Genre: Horror/Adventure
Premise: A former Hawaiian warrior turned werewolf is recruited to join a mysterious pack of werewolves.
About: It appears that Aaron Guzikowski really likes wolves. He created the show, Raised by Wolves. And it turns out, during the planned Monsterverse slate of horror movies, he wrote a draft of The Wolfman. Afterwards, Ryan Gosling would come to Universal and pitch his own version of The Wolfman, which had a Christopher Nolan approach to the property whereby he would treat it very realistically. “Nightcrawler” was given as a tonal comp. Yesterday’s writers, Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, would go on to write that draft for Gosling. To be clear, today’s draft was written by Aaron Guizikowski (Prisoners, Raised by Wolves, Papillon).
Writer: Aaron Guizikowski
Details: 120 pages

Wolf Week continues here on Scriptshadow.

Monday, we looked at the classic horror film, An American Werewolf In London. Tuesday, we had that Big Mean Orange-Haired Wolf. And today, we have a reimagining of the classic film, The Wolfman.

So, as those who read my newsletter know (e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com to sign up), our first Monsterverse script, for Van Helsing, turned out to be pretty awesome! And so, can a full moon strike twice in the same month? I thought that was impossible.

Or, wait. A full moon actually stays full for two nights, right? So maybe it can strike twice! Unless the second night of the full moon is only like a 95% full moon. In that case, it’s not a real full moon. And since I don’t know much about werewolf mythology, I don’t know how much of an effect that has on werewolf changism.  Is a 95% werewolf still a werewolf.  Or is just a werewol?

The year is 1826. We’re on Molokai Island, Hawaii (I’m guessing they were targeting The Rock or Jason Mamoa for the role). The prince of this land, Deo Kekoa, is hanging with his homies when a fiery ship sails right up to the beach.

Deo and others try to break through the hull where they hear people screaming. But when they finally succeed, they’re attacked… by a werewolf. Deo is able to kill it but, unfortunately, he’s been bitten. And since his father has seen werewolves before, he knows Deo will turn into one. So he banishes Deo.

We then wake up in 2017 in Iceland, where Deo is now a bodyguard for high-profile clients. Over the years, Deo has learned how to turn into a werewolf on command. Unfortuantely, he still has no control over his true turning, which happens every full moon.

Deo is responsible for guarding a businessman named Edmund Razmus, who works for something called the “Frankenstein” Corporation. He takes Edmund out into the middle of nowhere in order to truly isolate them from threats but it isn’t long before a group of werewolves attack and kill Edmund. Deo does some research on these werewolves and learns that they live in Hamburg, Germany. So off he goes.

Once there, he meets with the alpha of the group, a steely wise businessman named Jacques Delancre, a billionaire shipper. Also, Deo realizes, Delancre is the man who owned the fiery ship that crashed on his shores that day.

At first, Deo wants to kill him. But there’s something magnetic about Delancre that Deo has never experienced before and he soon finds himself curious about this wolf pack. For so long, he’s been alone. It feels good to finally have a family. Delacre teaches Deo to stop resisting his animalistic urges and, instead, embrace them. He wants Deo to be more wolf than man.

The next thing you know Deo is helping Delancre with a heist. The Frankenstein Corp has a lab in the Swiss Alps and they’re doing tests on a former member of the pack. Because Deo has the special ability to turn into a werewolf whenever he wants, Delancre needs him for this rescue mission. Deo agrees, but in the process, worries about if he’s being seduced for, ultimately, nefarious purposes.

Um.

This script is awesome.

I mean, I don’t know what’s going on over at Universal. But they’ve gotten two of the best big-budget scripts I’ve read in a long time and they’re not going to do anything with them. It baffles me.

Cause this was a really cool script.

There were four things that stood out. One, the mythology. It’s really well-researched and constructed. Every werewolf here has a deep backstory as they come from a different time period and different part of the world.  And the stuff about the Wolfpack and who it operated was really cool. Two, the specificity. We start off on a gold-caped Hawaiin prince in the year 1826. I’ve never seen that before in film. When someone can give me that level of detail and uniqueness right away, the script that follows is almost always good.

The originality is strong as well. Going from 19th century Hawaii to 21st century Iceland. It feels like we’re in a totally different world than we’d usually be in with movies like this. 9 out of 10 writers would’ve started this movie in New York.

