Genre: TV – 1 hour drama
Premise: Two dads in Suffolk County engage in an intense feud that bubbles over into their innocent childrens’ baseball league.
About:  A huge article purchase from over on Esquire (article has a paywall unfortunately).  Jason Bateman and Netflix continue their love affair as the streamer paid big bucks to bring their Ozark pal back into its arms (Netflix beat out SEVEN other rabid suitors). Bateman will direct and star in the show about two little league fathers who get into a very intense rivalry that involves criminal activity. They’re going to have to figure out a better title though because when I first saw this, I thought it was a story about a Cinderella-type ball that dads attended.
Writer: David Gauvey Herbert
Details: About 6000 words

One of the best ways to sell anything in this business is to write a story that’s similar to a recent hit.

This actually used to be harder because the strategy was built almost entirely around giant movie successes. So if Armageddon made a billion dollars its opening weekend, you’d be competing against thousands of other screenwriters with your “Armageddon adjacent” spec script. A giant Astroid threatens the world? Well, what about a giant tidal wave!?

But these days, there are a lot more opportunities because success has become more relative and diversified. A crafty screenwriter looks for smaller “mini-successes” and pitches projects similar to them.

Case in point, today’s sale. The Daddy Ball project was clearly pitching itself as “The next Beef.” And boy is that a powerful pitch when all of the elements align. You have to be in the minds of these buyers. They’re terrified of buying something that sucks. So any little image you can put in their mind that indicates success – like a recently popular show – helps out.

With that said, I’ve found that you have to be careful not to jump onto mega hits. I experienced this myself a couple years ago while trying to pitch a really good racing pilot with a writer. We pitched it as a Succession set in the south. What I didn’t realize was that, literally, EVERYONE was pitching “Succession set in the [blank].” And when that happens, the pitch goes right through one ear and out the other.

This pitch was perfect because Beef was a hit but a low-key hit. Not everyone saw it. And not everyone who did see it, liked it. However, the people who did like it, loved it. And, so, when you pitched “Beef set in the world of little league baseball,” your competition was small and the people who loved Beef were DEFINITELY going to request the script.

Back in the late 2000s, in Suffolk County, Bobby Sanfilippo was excited to get his 10 year old son into the local little league scene, which was becoming a big deal. To get on one of these traveling teams, you had to fork up a couple grand. But Bobby was more than happy to, since his son (who can’t be named) loved baseball.

Bobby’s son joined a team called the Inferno and that’s when Bobby first met John Reardon, a sort of daddy psychopath. John’s son Jack would come onto the team and be an instant star. He had all the makings of a kid who could go pro one day. Much better than Bobby’s son, who was just a good player who loved baseball.

When the team started to get really good, parents wanted to get rid of the weak players. John seemed to spearhead the movement to get rid of people like Bobby’s son. So Bobby, who was doing well financially, took his son and STARTED HIS OWN TEAM, naming it, “Vengeance.”

Not long after, the two teams would play, Jack’s team would win, and John would scream some really terrible things at Bobby’s son. When the Vengeance coaches called him out on it, John pulled out a bat and came at them. In the end, everybody calmed down, but this daddy rivalry had gone up a notch.

One day John started getting all these text messages sent from an anonymous phone that contained pictures of his family doing everyday activities accompanied with threats that John was “done.”

Several months later, during a Vengeance game, the police showed up, arrested Bobby for the messages, and made him do the perp walk of shame in front of his team. Although Bobby denied sending the messages, the damage had been done. The team was never the same since many of the parents believed Bobby was guilty.

Bobby had always contended that John was friends with the local police chief and the two had constructed this hit job together. A couple years later, this gained more credence when that police chief was taken down by the FBI for running his precinct like the KGB. In the end, both fathers still think they were right in all the things they did. And both still hate each other.

I’m not sure what to make of these non-traditional magazine article sales. You guys remember that Monopoly one from a couple of years ago? The one that Matt and Ben bought? That thing died in a blaze of glory quicker than you could say, “How bout them apples.”

I understand why this sold. In addition to the “Beef” connection, you’ve got that all important conceptual irony to hang your baseball cap on. It’s because this is set in the world of little league baseball that it has a juicier taste. You shouldn’t be sending life-threatening messages over junior sporting events.

But I was hoping for a lot more chaos. I actually thought, when I read about this in the trades, that it was going to end in murder. That’s the expectation with these true stories now. So, when you don’t get all the way there, the audience is like, “That’s it??”

At the very least, I was hoping for an ongoing rivalry between the two teams. But there were only two games and both of them were uneventful except for Jack striking out Bobby’s son and John bringing out a bat afterwards, a bat he didn’t even use.

