As we anxiously await the end of the year screenwriting lists, we turn to one of Hollywood’s go-to moves – free IP!

Genre: Fantasy
Premise: Dorothy Gale and Alice meet in a home for those having nightmares and embark on a journey to save the imaginations of the world.
About: This script made last year’s Black List. The script was involved in a bidding war and eventually got gobbled up by Netflix. This is an intriguing purchase in that this film will cost at least 120 million dollars (probably more). It’s also an indication that Netflix is now poaching on film studios’ favorite material – old IP. The writer, Justin Merz, is an English teacher.
Writer: Justin Merz (based on the characters created by L. Frank Baum, Lewis Caroll, and J.M. Barrie)
Details: 114 pages

When in doubt about what to write next, turn to the classics.

Cain and Abel, Shakespeare, Wizard of Oz, Frankenstein, The Count of Monte Cristo, dare I say ROBIN HOOD(???) – I just did. I said Robin Hood. But it’s true. Hollywood never tires of these stories because they tick two of the most important boxes in production. They are KNOWN TO EVERYONE and they are FREE TO LICENSE. That’s profit on both ends, baby. And yet, Hollywood’s been screwing up the formula. They’ve got the Robin Hood Problem. The Pan Debacle. The Frankenstein Atrocity. And when was the last time someone gave us a good Shakespeare adaptation? It’s been so long, it’s starting to feel like it was back when Shakey was alive!

I suspect that there are so many options bouncing around our field of vision these days that if we whiff even a HINT of dust on a movie, we’re out. “We’ve seen this already!” we scream to our glowing portals. Only for the studios to be confused when we don’t show up to their latest CGI debacle. The trick to writing in this genre is you have to make it feel new. That’s the only way to wipe the dust off. And hence I give you Dorothy & Alice, a script that will attempt to reinvent a story we know by combining TWO tales into one. Let’s see if it works…

It’s 1901 and an 18 year-old Dorothy keeps having nightmares where she tries to get back to Oz but can’t find it. UNTIL NOW. Dorothy digs under some dirt, finds the yellow brick road, which leads her to someone named Ozra – protector of the Emerald Tower – who informs her that she needs to find something called THE DREAM STONE stat! If she doesn’t, it’s likely that the Red Prince will. And if he gets the stone back to his mommy, it will allow her to destroy any reality – Oz, Wonderland, Neverland, even Earth!

Dorothy’s cool uncle (her aunt has since died) believes that her crazy dreams are real and sets her up with a dream specialist who lives all the way out in London. Once there, Dorothy stays at a special hospital for girls who have wild dreams like hers. She’s thrilled when the head doctor, Dr. Rose, believes that Oz exists. But the good vibes don’t last. A crazed former patient named Alice pops in and recruits her to come to Wonderland where it’s believed the Dream Stone is located.

When Dr. Rose learns that the girls have escaped, she sends two of her men to neighboring Neverland through a Matrix-like contraption that allows people to jump into the dream world at will. Dorthy and Alice travel across the magnificent Wonderland, only to get picked up by Princess Tiger Lilly, who whisks them off to Neverland. Once in Neverland, the Red Queen arrives looking for the dream stone and, wouldn’t you know it, the Red Queen is Dr. Rose!!! Spoiler alert. From there it’s a battle to secure the dream stone and the good guys win and it’s all happily ever after………. or is it?

So here’s the deal.

I can’t stand scripts that are one giant CGI fest. For starters, when it comes to worlds this unique, it’s hard to imagine what we’re looking at based solely on words on a page. But, more importantly, when you write these movies, you risk slipping into CGI dependency, where the answer to your story problem becomes an enormous set piece on top of a giant rose with 50 foot monsters attempting to eat your hero.

The irony of a scene like this is that it’s both imaginative and unimaginative all at once. Sure, we’ve never seen it before. But we’ve seen enough stuff like it where it isn’t interesting. It’s much harder, and more rewarding, to come up with an emotionally resonant character-driven scene. But the more you fall into “GIANT CGI MOVIE MINDSET,” the less likely you are to go with that option.

I actually liked how this script began because it was character driven. I thought it was a really interesting question the author was posing – What is your life like three years after going through an incredible experience that nobody else believes you went through? Imagine how frustrating that must be. And when you add the death of Auntie Em, it makes Dorothy’s situation even more sympathetic.

