Let me start by saying, thank you to everyone who’s submitted to the Blood & Ink Showdown so far. I know it can be difficult putting your ideas out there to be judged. I always try and give some sort of explanation for why I say “no” but sometimes I have to get through a lot of pitches quickly which means I only have time to write a quick “no.” Please don’t take it personally.

Next weekend is the last weekend to pitch your horror ideas. If you’re not in yet, I would generate 5 pitches a day throughout the week and then, when the weekend comes, pitch the best 5 loglines you’ve got. You’ll have a better shot.

Next weekend will see the end of the “soft maybe” as there are no more weekends to carry your loglines into. And I do have good news for those of you who are stuck in Maybe-ville. I’m going to be accepting 5 “maybes” into the contest through the process of voting. That will happen AFTER next weekend’s pitches. So, at the very least, you’re going to want to get a “maybe.”

But today, I want to take a break from loglines to talk about the movie box office this summer, which isn’t doing great. Why do I want to talk about the box office? Because it affects the types of screenplays we should be writing. So, the better we can deduce what’s causing this rejection of current offerings, the better we’ll be at knowing what to write next.

And let’s start right at the top, since it’s so connected to the contest I’m running. The two big movie surprises this year have been Sinners and Weapons. Guess what genre those movies are in? Horror. Which means The Blood & Ink Showdown is right in the genre we want it to be.

But it’s not just that. It’s that both of these movies WERE ORIGINAL IDEAS. Which is awesome. It’s exactly what we’ve been saying Hollywood is missing. Audiences want original ideas. But I’m worried they’re going to focus more on the success of the genre and not enough on the fact that they were original.

I finally saw Weapons myself yesterday (here’s my old script review) and I thought it was great. But, more than that, it was different. It had this weird mystery at the center of it. It’s not told in a traditional easy-to-digest package. Instead, it’s told through individual points of view. These are things that studios traditionally believe mainstream audiences can’t handle. But they clearly can.

Even the number one movie of the year so far, Minecraft, FEELS different than other mainstream movies. And if you really look into it, it makes sense why it did so well. The mainstream big budget option for the past decade has been superheroes. We’re tired of that. So if you give us something even slightly different that also has the big budget treatment, we’ll flock to that movie.  And they have evidence of this every year yet they still don’t push it.  We saw it with Top Gun.  We saw it with Barbie. We’re done with these superhero movies.

I was holding out hope that James Gunn was going to bring something fresh to the table. But Superman was just a slightly more upbeat (and colorful) version of the superhero movies we’re used to. It wasn’t different enough. I truly think that we’ve reached the end with this genre. The last big hit was Deadpool and Wolverine and that’s going to be it.

They’re still hoping Avengers is going to save the day but I don’t see how it can. The reason that the original two Avengers movies were two of the biggest movies ever was because every Marvel movie was building up, both in story and box office, over the previous ones. So it really felt like the culmination of something special.

Not only is that not going on here, it’s actually headed in the opposite direction. The last three Marvel movies, Brave New World, Thunderbolts, and Fantastic Four, have done terribly. I suppose you could argue Fantastic Four did okay. But that’s only because the bar for success on superhero movies has fallen so low that we now label something as successful if it makes half as much money as an equivalent Marvel movie would’ve made five years ago.

So what does this all mean for screenwriters? It’s hard to tell because what Hollywood knows and what they’re actually willing to do are two different things. Sinners and Weapons are telling them to make more original material. So that’s what they should be thinking. But Hollywood is notoriously terrified of going down the original route because it’s so uncertain. They have zero comps or rules they can rely on to know if something’s going to do well or not. This is why you usually only see big original chances being taken in horror, because horror is inexpensive.

But at some point, if Hollywood wants to survive, it has no choice but to move to original material. Whether they do that now or they wait for the overall box office to drop another 20%, there’s no way around it. And they know this. But a studio is like a person. Nobody truly changes unless their back is against the wall. So they will wait until the last second to accept this. When do I think the last second will be? D-Day will probably be Avengers Doomsday third weekend.