That’s what this story felt like to me. A whole lot of blue baseballs.  It was always on the brink of something gnarly happening but nothing gnarly ever happened. In fact, any sort of issue between the two dads was an adjacent issue. When Bobby’s son left the Inferno, for example, it wasn’t John who kicked him off. It’s not even clear if John had any opinion on getting Bobby’s son off the team.

And then there’s this big thread about how John was distantly related to the local police chief, which is why the two had worked together to illegally take down Bobby. But that’s never proven. The evidence actually leans towards the two never having spoken to each other in their lives.

Stories work best when the attacks ARE DIRECT. Not adjacent. In Beef, it wasn’t that Danny *might have* kidnapped Amy’s daughter. He *DID* kidnap her daughter.

Unfortunately, this feels like a writer who thought there was more to this story than there was, spent a couple of years and a lot of interviews on it only to find out, in the end, it was really a rather tame story. He then did his best to imply a lot of bad things happened.

To be fair, it worked out. It’s being turned into a TV series. But for this to work, they’re going to have to add A LOT MORE to the story. This needs to be completely fictional if it’s going to be as entertaining as Beef. If they filmed this as is, people are going to leave this series saying, “Did you really just make a TV show about two people who yelled at each other a couple of times?”

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

What I learned: In a script like this, you need at last one “Holy S—t” moment. If you don’t have a “Holy S—t” moment in a movie or show about a bitter feud, then the feud you’re writing about isn’t nasty enough. Beef has that shocking traumatic ending. There’s also the house burning down. There’s Danny secretly sabotaging his brother’s future. There isn’t a single “Holy S—t” moment in Daddy Ball.

A reminder that the June Logline Showdown deadline is THIS THURSDAY! Scroll down for details on how to enter!

Genre: Action/Comedy
Premise: A stunt man on location in Italy is mistaken for a famous assassin who just tried to take out one of the country’s biggest businessman. The businessman puts his entire financial weight behind finding and killing the “assassin.”
About: This script finished in the middle of the pack in last year’s Black List. The writer, Will Lowell, received his masters degree in film and television from USC. Up to this point, he has written and directed several short films.
Writer: Will Lowell
Details: 111 pages

A reminder that THIS THURSDAY is the deadline for LOGLINE SHOWDOWN.  So get those loglines in!

When: June 23rd
Deadline: June 22nd, 10pm Pacific Time
Where: e-mail all submissions to carsonreeves3@gmail.com
What: include title, genre, and logline

On to the review!

If you’re a writer hoping to become the next Christina Hodson, Joby Harold, or Michael Waldron, screenwriters being hired to tackle these behemoth franchises, the genre you want to choose for your next script is Action-Comedy.

Those are the two most important ingredients for these mega-franchise movies. They want you to be able to come up with awesome set pieces (like babies falling from a building) and they want you to be funny. Studios need audiences coming out of their movies feeling like they had a good time. And the number one way to accomplish that is to make people laugh.

Some say the spec sale is dead. That’s incorrect. It’s just delayed. You write a great action-comedy spec and don’t get paid for it. But if someone hires you to write Iron Man 4 because they loved your spec, you, essentially, just sold the script that got you the assignment.

But what this means – if you want to make a lot of money as a screenwriter – is that you have to be strategic about the genre. You have to choose a genre where the biggest potential extrapolation of that route equals the biggest payday. Action-Comedy is the big enchilada in the payday department.

Sam Clark is one tough stunt man. The guy did several tours in the military. Now he gets to travel to unique places all over the world and do stunts for movie stars. He’s currently in Italy doing stunt work for an annoying Channing Tatum. During a particularly difficult stunt, he badly cuts his hand.

Elsewhere in Italy, a notorious masked assassin named Il Pistone attempts to assassinate a business magnate named Giuseppe Greco in his mansion, but unintentionally kills his adult son. Pistone aborts the mission but when he’s escaping, he cuts his hand on the fence. Giuseppe then puts the word out to every criminal in Italy to kill Il Pistone!

After a tough day on set, Sam goes to get a drink at a bar and meets a hot young lady named Clara and the two sleep together. The next morning, while Sam heads to set, he’s attacked by a random man. Sam’s military training allows him to escape. But soon, he realizes this is just the start. More and more men come out of the woodwork to try and kill him.

It becomes clear that Sam, because of the whole injured hand thing, has become mistaken for Il Pistone. And even going to the U.S. Embassy doesn’t help. Greco has too much influence here and so even Sam’s Murica brothers are after him.