I WANTED TO WATCH THAT MOVIE.

I even liked it once we got London. Again, it was because the writer was forced to write real things. Just to be clear about what that means – I believe that readers are attracted to things that they can relate to in their own lives. That’s a big reason why Harry Potter is so popular. It mirrored the school experience everyone goes through. When we get to London in Dorothy and Alice, we’re still dealing with real world things like settling into a new place and meeting new people.

Once we get to Wonderland, all of that goes out the window. It’s one CGI experience after another. And while I understand that a lot of this is inherent to the concept (it’s called WONDER-land, so there has to be plenty of wonder), that doesn’t mean you throw out the tool that helps the reader relate to what’s going on. You can ALWAYS use that tool, no matter how insane the world you’re writing about is. In Raiders, it’s the broken relationship between Indiana and Marion. Who hasn’t had to navigate a broken relationship before? It’s the thing that reminds us these people aren’t that different from ourselves.

I don’t know what the flaw or conflict or relationship issue any character here is going through. All I knew was that every ten pages, there’d be a new creature. That’s lazy. Not engaging.

Something that amazes me every time I think about it is the climax of The Matrix. It’s the epitome of the argument that character is more important than spectacle. The climax of The Matrix takes place IN A HALLWAY. The background is WALLPAPER. Think about that for a moment. That’s how minimalist the movie is. And we’re talking about a film that pioneered special effects. Yet the final battle is as simple as it can get.

I try and tell every writer I can about this scene because it’s more than just an example. It’s a way of thinking. When you’re struggling with your script, the solution is rarely to come up with the best action or chase or explosion scene ever. But rather, it’s to explore who your character is and how you can use this experience they’re in to test them.

A lot of you are probably confused now because I’ve gone on this whole rant yet Dorothy And Alice sold to Netflix. So why did it sell? I don’t know. But I can hypothesize. My guess would be that Netflix wants to get into the IP game. And going with free well-known IP is one of the easiest ways to do it. The writer DID come up with a new take, which is to combine two worlds. I suspect that that also had something to do with it, as it gives them unlimited options for sequels if the film does well. And the script is written well. I’m not saying this script is bad by any means. It provides spectacle if that’s what you’re looking for. My argument is that this stuff doesn’t resonate unless you prioritize character over spectacle. And I didn’t see that here.

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

What I learned: As a counter-argument to my review, I will admit that these kinds of scripts are good for writers who want to show that they have the ability to write big set-piece laden Hollywood screenplays. The scripts themselves don’t often sell. But if you can be consistently imaginative, and write even two REALLY INVENTIVE set pieces, that could get you an assignment on one of these effects-heavy projects. — HOWEVER, if you do that AND YOU NAIL THE CHARACTERS, you will be desired by every major studio in town.

This is as close as we get to flashy spec sales these days. A writer writes a short story, gets Ryan Reynolds attached, and a bidding war erupts!

Genre: Horror
Premise: A young resident at a psychiatric hospital attempts to diagnose its most dangerous patient.
About: And now for something different. Today we have the wonderful success story of a writer who posted his short story on the subreddit “Nosleep” two years ago and last week, found himself teamed up with “it” Warner Brothers’ horror producer, Roy Lee, and Ryan Reynolds, to turn the tale into a movie. Right now Reynolds is listed only as Producer. But it’s hard to believe he won’t want to play the juicy role of “Joe,” the titular patient driving the story, by the time cameras get rolling. Jasper Dewitt is experiencing that rare “came out of nowhere” moment that every writer dreams of.
Writer: Jasper Dewitt
Details: roughly 60 pages

I absolutely love success stories like this. In today’s Hollywood, the majority of breakout stories come from within. Most of the writers you see credited on studio movies came up through the system. They never had a true “name in bright lights” moment. So it’s fun to see that it’s still possible, even if these breakout moments require some unique twist. Writing a great screenplay will always get you noticed. But being found in some random corner of the internet carries with it that “rags to riches” story the trades love to write about.

Patient’s success also embodies the spirit of what I’ve been pushing for the last couple of years. Which is that you shouldn’t limit yourself to just writing screenplays. And you shouldn’t be trying to get noticed solely through traditional channels. The end game is to get noticed. Therefore, you need to be taking a “whatever means necessary” approach.