I know that’s a strange claim so let me explain. Avengers will be the true litmus test of if the superhero genre is dead. The first weekend, unless it’s drastically low, will be spun by the trades as a win. But the real data is in the second weekend drop. However, since Doomsday arrives on December 18, 2026, that means the second weekend will be Christmas, when a lot of families go to movies. So that second weekend should be strong. By the way, this is why they’re putting it a week before Christmas, so that the second weekend drop doesn’t drop much. They wouldn’t have that luxury if they opened in the summer.

Therefore, it’s the third weekend that you’ll see the drop. And how big that drop is is going to tell us everything. Literally the only way it’s not a giant drop is if the movie is good. I don’t see how that’s going to be possible. Bringing back a tired (and failed) Russo Brothers along with Robert Downey Jr. in a strange “other character” scenario feels desperate. Nor does anything here feel planned.  There are numerous stories about how they’re shooting without a script.  Nothing sounds promising here.  Even Deadpool joining the gang is tainted by Blake Lively’s mean girl parade lawsuit.

Despite that harsh criticism, Disney may be more ahead of the game than I’m giving them credit for. They’ve been letting agents and producers know they’re looking for male-dominated ORIGINAL material. I’ll believe this when I see it (if they start announcing a bunch of sales) but it’s an indication that they’re accepting originality is the only path forward. Which is saying A LOT about Disney, considering that they have more IP than anyone.

And let’s not overlook the male part of that request either. It seems like the era of the industry knee-jerkingly wanting a woman in the lead may be over. The studios have lost a lot of male moviegoers, and they’re sorry and want them back. Well, they’re not sorry. They just want money. But still. Men have always been the backbone of the movie-buying public, just like women have always been the backbone of the book-buying public. Disney either let politics cloud that reality or hoped to bridge the gap, or some combination of both. But they’ve come to the conclusion that dudes like movies more than dudettes so maybe you should gear a lot of movies towards dudes.

All right, what have we learned here? Originality is finally being valued in Hollywood and may become even more valued after the release of Avengers Doomsday next year. Horror is hot right now. And Hollywood wants men back. So male-centric concepts should do well. What else do you need to know? Start writing!

Pitching for this weekend is CLOSED.  Come back next weekend (the final one) to pitch your horror loglines.  Seeya then!

I have a direct line to, arguably, the biggest person in horror in all of Hollywood. And this person trusts my taste implicitly. If I send him a script, he’ll start reading it within 10 minutes.

This was the impetus for this contest. I want to send this guy a great horror script. But I thought, “How do I find a great horror script?” A truly great horror script from an amateur writer hits my desk maybe once every four years.

I wanted to speed up that process.

Which is how I got this idea. I realized that the big issue with all these horror scripts that get sent my way is that 95% of them don’t even have good concepts. So, even if the script is good, you know it can’t sell because its marketability can’t easily be conveyed to the next decision maker up the ladder.

So I thought, what if I create a contest where you only got in if you pitched a strong horror concept? This would dramatically increase the chances that we find a script that a studio would actually want to buy and turn into a movie.

So far, we’ve had two weekends of pitches and we’ve found roughly 30 concepts. We have two more weekends, which means we’re probably going to find about 60 concepts. From there, those people are in the official contest and their job is to write the best version of that screenplay possible.  There will be challenges and mini-showdowns along the way in order to keep them on schedule.

We will then have a showdown here on the site where you guys will decide what the best script is and, therefore, what I send to this Hollywood producer. But it’s got to be a really good script. This guy has such a high bar for quality and if all the scripts are weak, or just average, that’s not enough.

But we have half-a-year to write this script and get it in good shape, which is the same timeline a studio would ask for. Actually, a studio would want it sooner. So, this is not an unreasonable timeline.

You’re probably wondering, how does this work?

You pitch your horror logline down in the comments. Include your title and subgenre (i.e. horror comedy, horror thriller, etc.) and I will tell you whether the idea is good enough to advance to the official competition, in which case, you will write the entire script.

Here are the responses I will leave after your pitch and what they mean.

No – Doesn’t make the cut and DON’T re-pitch.
Soft Maybe – No but you can improve logline and pitch again next week.
Maybe – No but you can improve logline and pitch again immediately.
Strong Maybe – You’re in.
Yes – You’re in plus special treatment.

You get FIVE logline pitches. So, make sure they’re good.

