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Genre: Action-Thriller
Premise: (from Black List) When a veteran hitwoman is mysteriously poisoned on her last assignment in Tokyo, she has 24 hours to track down her killer before she dies.
About: Before today’s script made the bottom half of last year’s Black List, it got a 25 million dollar production commitment from Netflix… WITHOUT A DIRECTOR OR CAST. Wow. That kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore. Actually, I don’t think it’s ever happened. It goes to show that Netflix, in its bid to become the ultimate entertainment destination even if that means going bankrupt, is willing to disrupt any and all models they can. The writer, Umair Aleem, just made headlines yesterday for getting the high profile gig, “Danger Girl,” a comic book inspired by Charlie’s Angels, James Bond, and Indiana Jones, if that’s possible.
Writer: Umair Aleem
Details: 120 pages
I have a feeling today’s script is going to make some of you angry. I mean, it’s another Jane Wick spec – aka, the most unoriginal trend in Hollywood history. But I encourage you to see the light at the end of this tunnel. Writer writes spec. Writer gets direct commitment from Netflix. Writer gets high profile gig in the same vein as his spec. I’d hope everyone would champion that seeing as it means THESE SORTS OF THINGS HAPPEN. And therefore it could happen to you. And as much as spec sales rock, they don’t come anywhere CLOSE to production commitments. Who cares if you sell a spec that never gets made?
Kate is the best hitman/hitwoman who’s ever held a gun. Seriously? Isn’t that always the case with these movies? When are they going to make a movie about an average hitman? Anyway, we open on Kate telling her longtime handler, Varrick, she wants to retire after this hit. He doesn’t like it but he promises to talk to the Firm and see if they’ll release her.
Before Kate, who’s in Tokyo, executes the hit, she has sex with a male prostitute. Then off she goes to assassinate a prominent Japanese something-or-other. Right before she pulls the trigger, she feels an unimaginable pain all over her body. She refocuses, but the pain only gets worse. Somehow, she’s able to kill her target, but she passes out before waking up in a hospital.
They tell her she’s been poisoned with uranium and has less than 15 hours to live. Oh, and her death will be unimaginably painful.
There ain’t a whole lot to do during the last 15 hours of your life than figure out who poisoned you and kill them so off Kate goes, starting with Varrick, crossing him off the list, then the prostitute, satisfied he didn’t do anything. So then it’s time to check the heavy hitters. The Yakuza.
She works her way up to the two biggest families in town, the Sumiyoshis and the Kozakuras, killing entire armies of men to get to the top brass and question why they wanted her killed. But everyone she talks to has no idea what she’s talking about.
Along the way, she saves a 12 year old girl named Ani who, coincidentally, was being used as bait to lure in, guess who? That would be the mark she killed earlier. So now she’s walking around with the girl who she’s just made fatherless. But the two form a close bond, and therefore when Ani gets taken a second time, Kate will have to make a decision what to do with the last hour of her life – find out who her killer is, or go save the girl. Maybe, just maybe, she’ll achieve both.
I constantly preach on this site – GO SIMPLE! Write a simple easy-to-understand plot. A group of people go to a dinosaur park. The dinosaurs get loose and the people must escape. Simple, right?
But when is simple TOO simple? Is a woman who’s been poisoned looking for her killer enough to keep us engaged for 2 hours? Or is there a floor for how simple a concept can be?
A premise is too simple when, despite a clear goal, stakes, and urgency, you don’t do anything original with the execution.
That means either your characters have to be really interesting or you need a location that we haven’t seen before or a situation that’s fresh and unexpected or a plot that takes some risks or you need to have a voice that’s unlike any other writer out there.
Otherwise, if all you’re doing is giving us a generic, “Hero needs to get from Point A to Point B or something terrible happens” plot, it’s going to be too simple.
I’ll give you an example of another hitwoman script that got this write. It was called Ballerina. In that script, we end up in a weird Swiss Alps town and find out that everybody who lives in this town is a hitman, and they’ve been breeding hitmen for centuries.
Weird? Yes. A choice that works for everyone? No. But at least it was unique. At least it was something I hadn’t seen before. And that’s what you should be looking to integrate when you have an absurdly simple concept, like “Kate.” At several junctures during the story, we’ve got to feel that this is different from what we’ve seen before.