Just 25 years ago, it was impossible to get read. Almost literally impossible. Think about if you had a screenplay but no internet. How would you even begin to get people to read your stuff? You’d be lucky if three people read your screenplay in a year. Now we have entire websites dedicated to you being able to promote your work. Take advantage of that. Cause stuff like what happened to Dewitt can happen to you.

“Patient” is written in a first person voice so as to take advantage of the medium where it was published (Reddit). Their subreddit, “Nosleep” has a rule by which every story written there is “true.” Therefore you need to treat it as such. Our hero, Parker, has just started his residency at a psychiatric hospital and all he hears about is the mysterious patient, “Joe.” Joe is legendary due to the fact that everyone who speaks to him either quits, goes insane, or commits suicide. Being your typical ambitious doctor, Parker wants to be the one who cracks him.

It’s by no means an easy goal. There seems to be an intricate web of levers one must navigate in order to get permission to even get inside Joe’s room, much less try and diagnose him. So, at first, Parker goes through Joe’s old files, where we learn that Joe’s been here for over 20 years, since he was six years old, and was committed for being convinced that a spider-like monster lived inside his bedroom walls.

By the time Parker finally convinces the president of the hospital to get a crack at Joe, he’s bursting at the seams. But Joe isn’t anything like Parker expected. He’s skinny and meek and completely lucid. He tells Parker that everything Parker’s heard about him is a lie. That he hasn’t hurt anyone or convinced anyone to hurt themselves. But, rather, his parents are disgustingly rich, and, at the moment, he’s the hospital’s biggest source of income. As long as he’s here, they’re getting rich.

Parker becomes so convinced that Joe is being taken advantage of, that he plans an elaborate escape to free Joe. However, on the night of the escape, he’s swooped up by the orderlies and brought to the president, who informs him that she knew about his escape plan all along. “How?” Parker says. “Joe told me,” she replies. And it’s from here that Parker learns Joe is a lot more complicated than he expected. And maybe he should’ve heeded the advice he got about Joe from the beginning – to stay as far away from this psychopath as possible.

I have mixed feelings about this one.

We have a clear protagonist goal in place: diagnose and save the patient.

But is that goal strong enough to power an entire movie?

That’s the first struggle I had.

The second was padding.

Early on, Parker tells us he’s going insane due to the experience he had with his patient, Joe. Then makes us wait forever before he brings us into Joe’s room. I get it. The writer’s milking that suspense. But I didn’t feel like he’d earned the right to make us wait that long. Okay, you’ve established that the patient is weird. Let’s get to him already.

One of the worst things in storytelling is padding. If it feels like the writer is writing stuff just to pad up the page length, I go insane. And while I understand you need to build up a world before you can exploit it, you only get so much leeway. If I were reading this as a screenplay, I would’ve given up on it during this section.

And I thought about that while it was happening. Why is it, in this particular scenario, that I don’t care enough to get to the good stuff? I realized it was because the main villain, Joe, was becoming more and more obvious the more we learned about him. He made this nurse commit suicide. He assaulted another patient. He scared a guard. WE GET IT! HE’S NOT A GOOD GUY! lol It was all so obvious. Had we been given info about Joe that was actually surprising, I might’ve changed my tune.

This is probably why, once Parker finally talks to Joe, I got onboard. Joe, it turns out, is the opposite of what we’ve been told. I liked that Joe was making sound arguments about being set up, namely that his parents were rich and he was a paycheck for the hospital. All of these rumors about committing suicide or assaulting patients, were lies made in order to keep the gravy train rolling. This set up a legitimately compelling mystery: Which side is telling the truth?

Now Parker has to go back and forth between the two sides to come to a conclusion. It’s during this time that a new variable comes into play – the monster in the walls that supposedly drove Joe here in the first place. I like when stories do this – pose multiple questions – as it gives us more reason to keep reading. Now I’ve got two things I want to figure out.

The story’s featured scene is when Parker visits Joe’s old home so he can inspect the bedroom where the monster supposedly attacked him. I don’t know why but I’m a sucker for the old, “remove the rug and find an anomaly on the floor” development. I fall for it every time. And we get an appropriately kick ass climax to the scene when Parker’s had enough and takes an axe to the walls.