If you’re worried that I’m too hard to please, you still have a shot. Consistent Commenters, Brenkilco, Jaco, Poe, Scott Crawford, and Arthur all still have ONE YES they can give over these final two weekends.

There is one other way to get in.

GET 15 UPVOTES

If your idea gets 15 upvotes, you’re automatically in. So, I encourage everyone here to be constantly screening the newest entries and upvoting any concept you like. It could literally change a writer’s life. And this supersedes a “no.” So, even if I “no” a concept, it can still advance with 15 votes.

For those of you re-pitching your ‘maybes’ from last week, those do not count against your 5 loglines.

A few final rules. If you have a strong maybe or even a ‘yes’ and want to pitch more ideas to try and get a ‘yes,’ or a second ‘yes’ that’s fine.  I’ve realized that if someone came up with a good idea, they’re capable of coming up with an even better idea, so have at it.  If you want to campaign for your logline to get 15 votes, you only get one campaign message. You can’t keep campaigning or that idea is disqualified. Also, you can’t double post your idea and add up the upvotes from both comments to get 15 votes. You’ve got to get 15 upvotes from the original comment.

This weekend’s pitch session goes until Monday, 11:59pm Pacific Time, since it’s Labor Day Weekend here in the U.S.

P.S. If you want to have more of a conversation about your logline pitches, rather than just a ‘yes’ or a ‘no,’ or you want to pitch your ideas in private, you can order my logline service. It’s $25 for a logline analysis (along with a yes or no) and $50 for unlimited e-mails where we workshop a weak logline into something that is potentially contest worthy. There are no guarantees, though. You can’t put lipstick on a pig. If you want to use this service, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com.

Let Scriptshadow arm you properly for the coming weekend

As we move into weekend #3 of the Blood and Ink pitches, I want to give you guys more ammo for your entries by reminding you what kinds of loglines generate the most interest. Here are five varieties of loglines you should be pitching if you want to get into the Blood and Ink Showdown.

THE BIG JUICY CONCEPT

The big juicy concept is when you have a concept that is so huge the logline doesn’t matter. “Logline doesn’t matter?? How can that be?” Because all that matters with any movie idea is that the audience a) understands what it’s about and b) wants to see it. Take Jake Barnes’ idea. President of the United States is possessed and needs an exorcism. Note how I don’t have to craft a perfect logline around that for you to understand what the movie is. That’s a big juicy concept. The nice thing about big juicy concepts besides the fact that they’re easy sells is that you don’t have to be a logline expert to pitch them.

This speaks to a wider-ranging conversation about logline construction. The juicier the idea, the less perfect the logline has to be. Conversely, the less juicy the idea, the more perfect the logline has to be. Let’s use the above logline example. Let’s say your movie is not about the president getting possessed but rather the mayor in a small Midwestern town getting possessed circa 1988. I’m going to demand more out of the way that logline is presented than I would The President’s Exorcism.

By the way, I’m not saying the 1988 Exorcism won’t be the better script. But that doesn’t matter yet. All that matters is can you present your story in logline form in a way that will make me want to read the screenplay? And it is possible for the 1988 idea to get reads if your sentence construction is perfect, if the details imply a unique specificity to your story, if the main character sounds interesting. Actually, that’s the perfect segue into our next logline option.

HOW TO WIN THE ‘BASIC BITCH’ LOGLINE GAME (HINT: IT’S CHARACTER)

One of the more frustrating things about being a screenwriter is that most of the stuff we tend to be drawn to doesn’t fit into the high concept paradigm. The stuff we’re really passionate about is often more grounded. And even when those impassioned ideas are bigger, they’re not “president gets exorcised” big. This puts us in a tough predicament when it comes time to write the logline.

For example, let’s say you’re writing an A24 movie. Like Friendship, which recently came out to rent. That movie is about a guy who strikes up a friendship with a weatherman who lives in the neighborhood. The friendship goes sour and he wants his friend back. That’s not a big movie idea. It’s hard to logline that into something compelling, like a lot of A24 movies. I call these loglines “Basic Bitch” loglines because they’re unspectacular movie ideas, the kind you wouldn’t look at twice if they passed you on the street.