So was Aleem able to achieve this?
Well, his voice is a little different. He writes in the Walter Hill style of screenwriting, where the action is short and single-spaced. This fragmented style gives the script a unique feel right off the bat, which helps offset some of the simplicity of the premise.
The setting is a little different as well. I’m not sure we’ve ever had a female action-thriller set in Tokyo. I don’t know how much credit I should give for this since we’ve obviously seen plenty of male action scripts set there. But I admit it helped things feel a little different.
And Kate herself, while hardly a world-changing heroine, is a cold-hearted sociopath who had a double mastectomy to prevent the future possibility of breast cancer. I’m not sure how much I liked that choice. But it’s different. And it’s the kind of thing I can see an actress being excited to play.
Finally, I liked the choice of having the girl she saved be the daughter of the man she killed. I say that as someone who’s read lots of similar plots where the kid our hero saves has no connection to them whatsoever. And how that makes the relationship a lot less interesting.
All of these choices helped elevate “Kate” beyond amateur status.
After that, however, it’s standard stuff. We go question Suspect A. He mentions Suspect B. So we go see him. He mentions Suspect C. We go to him. He mentions suspect D. We go see him. It was a very linear repetitive narrative. And once you get in a rhythm like that, the reader gets too comfortable. They know that the next guy you visit is just going to tell us to visit the next guy. Because that’s what you’ve been doing for the past 45 pages.
I wrote an article once about In and Out. The idea behind the article was you want equal amounts of your hero imposing herself upon the story (“Out”) and the story imposing itself upon your hero (“In”). The move from one suspect to the next was all Out Out Out Out Out Out. It wasn’t until the girl arrives, which was after the midpoint, that we got an In. Aleem could’ve used more Ins.
With that said, I genuinely didn’t know who poisoned Kate. And I was surprised by just how much I wanted to know. And when we finally get the answer, I was satisfied (for reasons I’ll get into in the What I Learned section). For that accomplishment alone, this is worth the read.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
POTENTIAL SPOILERS!
What I learned: Whoever the killer is in your murder-mystery, you must 100% eliminate them as a possibility early on. You can’t trick audiences these days. There are only so many suspects to choose from. We’re going to figure it out. So what you do is you create a scene or a scenario whereby we know, for a fact, that your killer isn’t your killer. If you look back to Kevin Williamson’s “Scream,” there was a moment where we thought the killer was the boyfriend. But soon after, the boyfriend is with our hero, Sydney, while the next killing happens. We now know, for a fact, he’s not the guy (but then he ends up being the guy). Here, [The Killer] is the first person Kate goes to. She sits him down and asks him if he’s involved. It’s just a scene of them talking, but afterwards, we’re convinced this guy would never hurt Kate. Of course, in the end, it turns out he was just a really good actor.
Genre: Superhero
Premise: When a time-traveler comes back from the future to kill the boy who murdered his family, it will be up to Deadpool and his new super duper team to stop him.
About: There’s a sneaky sub-story regarding today’s film that the trades are trying to sweep under the rug. Deadpool 2 made 125 million dollars this weekend. That’s 7 million dollars less than the first Deadpool made on its opening weekend. The trades hate when one of their darlings underperforms because it means they have to come up with an angle that excuses the performance despite a history of tearing apart films with similar results. The spin they’re going with here is that Deadpool did better globally in its first weekend than the first film did. But that’s largely because they opened on more screens this time around. The thing is, Deadpool 2 does deserve a pass. It’s a better film than the first one. Its underperformance is the doing of its studio, which placed it between Avengers and Star Wars, possibly the worst release date in the past 10 years. Why not place Deadpool in June where the waters are calmer? I don’t know. But Deadpool 2 will leave between 100-200 million dollars on the table due to this bizarre decision.
Writers: Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick and Ryan Reynolds (based on the comic by Rob Liefeld & Fabian Niciza)
Details: 2 hours long
BEEEEP BEEEEP BEEEEP. Backing up the Spoiler Truck guys. If you get run over, it’s your fault.
I have a lot to say about this one so let’s jump right into it!