At this point, I was in “worth the read” territory, only to be yanked back to “wasn’t for me” when the author attempts to button up his story with a Sixth Sense level twist. I’ve read the twist several times now and I still don’t understand it. Even after going down and reading some of the comments, it’s confusing.

I’ll say this about good twist endings. They require more rewriting than anything else in storytelling. That’s because they need a series of setups that were put in place throughout the script. And you need to tweak those setups and the ending repeatedly so that when the payoff for those setups finally arrives – our twist – we understand what’s happened immediately. If the audience asks, “Wait, what?” after this moment, the twist didn’t work. And that’s very much how this twist felt. It was a “Wait, what?” twist.

“Patient” is a pretty good story. It’s fun in places. But it seems to be lacking that je ne sais quoi that puts movies like this over the top.

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

What I learned: The twist ending is one of the most tempting items on the writing menu. However, think about how many truly great twist endings there have been in cinema history. Can you think of more than five off the top of your head (no, I’m serious – list as many as you can in the comments section – no googling!)? My point is, only write a twist ending if you’re sure it’s effing great. Otherwise, write the ending that best suits your story.

No post today. Instead, I command all of you to write for FIVE HOURS this weekend. Find the time. Work on your script. Or an outline. Or start something new. However you want to parse it. As long as you’re writing. If you need a break, come back here to discuss the newest Avengers trailer (what?? no action scenes???). You can also read last week’s big sale in town, which happened to be a story someone wrote on Reddit’s “No Sleep” subreddit. It’s about a doctor who works in an insane asylum who tries to connect with a disturbed patient. Another example that you can find success in a myriad of different ways. I’ll be reviewing that on Monday. Seeya then!

As we inch towards an Avengers Infinity War Part 2 trailer, the Russo brothers, who directed the film, have been giving interviews. And one of their recent statements made me look up and say, “Wucchu talkin’ bout Willis?” Apparently, the Russo brothers aren’t fans of the two-hour storytelling format known in most corners of the world as the “feature film.” Here’s what they had to say: “We are in a major moment of disruption. The two-hour film has had a great run for about 100 years but it’s become a very predictive format. It’s difficult, I think, to work in it. … It’s sort of like saying, ‘We all like sonnets, so let’s tell sonnets for 100 years, as many ways as we possibly can… I’m not sure that this next generation that is coming up is going to see two-hour narrative as the predominant form of storytelling for them.”

That’s a bold statement. The two hour movie is dead? Have I been transported to another dimension? Actually, I admit to having similar thoughts over the last couple of years. One of the most annoying things about going to movies these days is that I always know what’s going to happen. Or, even if I don’t, I have a pretty good idea. The way the 2-hour 3-Act movie is set up necessitates that only a finite number of things can happen. I mean, if you set up a goal in the first act, the end of the movie is either going to be our hero achieving their objective or failing at it. If it’s a big Hollywood movie, they’re probably going to succeed. If it’s an indie movie, it’s not always obvious, but you usually have a good idea based on the tone of the film.

So I’m left to ask, “Why DO we still tell movies in a two-hour format?” Well, a big part of it is that movies have to be at least 80 minutes to be shown in a theater. This is so you don’t go see a movie and 40 minutes later the lights come up and you feel like you’ve been ripped off. The two hour format also seems to be the baseline for how long an audience is willing to sit down and watch a piece of cinematic entertainment before they start shuffling about and getting impatient. Hence why films are around two hours long. But I do think it’s a fair question to ask: Is this format the way it is because it’s the best way to tell a story or is it the way it is because we’ve gotten so used to it that we haven’t bothered to come up with anything else?

The argument towards change seems to be coming from the explosion of streaming entertainment. This new outlet has begun to tell stories in ways they haven’t been told before. Black Mirror has given us a series of one-hour films. Maniac is an 8 hour movie. And it seems like we’re only at the beginning of this experimentation process. Hulu just announced a John Grisham “universe” whereby two shows will be made side-by-side and tackle the same story from their own individual perspectives. Meanwhile, sites like Youtube are popularizing the 12-15 minute format, even if right not it’s being utilized mostly for real-life content creators. So TV/Streaming/Internet seems to be driving this “the two hour movie is dead” narrative.