While running around the city, Sam bumps into Clara again, who’s pissed off that she hasn’t received a text after their tender lovemaking session the night before. (Spoiler) But it turns out Clara isn’t being totally honest with Sam. That’s because Clara is Il Pistone! Eventually, Sam figures this out, and the two decide to team up to take down Giuseppe Greco.

This script was good.

But I’m still frustrated by it.

How can that be, you’re wondering. A good script is a good script. What else is there to discuss?

Here’s the problem. Good scripts are great. But great scripts are better.

The thing about good scripts is that there are a lot of them. Therefore, when you write one, you’ve only succeeded in getting lost in a sea of good scripts. You haven’t separated yourself.

Take the opening scene here. It’s as assassination scene.

It’s well written. It’s paced well. It’s described well. There’s a little bit of suspense. It has an emotional moment between father and son.

But I have read, literally, one thousand scenes just like it.

That’s the problem with a good script is that a good script is code for “good enough.” But “good enough” doesn’t get you much. It gets you acclaim from bored Black List voters who are used to reading lots of bad screenplays. They’re just happy that, for once, they’re not clawing their eyes out.

But this business is so freaking competitive that “good enough” is almost as bad as bad. Some might even argue bad is better. Because readers remember bad scripts. I remember Orbital. But good enough scripts? I’ve usually forgotten those by Sunday.

Someone just e-mailed me the other day for a script I reviewed a couple years ago. I had no idea what he was talking about. He kept telling me that I liked it. I gave it a “worth the read.” I finally found the script and, like this one, it was good enough. Good enough to get that ‘worth the read.’ But not good enough to be memorable.

I don’t know if there’s an existential plane for screenwriting discussion. But if there is, I would ask, after every script, “Does this script have a soul?” Or is it just a screenwriter executing a concept according to the steps he’s been told to take?

I watched this Black Mirror episode last night called Beyond The Sea. It’s complicated to explain but, basically, two astronauts on a deep space mission can link up with perfect human avatars of themselves back on earth so they don’t go insane in their tiny ship with nothing to do for years at a time.

One of the astronauts starts inhabiting his partner’s body back on earth and falls in love with his partner’s wife in the process.

That script had soul. It explored the human condition in a complex and, yet, universal way. It displayed tragedy, sadness, falling in love, happiness, jealousy — all these universal human experiences that, when added up, gave the script a soul. And, to be honest, I didn’t really like the episode. It was too dark and sad for my taste. But did it have soul? You bet it did.

Now, you may say: “Action/Comedy, Carson. None of those movies have souls. They’re dumb escapist fun.” Wrong. I just watched an action comedy yesterday that had a soul. The Flash.

It’s frustrating because I can go into a lot of the things that this script did well, particularly its plotting. The reveals (Clara is Il Pitone) and double-crosses (the Embassy is going to kill Sam) and the dramatic irony present late in the script when Sam thinks he’s protecting Clara when it’s really her protecting him.

Or when when Sam realizes that the only way out of this is to find and kill Il Pitone, and Clara is trying to talk him out of it because, of course, she’s Il Pitone.

All that stuff was fun.

But then you get this really over-leveraged Channing Tatum joke. If there’s anything that’s going to steal the soul of your script, it’s a drawn out Channing Tatum joke. Channing Tatum plays himself for a joke in EVERY MOVIE! That’s all he does these days. Which makes it a soulless creative choice. Go with someone unexpected. Josh Gadd in his first action film. Or weirdo Joaquin Phoenix. When you go below the surface with your creative choices, it’s like massaging your script with soul moisturizer.

This is more important than ever in the era of AI. Because AI is about to start spitting out really generic screenplays. Therefore, if you’re not consistently making interesting/risky/unique creative choices, your scripts are going to start getting mistaken for AI scripts.

Don’t get me wrong. Match Cut is not AI bad. But it is by-the-book. The writer masked a lot of that because his execution is strong. But it still feels like a script I’ve read many times before.

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

What I learned: As you know, I always appreciate a good character description. Here’s one I really liked in Match Cut: “AGENT GRANT (60s, ill-fitting suit, a Cold War relic lost in a sea of data analysis and predictive algorithms).” The writer uses something I call “essence description.” This is when you describe someone in a way that allows us to understand the essence of who they are.

James Gunn helped me remember one of the most powerful components of a great story

I was watching James Gunn do an interview with actor and podcaster, Michael Rosenbaum. For reference, they’re good friends. And, also, Rosenbaum played Lex Luthor in the show, Smallville.