Finally, the way the story is constructed is really smart. It starts off with this 20 minute teaser. Then we move to a bodyguard story, where our hero has to protect someone. Then we move to a Matrix situation, where our hero joins this cult of werewolves and learns about their pack and powers. And then we’re performing a heist in Switzerland.

It was just really freaking cool!

You know what it felt like in a weird way? Like a werewolf version of James Bond, if that makes sense. And I would’ve never in a million years thought of combining those two worlds for a werewolf film. Yet here we are and Guzikowski hits it out of the park.

You guys know how much I love when I can’t predict what’s going to happen in a script. The problem I always run into when I finally encounter one of these scripts, is that the only reason I can’t predict anything is because the script is so sloppily written and the writer is making things up on the fly. Rarely do I encounter a screenplay where I genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen ANNNNND what happens is still smart and calculated. Which is exactly how I would describe this script.

So you’re probably thinking to yourself, if this is so good, why didn’t they make it, Carson? This is where we get into how complicated Hollywood is today. Cause I think almost every genuinely good script has been made in Hollywood. Cream eventually rises to the top.

But we’re in a whole different era these days with all these extra factors in play. Nobody had done the interconnected “Universe” approach on a large scale before Marvel. So this was brand new territory. And the combination of The Mummy doing badly combined with The Invisible Man being a breakout hit changed the course of how Universal approached its monsterverse.

Big-budget was out. Low-budget was in. It’s why we’re going to get a Nightcrawler version of Wolfman. And I’ll be honest, I think a Nightcrawler version of Wolfman could be awesome. It just sucks that this movie is going to be left behind.

With that said, everything is cyclical. There will be a time in Universal’s future where big-budget monster movies make sense again. When that happens, they’re going to want to bring this script, and Van Helsing, back out, and make them. Cause these are really good screenplays. And it’d be a shame if nothing ever came of them.

Screenplay Link: The Wolfman

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

What I learned: A preview of one of my dialogue tips from the book. If you’re going to have people speak in a foreign language, yet present the dialogue in English, it’s imperative that you italicize the dialogue. If not, you’ll create a situation like the opening of today’s script where Deo seems to be speaking in English. And I’m thinking, “How does he know English?” The writer then tells us, in the description, that he’s speaking his local language and a translator is translating it. Problem solved right? No. Because as I continue to read Deo’s dialogue, I’m still seeing it as English and have to adjust, remembering he’s speaking in a different language. It’s an annoying hesitation-correction that occurs every time you read the dialogue. That visual cue of the italics immediately alerts the reader that it’s another language. Problem solved.

Genre: Action
Premise: (from IMDB) When the CIA’s most skilled operative, whose true identity is known to none, accidentally uncovers dark agency secrets, a psychopathic former colleague puts a bounty on his head, setting off a global manhunt by international assassins.
About: This is the Russo Brothers first big film after their Avengers movies, and they’ve brought along their Avengers writers, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, to write it. The 200 million dollar film is Netflix’s biggest yet. The Gray Man has been in development for a long time and is sort of a peek behind the Hollywood curtain in regards to how complicated these long-running properties are. The Russos’ version of this movie is so different from the original Gray Man project that none of the writers on the previous drafts even get credit. It’s like they only used the title. Which makes you wonder, why not just come up with an original idea? You can check out my review of the original script here…
Writers: Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely and Joe Russo (based on the book by Mark Greaney).
Details: 2 hours long

In the early 1980s, Francis Ford Coppola famously decried the day when Hollywood started publishing box office numbers. “Now,” Coppola said, “people are only going to produce movies that will make the most amount of money.”

That comment seems a little silly now. Why else would you make movies? For your health? Look at France, a country that still doesn’t care about box office, and the cinematic sludge that comes out of their system. I’m not talking about the one good French film that makes it over to the U.S. every year. I’m talking about the 50 other movies that are all terrible because there’s no incentive to make something that people actually want to see. Is that what we want the U.S. to become?

Well, the streaming revolution allowed us to get a peek into what that process might look like here. Since Netflix movies don’t have any box office, their directors, technically, don’t need to worry about how many people watch the film. It’s why we got such Netflix classics as Mank and Roma (a teensy bit of sarcasm there if you can’t tell).

But now, ironically, Netflix has gone in the other direction, moving away from artsy “who cares how many people see it” movies to 200 million dollar wanna-be-Bond action films. The only difference is that we have NO IDEA if anybody’s actually watching these movies.