So how do you logline these ideas? The only way to do it is to lean into character. If you can make the characters sound interesting, you’ll add significant shine to that basic concept. So, I might logline Friendship this way: “Craig, a lonely suburban husband who has extreme difficulty making friends, has his life turned upside-down when his neighbor, a popular network weatherman, invites him into his life.” Note how this logline is almost entirely character-based. It’s telling you as much about the characters as one has time for in logline form.

That’s how you should approach basic bitch concepts. If there isn’t a juicy hook there, focus on what’s interesting about your characters. And if you can’t focus on characters because you have a basic bitch concept with basic bitch characters, then you shouldn’t have written that script.

IRONY IS YOUR FRIEND YOUNG GRASSHOPPER

The logline that gets the most attention after the big juicy concepts is the ironic logline. And, surprisingly, we’re not seeing a whole lot of loglines featuring irony in the pitches. But boy is it crack for potential readers. So, it’s definitely something you want to consider. All movie execs love clever ideas. It makes them feel smart. And an ironic idea is the best way to achieve this.

A priest who lives a double life is more clever than a priest who is committed to the cloth. A therapist who’s on the verge of becoming crazy is more clever than a schoolteacher on the verge of becoming crazy. An influencer with 20 million followers is more interesting if she’s deftly shy in her day to day life than if she’s super outgoing.

Although the best ironic premises are built around character, you can build irony around plot as well. In the future, a new city is built so that committing crimes is impossible. It’s billed as the safest city in the world and everyone wants to live there. But then, one day, a string of murders indicates that there’s a serial killer on the loose.

It’s not the greatest idea but it’s a good example of how to build irony into your premise.

BE EFFING UNIQUE

Back in the day, you could be reading some back alley magazine and come across a wild true story about a giant hole that exists in the middle of Antarctica and have the beginnings of a cool movie idea that nobody had heard of before.

But these days, with podcasts and Reddit and social media, all of the unique things that are out there have been exposed a thousand times over. Which makes being unique harder than ever.

But it’s still one of the best ways to separate your logline from the pack. As many as 70% of the loglines that have been pitched so far I’ve rejected because they’ve provided absolutely nothing new. Here’s an example: “A guilt-ridden mother fights to protect her two young children from the disturbed spirit of a murder victim who covets their souls for the afterlife.” Where is the unique element in this idea? It’s not a guilt-ridden mother. It’s not protecting children. A spirit isn’t original. Nor is a murder victim. Nor is coveting souls or the afterlife. Without one single unique element, how do you plan to stand out against a thousand other loglines?

Contrast that with this “strong maybe” that made it. “When a young family’s first night camping in the remote Australian wilderness ends with their car, food, and gear stolen, they are plunged into a nightmare scenario, as they are forced to protect their two teenage children and make their way out of an unforgiving landscape, while staying ahead of the dreaded Kadaitcha, a demonic executioner from Aboriginal folklore, that stalks trespassers and demands blood payment for defiling sacred land.” I’ve never heard of the Kadaitcha in my life. That makes me curious. And that’s what being unique does.

Another strong logline involved moving an entire cemetery. I’d never heard of that before. It’s unique. You should always be pushing to come up with unique ideas so I expect at least one of your ideas this weekend to focus on something truly different.

THAT FRESH ANGLE SMELL

Sometimes it seems like every movie idea has already been done. How can you possibly come up with something new? Here’s how. You find a new ANGLE into an old idea. For example, here’s one of the “yes” loglines that made it directly into the competition: “From bite to bite, we follow the zombie infection as it spreads – each victim’s story unfolding from the moment they’re bitten to when they pass it on.”

We’ve seen a million zombie movies before. But we haven’t seen this angle before. So, when you approach your vampire or werewolf or haunted house or masked killer concept, you can’t just give us another vanilla version of it. You want to take a step back from your idea and see if you’re coming at it too predictably, which is often the case. Is there another way in?

There are many ways to write a movie about a conclave. You can write a world-hopping conspiracy thriller, which I think Dan Brown did in one of his novels. You can follow a journalist who’s trying to break a story about who the next Pope will be. You can write a mystery about how the previous Pope died. Was one of the Cardinals responsible? You can write a dark comedy about a bunch of old men in this church arguing with each other. Or you can write it the way “Conclave” did, following one Cardinal’s journey to try and get the best man for the job elected, only to get pulled into the conversation himself.