One of the topics that came up in the podcast was “superhero fatigue,” which Gunn admitted was a huge problem for moviegoing in the current era. But he went even further than that. He said he’d grown fatigued by all spectacle movies.

One thing he said really stuck with me. He said he couldn’t remember the last time he watched the third act of one of these spectacle movies AND ACTUALLY CARED ABOUT WHAT WAS GOING ON.

This is the same reason why I’ve been so reluctant to see Hollywood movies lately. It’s why I didn’t see Ant-Man. It’s why I didn’t see Fast X. It’s actually why I didn’t see Guardians (as I assumed it would be yet another third act Marvel mess).

But it was what Gunn said next that really hit hard. He said, “You don’t feel anything for the characters. And if you don’t feel anything for the characters, you don’t care what’s going on.”

This immediately got me thinking about how to get the audience to care. What makes me care about a story? Luckily, I just read a great story yesterday, in “Wild,” about a werewolf who takes in a thief on the run. What was it about that script that made me care?

Simple, really.

The central relationship.

We put so much focus on the hero in screenwriting that we’ve lost sight of the fact that what really makes us care is our main story pairing. Because just like in real life, there’s power in numbers. Why rest everything on a lone hero’s accomplishment when you can pair two people up and have them experience that victory together?

There is something about watching two people connect and overcome obstacles that hits the audience harder than when just one person does it. Would it have been cool, yesterday, to see just Liz beat up all the bad guys with her werewolf powers? Sure. Would it have been cool to see just Nick kill all the shady gangsters who chased him into town? Sure.

But watching them both do it TOGETHER?  Watching them depend on each other? That feeling of accomplishment is multiplied because we’re not just happy for him or happy for her. We’re happy because each of them helped SOMEONE ELSE. It was not a selfish act. It was a selfless connective act. And that’s what gets audiences feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.

I relate this to playing tennis. I kinda hated singles growing up. I felt good when I won, I guess. But I was never happy when I was playing the match. I was always screaming at myself and upset that some part of my game wasn’t working. When I won, I was just happy that I didn’t lose. I felt like Jokic after winning the NBA finals. Just let me go home.

But I LOVED doubles. The specific reason I loved doubles was because when I won, I got to share that victory with someone else. Usually, a good friend. There was nothing better than that feeling.

What James Gunn is talking about is the erosion of the screenwriter’s focus on this tool. The reason we don’t care about the ending is not because of all the cheesy VFX – although that’s certainly part of it. The reason we don’t care is because we don’t care about these characters and we certainly don’t care about their connection with one another.

None of this is to say these companies aren’t trying.

No producer is going out there and saying, “Who cares what the audience thinks of our characters.” Quite the opposite. If you listen to Kathleen Kennedy, she can’t stop talking about the importance of characters.

So then why do all her characters suck?

It’s because they’ve forgotten that it isn’t just about making your hero likable. It’s about the Power of Two. You have to make the hero likable and then you have to develop a compelling relationship with another character who we care about and now your story is turbocharged. Cause we’re not just rooting for the hero. We’re not just rooting for the co-hero. We’re rooting for them as a team.

“Okay,” you’re saying. “But how do you develop a Power of Two who we actually care about, Carson? Cause just saying ‘create two characters instead of one’ doesn’t automatically result in a great script.”

True dat.

We can look to yesterday to get our answer to this. There’s one primary ingredient you absolutely must inject. And that’s CONFLICT. You have to create conflict within that primary relationship.

What that conflict does is it PUSHES your central characters apart. And then, in order for them to be victorious, they must PULL together. If you get that push-pull right? That’s your golden ticket to screenplay nirvana. If you do nothing else right but that, you’ll have a good screenplay. That’s the secret sauce.

So, yesterday, what’s PUSHING them apart is that Liz is a werewolf. But they can’t defeat the sheriff’s family or the criminals unless they PULL together.

But don’t take some unproven Black List script’s word for it. Look at two of the most successful movies of all time – Titanic and Avatar. Jack and Rose are pushed apart by society. But they must pull together to survive the sinking of the ship. Jake and Neytiri are pushed apart by being from two different cultures but must pull together to defeat the human’s military attack.

That’ll do the majority of the work for you.

But if you want to really make people care, follow this one-two punch: Make the central relationship interesting in some way. And make it specific to your movie.

You can’t just have two people be friends and we’ll magically care about their relationship more than anything in the world. Use the conflict to create an interesting pairing.