If you were just to go by online chatter, a lot more people saw “Nope” this weekend than “The Gray Man.” Which would imply that, if The Gray Man were in theaters, it wouldn’t have surpassed 45 million dollars (Nope’s first-weekend gross). Which sort of begs an opposing question. Just as it seems strange to make small budget theatrical movies that aren’t going to make money, it’s even stranger to spend an inordinate amount of money on TV movies that don’t bring in any money.

If all of this seems confusing, that’s okay, because I would argue that The Gray Man is a confusing project, an action movie without an identity. I have a theory on why that is, which I’ll share at the end of the review.

Sierra Six (Ryan Gosling) is a convicted murderer who’s pulled from prison by his new handler, Fitzroy, to be in a new CIA assassin program. Years later, after becoming one of the most lethal assassins in the world (a ‘gray man’), Six is assigned to kill a target who, as the target lays dying, says he’s also part of the Sierra program, and that Six will be next.

Six grabs a USB drive from Four (I think that’s his name) causing Six’s boss, Carmichael, to turn on him, believing the drive has evidence of his nefarious doings. So Carmichael hires the one killer good enough to eliminate Six, Lloyd Hansen (Chris Hansen), a wise-cracking mustache-twirling (literally!) bully.

Lloyd, a giant weasel and purveyor of such lines as, “If you want to make an omelette, you gotta kill some people,” goes to Fitzroy and orders him to order his own men to turn on Six, which they do. But of course Six escapes. This enrages Lloyd, who then orders a super-hit on him, which means that every single bounty hunting team in the world is now looking to kill Six.

Six teams up with another agent for the first time ever, Dani (Ana De Armas), and doesn’t like it because Six works alone, darn it! When Six learns that Lloyd is holding Fitzroy and his pacemaker-laden daughter hostage, he decides to turn the tables on Lloyd and go save them. But can Six survive going into the belly of the beast? Or will he be Lloyd Hansen’s toast?

These movies are so hard to do well.

You’re trying to differentiate yourself within one of the most cliched well-worn blueprints of modern cinema – the big action movie.

The degrees to which you must differentiate yourself to stand out seem trivial. For example, John Wick’s differentiation revolved around well-tailored suits and tighter, better choreographed, fight scenes. A betting man would say that’s not enough to get audiences to show up. And yet, John Wick is the sexiest action franchise alive.

Meanwhile, Jack Reacher comes out, angling for a “thinking man’s action movie” and it lands with a thud.

In my experience, big action movies come down to nailing four things, in this order: A protagonist we absolutely love, groundbreaking or unique set pieces, a strong villain, and a plot that’s strong enough to keep us invested the whole way through.

Let’s start with A. As much as I like Ryan Gosling, there’s nothing about this character that stands out. I don’t know if this is the writers’ or actor’s fault, but I suspect it’s the writers. Gosling has proven he can play cool memorable characters, such as the “Driver” in the movie, “Drive.” What was the difference? Well, it might be each character’s opening scene. In Drive, Gosling had this really cool escape scene from Staples Center that set the tone for the character. Here, we meet Gosling sitting in a chair, smiling as a man tells him he’s free. Not exactly a, “Whoa! This character is so cool!” moment.

Next we have the set pieces. The set pieces are all okay but I was expecting groundbreaking stuff when we’re talking about the most expensive movie Netflix has ever made. The movie-killer for me was the ubiquitous plane crash set piece. Not only has this scene been done in the last 20 action movies, but they didn’t even do as good of a job as “Man From Toronto,” an action-COMEDY for goodness sakes.

Next we have our villain, Lloyd Hansen, played by Chris Evans. Chris Evans is definitely having fun in this role, and is hoping for a sprinkling of Henry Cavill magic, donning a mustache just like Cavill did in Mission Impossible. But while Hansen is the most memorable thing about this film, I’d argue he’s having more fun with himself than we are with him.

The showiness of his performance often borders on “try-hard,” which breaks the suspension of disbelief, and makes us see Chris Evans instead of Lloyd Hansen.

Finally we have the plot. I’ve long chastised big action films for overcomplicating their plots when the objective for anyone watching an action movie is to turn your brain off and have fun. It’s why movies like Taken and John Wick are so popular. The plots are mind-numbingly simple.