What angle you tell your story from can completely change the tenor of the idea. It can be the difference between something sounding dull or exciting, so it’s worth exploring every option before you pick an angle.

All right,

24 hours left before the festivities begin.

Get those loglines ready!

:)

Okay so I’m a little overcooked after these last couple of weekends. For that reason, I’m going to take the day off. I might even need another one but we’ll see. A few of you were asking me about Second Chance Showdown. It’s still on. Not only is it on, it will be a 2-parter that takes place over 2 weekends. Six entries for each weekend. I’ll do that the weekend after the final Blood & Ink pitch.

And since horror is on the brain, I’ve got one other little tidbit I’ve been thinking about. Did you know that two of the biggest horror writer-directors to hit the scene lately both originally came from comedy? Everybody knows that’s the case with Jordan Peele. But not as many people know that Zach Cregger (Barbarian, Weapons) used to be in a comedy troop called “The Whitest Kids You Know.”

This got me wondering – is the secret to writing great horror comedy? And, if so, how is the best way to use it? To answer the first question, I believe it’s a bigger part than people realize. Because horror is often about creating tension and you need a tool to occasionally relieve that tension. People who are good at comedy can achieve that.

I also suspect that the creative bone that comes up with good jokes works adjacent to the bone that comes up with good scares. Cause, in both cases, you need to be a little nutty. You need to be a little weird and out there to think of that uncomfortable joke that nobody else would’ve thought of.  And you need to be really weird to come up with some of these crazy unpleasant scares in horror movies that nobody else is capable of imagining.

The greatest horror writer of all time, Stephen King, has a good sense of humor too. His books would always have good laughs between the horror elements. Then again, you have Ari Aster, who’s about as funny as a chain link fence in a prison yard. But maybe he’s the exception.

What do you think? Am I onto something?

If you haven’t been on the site lately, we’ve spent the last two weekends pitching horror loglines.

It’s a cool experiment and, even better, it’s an experiment that’s working. Regardless of whether people enter or get into the Showdown, what I wanted to convey with this challenge is the risk of going with the first movie concept you come up with.

We all like our movie concepts, no matter how dumb they are. Because there’s something in them that speaks to us. But what we often ignore is whether they speak to other people. And, unfortunately, those other people matter. Because you’re not writing a movie for yourself. You want other people to see it.

I’ve seen so many instances in this challenge where a writer pitches a bad idea and my thought process is, “What the heck are they thinking? This is awful.” It gets a ‘no’ and it gets no upvotes, confirming that it’s not a good idea.

Then, three hours later, that same writer will pitch something that gets 20 upvotes and a ‘strong maybe.’ All of a sudden you’ve got a genuine movie idea on your hands. And, without this contest, that writer may have never considered the better idea because they didn’t get any feedback on the first one, then assumed it was good, and wrote it instead, wasting 8 months of their life on something that never had a chance.

Here’s a great example. An early pitch by Stephen that got a no.

People of Walmart

The day before Turkey Day. Ruthless Walmart crowds. A mark takes refuge from pursuit by a dogged bounty hunter. But this hunter has some special gadgets up his sleeve… because this mark? A shapeshifting Chimera. Will the people of Walmart turn on one another or band together to survive this mythological foe?

And then here’s this idea he pitched that got a yes.

Red Shift

His first night on the job, a paramedic must contend with the reality that the city he is working is on the brink of a zombie outbreak, and the patient he’s got in the back of his van is ground zero.

No shade on Walmart or Chimeras but one of these is a clear movie and the other isn’t.

And people… THAT’S FINE.

That’s what this is all about. It’s about trying ideas out to see what works and what doesn’t. That’s a huge strength of this community. It gives us an advantage over the studios. Because everybody in a studio has an agenda and a ton of those agendas have nothing to do with trying to make the best movies possible.  But here, if your idea is good enough, it will find a way through, one way or another.

Now, what surprised me about this weekend was that none of the Star Commenters voted an idea in. I’m not saying this is a good or a bad thing. I’m just surprised is all. But it tells me that maybe I’m a little more lenient than I thought I was. These guys are the true tough crowd.