That’s what I liked about Wild so much. It was such an interesting dynamic. He was on the run and needed a place to stay. He doesn’t like this woman but he’s got no other choice so he stays in her barn. She’s a werewolf. She could potentially kill him. Talk about a messed up way to start a relationship. This interesting pairing that has conflict up the wazoo and was specific to the movie made for two people we instantly cared about.

Contrast that with Jason Reitman’s Labor Day where the female lead pretty much likes the criminal right away. He likes her right away. They’re reenacting the pottery scene from “Ghost” within five minutes of getting to her house. It’s just boring. Without that genuine conflict and interesting connection, we’re bored by them. And if a relationship starts off boring, it’s almost impossible to salvage it.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite movies growing up, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which is the perfect example of this formula’s power.

You have selfish Ferris, who just wants to have the best ditch-day ever. And then you have Cameron, who’s sick as a dog and just wants to be left alone. That’s the conflict that’s pushing them apart.

I can’t emphasize this enough. John Hughes could’ve easily made Ferris and Cameron the best of pals, party animals who were both on the same page about ditching school that day. Many lesser writers would’ve written that exact setup. By Hughes creating that conflict, he makes their relationship instantly more compelling.

And if they’re going to have the best day ever, they’re going to have to pull together despite that. That push-pull is the movie-within-the-movie that makes Ferris Bueller’s Day Off so iconic.

That scene at the end? The one where they’re sitting in Cameron’s dad’s car trying to run back the odometer? The level of emotion in that scene? That’s what Gunn is talking about when he says we don’t see that anymore. Because writers and studios aren’t doing the character work required between the two leads to make moments like THAT happen.

If they made that movie now, that scene would just be words. We wouldn’t feel a thing.

So, on your next script, make us care about your hero, yes. But, also, make sure the central relationship with that other main character is in place. Because we will care more about two people succeeding together than one person succeeding alone. Always.

Get a Script Consultation With Carson for $150 OFF! – In addition to logline consultations (just $25!), I do full screenplay consultations, pilot script consultations, outline consultations, first act consultations. Anything you need help with, I can help! If you mention this article anytime this week, I will give you 150 dollars off a feature (or 100 off a pilot) consultation. :). E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com

(TOP 25!!!) – One of the cooler crossovers I’ve read in a long time. A History of Violence meets An American Werewolf in London meets Let The Right One In.

Genre: Horror
Premise: A werewolf living on a remote farm with her older sister takes in a thief on the run just 72 hours before the next full moon.
About: This script finished on the Black List. The above logline you read was my logline. But since I’ll reference it in the review, here’s the very un-horror sounding logline from the Black List: “A young woman is determined to protect a thief on the run when he holes up in her small town, even if it means revealing a darker, more violent secret of her own.”
Writer: Michael Burgner
Details: 110 pages

It can be VERY difficult choosing a script to review from the Black List. Make the wrong choice and you could find yourself sifting through 120 pages of high school freshman level writing. Make the right choice, and you may find yourself the next Nightcrawler.

The stakes are high.

For this one, I noticed that Sugar23 represented it. I know they represent creators who did True Detective and 13 Reasons Why. I also noticed that even though the Black List logline made the script sound like a drama, that the writer had a couple of short films to his name that were horror. So I figured… hmmmm, maybe that means this one is a horror film too.

That was enough to seal the deal. And boy did that research pay off!

We meet Liz, who lives in a Kansas farmhouse with her sister, Jean. Liz has ugly scar tissue all around her neck. What’s that about? She walks downstairs where Jean is waiting. The two walk outside, across the yard, to the storm cellar. They go inside. There’s a big rusty chain and collar attached to a concrete wall. Jean and Liz place it over Liz’s neck, lock it, and Jean heads back into the house.

Later that night, a semi-truck screeches to a halt on the nearby highway. Jean sees this. Oh no. Jean runs across the field to the truck, hollering at the driver to get back in his truck. The driver, who thinks he hit something, gets WHACKED by a blur, pulled into the nearby corn field. Jean turns around and sprints with everything she’s got back to her house. It doesn’t take long for us to figure out what happened. Liz is a werewolf and got free from her restraints.

Cut to a medium-sized town several weeks later where Nick and Crispy barge into a strip club to rob it at the end of the night. After Crispy goes rogue and gets shot, Nick is able to get away with the money. But the owner’s security, a Navajo psychopath named Hashke, along with the owner himself, are already planning on how to retrieve his dough and torture this man.

During the getaway on his motorcycle, Nick’s battery was shot. So when the motorcycle dies, he’s forced to hitchhike. This is where he meets Liz, who looks like she’s going to pick him up, but instead tells him to get cleaned up and drives off.