But let’s not kid ourselves. TV still has its own story problems, namely the “never-ending second act.” Almost every story starts with a problem or issue that needs to be resolved. For example, with Lost, it was “We need to get off the island.” Or with Breaking Bad, it was, “Get my family taken care of before I die.” This ensures that the first few episodes (or, if a show is really well-written, the first few seasons) begin with a giant push. But inevitably we get to a point where it feels like we’re spinning our wheels. The new shorter-series streaming projects have less of this. But they’re still there. That’s one of the powers of the 2-hour format. Is that everything has to be decided by the end of the film. So there’s an amazing amount of momentum propelling the story forward. It’s a rush as opposed to a slow drip.

Still, I think there’s something to what the Russos are saying. The two hour feature storytelling format has become embarrassingly predictable. There are only so many ways you can remix the 3-Act structure. Every good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Sure, you can try and pull some Tarantino shit (“Every story should have a beginning, middle, and end, but not necessarily in that order”), but for the large majority of the writers who try that, their scripts come off less revolutionary than they do messy. Playing with time requires a deft touch. And it’s usually a gimmick to begin with.

I suspect the fate of the 2-hour film is going to play out over the next decade. The feature world will skew more and more towards spectacle, which means the majority of the non-Marvel movies we watch will be at home on streaming services, where there are no restrictions on time limit. And that’s where more and more chances will be taken. It’s going to take young writers and filmmakers who grew up without these hard-limitations in mind to discover different ways of telling stories. Despite that, I don’t think the core of how we tell a story will change. There will always be a beginning, a middle, and an end – a setup, a conflict, and a resolution. That’s how stories have been told for two thousand years. So I don’t see this “the two hour movie is dead” proclamation as doom-and-gloom. Maybe more of an evolution. And I wouldn’t mind that if it eliminates movies like Mortal Engines and Artemis Foul. Would you?

Genre: Family/Holiday
Premise: (from Black List) A young girl partners up with an elf, a Russian explorer and a reindeer to rescue Santa Claus from a band of evil elves and save the North Pole.
About: Today’s script finished on last year’s Black List with 10 votes. The writers, Paul Laudieo and Ben Baker, are both new to the game. This is their breakthrough script.
Writer: Paul Laudieo & Ben Baker
Details: 112 pages

Today’s review comes with a reminder. Thursday, December 14th, is the last day to send in your script for the FINAL AMATEUR OFFERINGS COMPETITION of the year, which is for holiday-themed scripts only. So if you have a script about Christmas, Hanukkah, Festivus, or even that long awaited Alastair Sim biopic (we’ll see how many of you get that reference), send it to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the title, genre, logline, and why you think it should be featured on the site.

The good news is that Netflix has embarked on being the home of everything Christmas. Their “Christmas Chronicles” movie, starring Kurt Russell, has been viewed over 20 million times! And it’s still 3 weeks til Christmas! So there’s a real shot that if you write a great Christmas script, good things will come of it. Today’s Christmas adventure was featured on last year’s Black List. Let’s check it out!

13 year old perennial good girl Sophia is headed to her grandmother’s house for Christmas with her family. While Sophia loves her four siblings, she’s sick of them being so selfish all the time. So when the family finally gets to Grandma’s and her older sister, Caitlin, starts being a bitch, Sophia screams at and throws a plate at her, which leads to her getting punished.

Later that night, while stewing in her room, Sophia notices an elaborate sleigh landing on the roof! Oh my. Is that… Santa Claus?? Sophia runs outside to see that it is not Santa, but rather someone named Bucklebee the Elf. Bucklebee makes Sophia an offer she can’t refuse. Come to the North Pole and party her ass off. Since that sounds better than hanging with her annoying family, Sophia walks into the sleigh carriage, which has a giant endless carnival inside!

Sophia begins to enjoy the festivities until she notices a kid hiding from everyone. She runs after him and he tells her that Bucklebee is evil! He’s an elf who’s taken over the North Pole and loves to sing mean variations of holiday classics (“I see you when you’re sleeping! And I know when you’re awake! I know that you’ve been bad, not good! So give in and accept your fate!”). And one of his favorite things to do is kidnap the “naughty” kids every year. Heeding his warning, Sophia is able to escape the sleigh, jumping out onto a snowy mountain.