In movies like James Bond and Mission Impossible, you need a pen and notepad to keep track of the main plot, subplots, motivations, double-crosses, and everything in between. I wouldn’t put The Gray man in that company. It’s essentially one guy chasing another guy. But there were too many times where I didn’t understand exactly what was going on.

For example, there’s this whole baby-sitting storyline where Six babysits Fitzroy’s daughter and it took me a full five minutes before I realized it was a flashback. I get that they wanted to create an emotional connection between Six and the daughter, but a five-minute flashback in an action movie??? Come on.

I have no idea how this movie came together. But I suspect it went something like this. Netflix initiated a meeting with the Russo Brothers. They said, “We will hand you a blank check and a high percentage of franchise ownership if you give us our own James Bond franchise.”

The Russos then scoured the town for the best available action property. They found The Gray Man, which had been in development for 13 years and, therefore, was well-known around town. They didn’t necessarily like it so they totally rewrote it into their own version. And that’s what we got here.

The reason it’s not very good is because they never had an emotional attachment to it in the first place. Again, blank checks are big motivators to make movies.  I’m not turning a blank check down and neither are you.  But personal emotional attachment is the motivator to make GOOD movies. And that seems to be missing here.

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

What I learned: It’s hard to scare or anger or evoke negative emotion in an audience with a jokey villain, which Lloyd Hansen very much is. If we’re not feeling those big negative emotions from a villain, we’re not going to be scared for our hero and we’re not going to want to see that villain go down.

What I learned 2 (dark evil screenwriting tip): When writers want to get credit on a movie, one of the first things they do is change all the names of the main characters from the previous draft. This makes it appear, to later WGA readers who don final credit, that they’ve made the characters up wholesale.  We see that done here.  Can’t let those former writers get any credit and take our money!

Genre: Drama
Premise: (from Black List) Peter, a seventeen-year-old painter, lives with his controlling mother in a lonely house in the wilderness. When he meets a mysterious stranger, he begins to question the reality he was raised to believe, gathers the courage to leave his mother, and unveils the sinister truth behind his upbringing.
About: This script finished with 8 votes on last year’s Black List. The writer has written several short films, which makes this script their big breakthrough.
Writer: Yumiko Fuiwara
Details: 85 pages

Millie Bobby Brown for our gender neutral mystery forest figure?

We’re going from one of the biggest blockbusters of all time to a script you might see Kogonada direct for A24. That’s why I love Scriptshadow, baby. You never know what you’re going to get!

17 year old painter Peter Mori has lived his entire life with his mother, Felicia, out in the middle of the forest. All Peter does every day is paint. And he’s really good at it, even if his paintings are excessively disturbing. Peter focuses on death and fear and evil in his paintings, with a particular love for fire.

Every few weeks, a 70 year old man named Mark shows up to the cabin and collects Peter’s paintings. Mark appears to be some rich dignified aristocrat of sorts. Which is impressive when you consider that society is no more. At least that’s what we’re told.

Things are starting to change for Peter, though. He’s going to be 18 soon, and the implication is that he will make his way into society once he’s a man. This has injected a healthy dose of curiosity in Peter, most of which is aimed towards a big metal door in their home that Peter is not allowed into. Talk about a mystery box.

In addition to this, Peter meets a strange character out in the forest one day. This is the description of the character in the script: “A TEENAGER – about Peter’s age. Gender-neutral. Skinny, a few inches taller than Peter. They wear an oversized hoodie, black jeans and leather boots. They have wild, curly hair that ends just below their ears, and falls over their large, searching eyes.”

Our gender-neutral “teen person” tells Peter that the real world isn’t nearly as bad as his mother has told him. And that Peter should come with “them” and find out for himself. Peter hems and haws over the course of a few meetings with this mystery figure, but finally agrees to run off with them.

A day before Peter plans on sneaking off, he can’t help but be drawn to the steel door that has stood between him and the mystery room his whole life. So he goes inside when his mom is out and finds out the shocking truth about his mother, and by association, him. (Major spoiler) It turns out Peter’s mom was a famous artist in the real world and that Peter’s entire life has been an art exhibit of hers, which she plans to show the world on his 18th birthday. Naturally, Peter decides to get the f$#k out of there. But will the real world be any better than his mother’s fake world?

It’s important to remember that not everything can be ideal screenplay or movie subject matter.