Furious, he walks the rest of the way to town, where he runs into Liz again, ignores her, and heads to the hardware store to get a battery for his bike. The owner says it’s a special delivery and will take 72 hours. When Liz sees Nick throwing around money, she offers him a place to stay at her barn. Realizing that people will talk if he stays in town, he decides to take her up on her offer.

Meanwhile, Ruby, a sheriff, has made her way into town to find out exactly what happened to her husband (the trucker), and Hashke, taking a page out of Anton Chigurh’s book, has arrived in town in search of Nick. Oh yeah, and did I mention there’s a full moon in three days? About the same amount of time that Nick plans to stay at Liz’s? Yeah, I’m starting to think we’re going to get one hell of a climax.

When people talk about the difference between amateur and pro writing, it often sounds arbitrary. A lot of times it just means the reader likes this script better than that one.

So let’s get specific. Cause this script is a a great example of what a truly good screenwriter looks like when they’re putting together a story. I can show you specific examples of what the difference between advanced and intermmediate looks like. So let’s get into it.

For starters, there’s the robbery that opens Nick’s storyline. Nick is robbing a strip joint with Crispy. They get in there, it’s a room full of people, and when the initial threat of a stick-up doesn’t receive the proper fearful response, Crispy slides open his jacket to reveal that he’s strapped with explosives.

Nick stares over at this the same way everyone else does, with a giant “WTF” look on his face. This was the first indication that we’re dealing with an advanced writer. 99% of writers are going to have their robbers in lockstep, cause they’ll think of them as one entity.

But it’s so much more interesting to the story if one of these two go rouge. It instantly turns a black and white situation gray. And that’s where all the fun is.

Cut to a few scenes later. Nick’s motorcycle breaks down and he’s hitching on the side of the road. Liz is driving down that same road, sees him, and stops. Keep in mind, Nick still has blood on his face from the botched robbery.

Now, let me explain to you how an amateur writer thinks in this moment. They know that Nick is going to stay at Liz’s place. They know that’s the next major plot point. So they view things through the eyes of getting to that plot point ASAP. Therefore, they have Liz see this bloody man hitchhiking, pick him up, and take him to her home.

But in what reality would that happen? What woman is going to pick a bloodied hitchhiker up. That’s how the advanced writer looks at it. They look at it more from a perspective of reality. Of course you’re not going to pick him up. So after a few words with the man, Liz tells him that if he expects anyone to pick him up, he’s going to have to get cleaned up first. Then she drives off.

But here’s where the writing goes from advanced to very advanced: That scene does double duty. Not only is it more truthful but it establishes REAL CONFLICT between the two. Nick hates this girl now. The beginner screenwriter just has his two leads hate each other because it works better for what he’s trying to do.  Who needs a *reason* for that? Here, the writer actually creates a reason for Nick to dislike Liz, establishing the necessary conflict between the two leads.

Later, the two re-meet at the hardware store. Liz sees Nick throwing money around. Liz’s farm is going under. Money is everything to her right now. So she offers him a place to stay while he waits for his battery to come in (another well-done, underrated, part of the plotting – the time constraint) and when she brings him back to her place, Ruby is sitting there, the wife of the dead trucker.

This is an EXTREMELY strong writing choice and let me tell you why.

Nine of out ten writers would’ve taken a break at this moment in the story. We just went through Liz meeting Nick on the road, Nick buying the new battery, the two negotiating him staying over… it would’ve been easy to take a couple of scenes off with Liz just sort of sitting in her room and looking tired. Or showing a “day in the life” of living on the farm. I know a lot of writers who would’ve done that. Five pages of mush before we get back to the plot.

By having this obstacle waiting for her – the wife of the man she killed sitting on the couch – tells me that this writer gets it. He knows that movies in small towns on farms die a lot quicker on the page than the Mission Impossibles and the Jurassic World’s of the world. So he knows that he has to keep things moving. It was moments like this that elevated this script above 99% of the other scripts out there.

And then, like any good horror film, you have this looming danger that’s coming. We know that the full moon is 3 days away. We know that Nick is the perfect food source. Nobody will miss him if he disappears. So we’re wondering, is he dead meat?  Or is she going to start liking him enough that that doesn’t happen?  Or maybe still happens?

And then, as if all that isn’t enough, you have not one, but TWO looming obstacles imposing on the central storyline. One is Ruby, a cop who wants to know what happened to her husband. And two is Hashke (and ultimately the strip joint owner), who want to kill Nick and get his money back.

I honestly don’t know if you could’ve come up with a better series of creative choices than was made here.