It’s here where she runs into Juniper, an elf who escaped the Rebellion, Cosmo, a baby reindeer, and Georgy, a Russian man who’s been wandering around these parts for years in search of the Abominable Snowman. When Sophia informs them she heard that the exiled Santa Claus is somewhere in the Yulewood Forest, they reluctantly agree to help her look for him. Unfortunately, Bucklebee and his army of oversized crows are hot on their tail, determined to prevent Santa Claus from returning at all costs!

When it comes to kids movies, there’s this odd glitch in the success matrix that seems to favor darkness. Think about the most famous kids movies. The Wizard of Oz. Willy Wonka. The Lion King. The Nightmare Before Christmas. These films get really dark! I don’t know why this is because, on the surface, you’d think anything for kids should be straight-up fun and happy. But the proof is in the pudding. In the movies I listed above, there’s death and moody songs and intense villains and uncomfortable weirdness. I mean, who the hell came up with flying monkeys? Or a girl who turns into a giant blueberry and disappears?

Escape From The North Pole sticks to that tradition. Bucklebee is both evil and freaky. But it’s not just him. There’s a warped sense of hopelessness that permeates the story. Santa is gone. Kids get kidnapped into a flying carnival of hell where they’re all drugged to prepare them for slavery. And some of the biggest set pieces are really sad. Like the Cave of Lost Toys – an entire world of toys living underneath a cave because they weren’t deemed fun enough to play with. Yeah, right?! This is some dark shit!

But what Laudieo and Baker get right is that they build a central group of characters to contrast against that. Our heroes are actually fun. Sophia is delightfully earnest. Georgy’s a big goofball. Juniper doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. And who doesn’t love baby reindeer who haven’t yet learned how to fly? These four are the beacon of light that keep us headed for land.

Yet Laudieo and Baker run into a screenwriting problem I see often. They cheat on the hero’s character flaw. You can’t do this because the hero overcoming their flaw is the emotional anchor to the story. When you get it right, it’s the thing that makes the audience feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Get it wrong and the movie can still be good. But it’s not MEMORABLE to the audience because they don’t associate any FEELINGS with it.

Let me explain in more detail. This whole premise is based around Sophia getting on the naughty list. That’s why she’s picked up by Bucklebee. However, Sophia isn’t naughty. The entire opening of the movie establishes that it’s everyone else in the family who’s naughty. She’s the lone good one. But if she’s good, Bucklebee won’t want her. So the writers have to construct this moment where Sophia loses her cool and throws a plate at her sister. And that’s what gets her on the list.

The reason this is a problem is because Sophia doesn’t have a true character flaw to overcome. She doesn’t have to learn to be “nice” or “unselfish” because she’s already nice and unselfish. By cheating to get her on this trip, you’ve given us a character who can’t be arced. The writers would’ve been better off making Sophia legitimately selfish or “naughty.” That way, we can use the adventure to teach her a lesson and arc her. The problem is that every writer’s terrified of making their hero mean because all the screenwriting books tell them the hero has to be “likable.” But if a character doesn’t have any flaws, then there’s no reason to send them on an adventure. The whole point of going on any adventure, even in real life, is to test and learn something about yourself.

While some writers rebel against the notion of character arcs in movies because that stuff never happens in “real life” (or at least, that’s the argument), family films are one of the genres where you have to do it. If there was ever a genre built for arcing characters, it’s this one. Your main audience is in the process of learning what’s right and wrong in life. Your responsibility as a writer is to show them.

But that doesn’t mean Escape From The North Pole was bad. I found it to be imaginative (I loved stepping into the carriage and it being a million times bigger inside than out), and brave (the darkness gave the story an edge that struck a nice balance between sophisticated and childlike). I just wish more had been done with the characters. That’s where the real magic happens in these movies. And it could’ve elevated Escape From the North Pole into something truly memorable.

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

What I learned: I wouldn’t recommend writing something like this. It’s so hard to get a 150 million dollar non-IP film made. Christmas movies like The Christmas Chronicles and Elf can both be made for under 30 million bucks. So if you have a choice, write one of those over the much more expensive Escape From The North Pole. That is NOT to say it’s impossible to get this movie made. Only that when a script comes along with this big of a budget, you’re eliminating 90% of the buyers in town.