There are certain genres that fit perfectly into each. An action movie, like James Bond, is perfect for film. It celebrates everything the medium is good at. A lean thriller, a la Taken, is perfect for spec screenwriting. The narrative moves quickly and the writing is always sparse and, therefore, easy to read.

But we still need other stories or else the audience gets bored. And today’s script is definitely “other.” I’ve read plenty of scripts about people living in isolated areas. Even scripts about parents lying to their kids’ in these scenarios, keeping the truth of the real world from them.

But I’ve never seen one that evolves like this. And I’m still trying to wrap my head around the big reveal. Cause in scripts like this, where the entire story is screaming, “JUST WAIT UNTIL THE END! EVERYTHING WILL BE REVEALED AT THE END! THE BIG END IS COMING AND IT’S GOING TO BE A DOOZY! JUST YOU WAIT AND SEE WHAT THAT ENDING REVEAL IS!” – the reader will not accept anything other than a perfect reveal.

An argument can be made that everything that needs to be set up in this story could’ve been done so in the first 10 pages. Then the next 60 pages are the story spinning its wheels, getting you all charged for the final reveal, and we get that reveal with 15 pages to go.

While I give the writer credit for a reveal I’ve never seen before, I’m not convinced its worth a 70 page tease. The script is a prime example of a “waiting around” narrative. For those who don’t know what this is, it’s when the characters don’t have a clear goal and are therefore passive. We’re essentially “waiting around” for things to happen *to* our hero as opposed to the hero going out and *making* things happen for himself.

These scripts are not impossible to make work. But they are definitely challenging. And if you’re someone who doesn’t understand the unique challenges of a waiting around narrative, it’s unlikely you’ll pull them off. Because even writers who understand the unique challenges of this template have a hard time making them work.

With that said, mystery is a primary interest-driver in these stories. And the writer does a good job setting up several mysteries. Who is our gender-neutral forest dweller? What’s behind the magical steel door? What is Mark doing with these paintings Peter paints? And just what’s going on in the outside world in general?

Those were just enough mysteries to keep me interested in finding out what happened. I wouldn’t say I was invested, though. And this is one of the issues you run into whenever you write a story with so many mysteries. It’s hard to delve into any character development because every character is a lie. You can’t tell us what’s really going on with them.

We do know, however, that they’re taking advantage of Peter. And that makes him sympathetic enough for you to care what happens to him (readers will always root for characters who are being taken advantage of).

The problem was that you just never had enough gears pushing the narrative along. And so the story felt like a car with only a couple of gears. That led to characters sitting around and being forced to say things that didn’t do much for the story. “Thing is, when I paint I can exist somewhere else… Like, outside of space, and maybe outside of time, even. I’m not here… I’m in a different realm.” This is essentially gobbledy-gook. You don’t want artist characters giving detailed thoughts about their process. It’s never as interesting as the art itself. Just show it through the art. And you don’t want characters offering up unprompted thoughts as a rule of thumb. It comes off as pretentious 99% of the time.

The Fire Outside reminded me of many of the Black List scripts you read today. You can see some talent on the page. But it’s too raw. There’s not enough technique to keep the story compelling from beginning to end.

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

What I learned: I’ve pointed this out before. But never have somebody physically push another character down, then have the fallen character bump their head, and either pass out or die. That doesn’t happen in real life. So it shouldn’t happen in the movies.

What I learned 2:

When writing monologues, or any dialogue really, don’t underline a bunch of words for emphasis. First off, it looks like you’re trying to direct the actor’s performances, which actors hate. But it also conveys that you don’t have confidence in what your character is saying. If you have to underline a bunch of words to REALLY EMPHASIZE those moments, it means the dialogue isn’t doing the job on its own. I don’t mind emphasizing a word once every 25 pages or so. Assuming you really need that emphasis to make your point. But don’t don’t do it multiple times in a monologue. Your monologue should speak for itself. And the truth is, it’s highly unlikely those words needed to be emphasized.

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

Parasite actress Park So-Dam for Chelsea?

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

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

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

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

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

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

I suspect the answer will depend on the individual.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The dynamic is off as well.

The script introduces Chelsea first.

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

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

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

I didn’t know what was going on there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NON-SUPERHERO MOVIES THAT STILL GET THEATRICAL RELEASES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope this helps!

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

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

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