All of this sitting on top of the best creative choice of all, which was to make this a horror film. Too many writers would’ve written the version of this that the Black List logline implies. Which is a criminal who stays with a woman while avoiding the bad guys chasing him. That story ISN’T SEXY ENOUGH for a screenplay. You need a genre element to make people care (not to mention, make it marketable!). And that’s what we get here. We get the werewolf element.

How do we know that the non-genre version doesn’t work? Cause we’ve seen it. Jason Reitman’s snore-fest, Labor Day. Same premise. But no werewolf. Which equaled 1000x more boring.

This is the kind of script that, if you can internalize all the choices made here, starting from the concept then moving into the plotting itself, you will massively improve your own screenwriting. Every screenwriter should read this script.

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

What I learned: The “Meet Mean.” We’ve all heard of the “Meet Cute.” But how much more interesting is it when your male and female leads are introduced via a “Meet Mean,” as was the case here? Liz drives up to Nick, asks him a few questions, lets him know there’s no way she’s letting him in her car, then drives off. I find that WAY MORE interesting than if they had an instant obsessive infatuation with one another.

While the box office helps screenwriters keep track of industry trends, which helps inform them when it comes time to write something, the majority of that data is useless. To screenwriters, I mean. There isn’t anything the average screenwriter can learn from Super Mario Brothers making a billion dollars. All movies in the top 10 live in Studio IP La-La Land, a destination reserved exclusively for the titans of the industry.

In order to learn something from the box office as a screenwriter, you want to track ORIGINAL projects. Projects that you could’ve written yourself, had you the foresight to do so. These are the projects that savvy screenwriters should be emulating and inspired by, as these are the scripts from screenwriters that actually get made.

Today I’m going to list the top 10 original projects, ranked by worldwide box office take, and tell you what you can learn from each of them.  I’m sure there will be some comments about the underwhelming box office take of some of these films.   But let’s keep things in perspective.  M3GAN, the number one original movie of the year, cost 1/20th the budget of Super Mario Brothers, the number one overall movie of the year.  When you take that into consideration, you realize these box office performances are a lot better than they first look.

M3GAN
Genre: Horror
Domestic: 95 million
Worldwide: 176 million

Lesson: I confess I did not see M3GAN’s success coming. I thought the living doll horror story had been done to death (see what I did there?). They couldn’t even get a better known doll franchise, Child’s Play, to drive ticket sales. Why would I think rando M3GAN would be able to? But if there’s anything M3GAN’S success reminds us, it’s that horror is the go-to genre if you’re a spec screenwriter who actually wants to make money. It honestly can’t be beat. And looking back at previously successful horror templates is a great starting point for coming up with an idea that gets buyers salivating.

AIR
Genre: Sports Drama
Domestic: 52 million
Worldwide: 90 million

Lesson: Yet another savvy business idea is to mine true sports stories for concepts. They usually do well. Weirdly, they all do well on the Black List (I guess because all those assistants are big sports fans), further improving the chances of them getting purchased. Air was a departure from the usual formula, though, since it was less about the on-field stuff and more about what happens behind the curtain. The hack the writers are using here is that they know a lot of actors love sports. And they know those same actors are either too old or not in good enough shape to play professional athletes. But anybody can play a schlub in a suit. If you make that schlub talk a lot, you’re going to find a big actor who wants to play him.  That big actor is the start of a flashy package that’s going to make sure your movie gets a big marketing push.

COCAINE BEAR
Genre: Comedy/Horror
Domestic: 64 million
Worldwide: 87 million

Lesson: Cocaine Bear is an example of a low-key growing trend in concept creation: viral concepts. These are concepts that either already went viral on social media (“Zola”) or the ideas are so wacky, the producers are banking on the fact that the movie itself will go viral, which achieves that all-important awareness, and also saves some money on the back end of the marketing budget. That was the plan here, although it’s difficult to tell if it was successful or not. Cocaine Bear landed in that monetary zone where you can’t call it a success or a failure. Which means even these newer flashier ways to construct concepts are susceptible to the same roll of the roulette wheel that movies have had to deal with since day 1 of the business: You never know what’s going to click with audiences.

THE POPE’S EXORCIST
Genre: Horror
Domestic: 20 million
Worldwide: 74 million

Lesson: This was based on a book but I included it because it’s still an idea any writer could’ve come up with. You don’t even need the book to write about it, since it’s based on a real person.  One of the most dependable horror specs you can write is an exorcist script. If I had any interest in exorcisms, I would be writing one of these every month. How dependable is the genre? Well, the script doesn’t really have a hook. I guess it’s kind of cool that the exorcist works directly for the Pope. But it’s not like the Pope is possessed. That would be a hook. Our exorcist still exorcises normal people, like every other exorcist. In other words, even without a hook, this movie made 74 million worldwide, and that’s all because of one word: EXORCIST.