Going forward, I’m worried for anyone who has a serial killer idea. I’m so sick of seeing “serial killer” in a logline at this point that my knee-jerk reaction every time I see it is to give it a ‘no.’

Too many writers think that certain subjects or phrases or words are enough for the concept to be worthy. For example, if they want to write about something mundane, like an Amazon factory worker, they think they can end the logline with “serial killer” and they’ve all of a sudden got a movie.

No.

Any tried and true horror element you use has to still be integrated into the story in a clever way. A logline is not a series of separate pieces. It’s a series of interconnected pieces that add up to a compelling whole.

So it’s not that I’ll never like a serial killer idea again. But the second I sense that “serial killer” was shoved onto a half-baked premise, there’s no way that logline is advancing.

And “serial killer” is a stand-in for any horror trope – vampires, hell, werewolves, witches. The elements around those things have to be well thought out if you want a chance to compete in the Blood and Ink Showdown.

The more frustrating thing is that there are quite a few writers who keep posting weak loglines and they’re not reflecting on them to figure out what’s wrong. So they keep making the same mistakes. And I don’t have the time to coach them through the problems and help them get better.

But if you’re one of these writers who hasn’t gotten at least a ‘soft maybe,’ I would do some reflection and consider whether there’s a consistent mistake you’re making.

For example, some loglines are so long that we get lost when we read them. Some loglines lack a big enough hook. Some loglines stay so much on the surface that we don’t feel anything deep enough to care about. Some loglines are clearly rushed. So many loglines start out with a hook then devolve into such vague actions for the hero that it’s clear the writer has no idea what the movie would be past the first act.

Ask for feedback from the people on the site. If you get a note once, consider it. If you get the same note from two different people, that’s a confirmation that there’s a real problem there.

And I know some of you think of loglines as these necessary evils that you just aren’t good at and you think they don’t matter because what really matters is the screenplay, so you assume this contest just isn’t for you.

I’m sorry but loglines definitely matter. You know how I know? Because every good writer I’ve ever known knows how to write a good logline. The reason they know is because they understand that if you can’t explain what your movie is about quickly in written form, then there’s probably something wrong with the idea. Because the logline should be an overall directive for what happens in your script. If it’s unclear, your will script will be unclear.

You can fight this notion all you want but I’m one of the few people in this town who can actually confirm it. Because I’ve read thousands of loglines then read the scripts for those loglines, and I can tell you that a poor logline is one of the surest signs that the script will not only be bad, but be bad in the exact same way that the logline was bad (for example, if the logline is unfocused, the script will be unfocused).

Unless you’re a writer-director and know how to use cinema’s visual language to make up for weaknesses in your screenplay, that’s going to be the case.

So, what can we expect for next week? Will there be a new way to get in? I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see. I can tell you this, though. We have to do something about the campaigning. I get that it’s hard for people to find loglines to upvote inside 2500 comments. But more scripts are getting through via upvotes than I expected. So I think the formula is working just fine.

I’m thinking of eliminating writers who delete their pitches after they’ve received my vote. This pitch session is a learning experience for writers who come to the site and we can’t learn if pitches are being deleted. And it’s just bad form. I might allow for one deletion since everybody has that one precious idea that they want to protect. But that’s probably it.

I haven’t counted all the submissions that have gotten through yet but I believe we’re on pace for 60 scripts in the contest, which would be perfect. I’m expecting that a third of the entrants won’t complete their screenplay, which depresses me but I’m just being realistic. That leaves 40 scripts, every single one of them a good movie idea. That’s more than enough.

Next weekend will be an extra long pitch session as Monday is Labor Day. So that should get crazy. Keep working on those loglines people! Don’t wait until the last second. Loglines need to be rewritten until they’re perfect, just like scripts.

And if you need help, you can always order a logline consultation from me. Just e-mail me here: carsonreeves1@gmail.com

Thank you everybody for a fun weekend! And if you haven’t made it through yet, KEEP TRYING! You’ve got two more weekends.

P.S. If your soft maybe, maybe, strong maybe, or yes haven’t been counted, e-mail me at carsonreeves3@gmail.com and let me know. Also, if I never responded to your pitch, e-mail me as well and I’ll remedy that.