel into a man’s mind and insert an idea. 300. 300 men must take on an entire army.

Do that rather than, say, follow a new black ops team that deals with even more difficult missions than before. By creating a situation, you put more of a movie into the reader’s head.

And from there, execute. If you create great characters and keep us guessing with a riveting plot. If the basics are all in place (strong clear goal, urgency, HIGH STAKES). If you’re giving us amazing action set pieces that we haven’t seen before. Your script is going to stand out. I’ll never forget that scene in Fast and Furious 5 where they bypassed breaking into the 5-ton safe and instead just rigged their cars to it and dragged it out of there, resulting in a crazy car chase throughout the city. I’d never seen anything like that in an action movie. You want to write action set pieces that get potential directors excited.

That’s another thing to remember. Action is a director-driven genre. Maybe more so than any other genre. It’s why a script about a man who hunts down cliche Russian gangsters because they killed his dog can become a billion dollar franchise. Weak concept but amazing direction. Your job, then, is to excite the director who’s looking for something to direct.

I guarantee you if you give them something unique that has some great set pieces, you have a shot.

By the way, let me be clear about something. You CAN be one of the lottery winners who writes a generic action script and someone somewhere chooses it because it was a ‘right time, right place’ scenario. You could write, say, “Skyscraper,” that dumb Rock movie, and it just so happens that a new Lionsgate executive who loved Die Hard has gotten a green light to make a huge action film. He reads that script and says, “That’s it. That’s the one I want to make. My Die Hard!”

Or you can write something original that gets EVERYBODY who reads it excited. In other words, you can make things hard on yourself or easy on yourself. We already know that writing words on a page and hoping someone likes them is a stratospherically difficult profession. With that in mind, it makes sense to align the rest of the variables in your favor.

I know we have some big time action movie connoisseurs on this board. Feel free to offer your own action screenplay insights. :)