65
Genre: Sci-fi
Domestic: 32 million
Worldwide: 60 million

Lesson: When people think of this film, they think, “Loser.” But it’s actually a winner. Every movie on this list is a winner because it’s an original idea that got made. Which is what most of you are trying to accomplish. 65 was actually a good idea. A couple of people crash land on earth during the dinosaur era just hours before the famous dinosaur-destroying asteroid arrives. Unfortunately, it made a couple of critical creative mistakes that tanked its RT score (main characters were, inexplicably, aliens and the tone was too dour). Since original movies are more dependent on good reviews than studio-backed mega-franchises, 65 didn’t survive its weak critical reception. To really take advantage of mid-budget sci-fi, you have to keep things here on earth and in the present. District 9, Arrival, and the upcoming The Creator. I still contend that 65 was a cool idea. But mass audiences tend not to like this story setup for some reason (they rejected “After Earth” as well).

PLANE
Genre: Action/Thriller
Domestic: 32 million
Worldwide: 52 million

Lesson: The great thing about these movies is that they always get made. These Thriller-Action B-movies might as well be printed on the same documents that authorize the financing transactions for production because that’s how dependable they are. With that said, you are going after the same group of actors here (Gerard Butler, Liam Neeson, Jason Statham, etc.) and it DOES help if you can give them anything unique. It’s very common for them to say, “I already played this part.” It’s why Statham got so excited to do The Beekeper. Sure, in the end, money talks. Neeson has done the same role for the last 20 movies. But what I’m saying is, you gain yourself a little bit of an edge if you not only come to the actor with an offer, but come to them with an offer and a role they haven’t gotten to play yet. Gerard Butler had not played a pilot yet. And that was all he needed.

MISSING
Genre: Thriller
Domestic: 32 million
Worldwide: 49 million

Lesson: Timur Bekmambetov is THE GUY for these computer-based movies. I know a writer who’s writing one for him right now. And since they’re so cheap to make, I see Bekmambetov’s production company continuing to spit them out until they squeeze every dollar out of the sub-genre. Just make sure that you keep the story moving, which Missing does an AMAZING job of. It isn’t just a thriller in name. It’s thrills every second. Remember that the main character is sitting down the whole movie (or most of it). Which is why you want the story to have extreme urgency and stakes. Cause if someone is sitting down the whole movie in front of a computer and their goal is weak and they have as long as they want to achieve that goal? That’s a script disaster waiting to happen.

80 FOR BRADY
Genre: Comedy
Domestic: 40 million
Worldwide: 40 million

Lesson: It may not be my thing. It’s probably not your thing either. But the 65+ female demographic has been known to come out for these movies. The formula right now is comedy + several older women. But that could change and be centered around 2 older women, or even 1, if she’s interesting enough. If you have a really good comedy idea for the older female demographic, it may be worth writing it just because this is one of the least competitive sub-genres out there. Very few writers are writing them. So if you had something good, you could sell a script.

RENFIELD
Genre: Comedy/Horror
Domestic: 17 million
Worldwide: 25 million

Lesson: What I’ve found with horror comedies is that there’s a segment of writers who love to write them and a segment of readers who love to read them. But when you get to the actual theater, not a lot of people like to come to them. The target demo for this genre combo is usually people bored at the end of the weekend who just want to throw on something mindless. Which is why this movie bombed.  Plus, I think it was too weird. The comedy angle was odd – that Dracula’s assistant had powers of his own. It didn’t really make sense. That’s script suicide right there – when your main character’s unclear.

THE COVENANT
Genre: War/Action
Domestic: 16 million
Worldwide: 18 million

Lesson: These movies tend to play well to conservative audiences. This one was about a guy carrying another guy across the battlefield for a long distance. But it’s a tough genre to hit the bullseye with. American Sniper showed what was possible at the box office. Lone Survivor did well. Hacksaw Ridge did solid. So you would think this would’ve done better. What was the difference? Out of these four films, only The Covenant was not based on a true story. The thing with these conservative-leaning war stories is that the Rust Belt idolizes these soldiers. They’ve been celebrating them long before anyone made a movie about them. You could say that they’re conservative IP. So I think that’s the trick if you’re going to write one of these. Making it completely fiction, especially with such a weak hook (carrying a guy across a battlefield), was the stake in this movie’s box office heart.

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