Deadpool 2 starts in typical Deadpool fashion, with Deadpool blowing himself up. But the curse of being Deadpool is that he can’t die. So like Humpty-Dumpty, they put him back together again. A few scenes later, Deadpool shows us the reason he killed himself. A bad guy pops into his apartment and shoots Vanessa in the heart. Yes, Vanessa, from the previous film is dead.
Meanwhile some dude named Cable, who’s from the future, is also suffering from family tragedy. His wife and son were murdered by a firestarting super-villain. So Cable time-travels back to 2018 to kill the offending villain, a mutant 12 year old boy named Russell, before he can begin his decades-long killing spree that ends in the murder of his family.
Deadpool is reluctantly recruited into the X-Men, which means he has to do good, and his first order of goodness is to save Russell. But being Deadpool, he has to do things his way. So he recruits a team of the worst superheroes imaginable, calling them X-Force. It’s then a race for X-Force and Cable to see who gets to the boy first.
To stand out amongst an entertainment machine that pumps out thousands of hours of content every day, millions if you count the internet, when you write a script, you must give us things that we’ve never seen before.
That doesn’t mean you have to give us a movie concept we’ve never seen before. It’d be nice. That’s what the original Deadpool did. It gave us a fourth-wall breaking R-rated superhero. But it’s hard to find those ideas.
So the next best thing is to give us moments WITHIN YOUR SCREENPLAY that we’ve never seen before. One great original moment is nice. Two is better. And anything over two is awesome. Deadpool 2 gives us three moments.
The first is the opening credits scene. For those who haven’t seen the film, Deadpool’s wife, Vanessa, is killed in the fourth scene of the movie. It’s an emotional moment. I was genuinely shocked. These two were set up as the perfect couple in the first film.
The title sequence that follows, a James Bond parody set to a surprisingly catchy Celine Dion song, begins listing the credits. Except they aren’t what we expect. “Produced by: Wait a minute, did you just fucking kill her?” “Directed by: Are you insane?” Director of Cinematography by: “Holy shit, you really fucking killed her.” (paraphrased).
This was clever, not just because we’d never seen it before. But what you probably don’t know is that credit sequences are unionized. It’s hard to change them. Unions did this to prevent situations where producers kept their credit on screen for 60 seconds. Or say the studio hated the job the costume designer did. This would prevent them from simply not including her credit.
I bring this up because there’s a bigger issue at play here. There are things that we believe are “set.” That can’t be changed. So we don’t even consider it. I’m assuming the reason it took so long for someone to think of this was because everyone assumed you can’t change a title sequence. You had to accept them. This is a reminder that everything is open for change. There should be no avenue closed off from your imagination.
The second moment was the X-Force fail. This was my favorite sequence in the movie. I knew something was up because the superheroes looked super cheesy, even for a movie that made fun of superheroes. But I didn’t think they were going to kill them off before they fought a single battle! That was brilliant, and the one time in the movie where I couldn’t stop laughing.
Finally we had baby legs. I wasn’t a fan of this scene. A lot of people think the baby-adult hybrid thing is funny. They’ve done a lot of Super Bowl commercials covering it. But it’s too weird for me. Regardless, there’s a lesson to be learned here as well. This is one of the most talked about sequences in the film, and it’s six people in an apartment. This is what I remind writers who think that the only way to catch a reader’s attention is to go bigger. No. This scene proves that the smallest scenes can be the most memorable. You just have to be creative.
But maybe the biggest surprise of Deadpool 2 was how character-driven it was. I’d just done a screenplay consultation for a writer who wrote an action film. And my big note to him was, “You need to give us more character development so that we care about these characters during the action.”
As I was writing that, I realized that the average screenwriter has no idea how to do this. Their understanding of character development in an action film is to write one scene every 30 pages where two characters are in a room, resting, and one of them gives the other a monologue about their troubled childhood.
Deadpool 2 is about 30% action. This means 70% of the film is covering character. Seeing Cable’s reaction to the aftermath of his dead family is character development. Deadpool whining to a bartender after his wife died is character development. Seeing quick flashes of Russell being tortured is character development. Seeing Deadpool rage-kill the man who killed his wife is character development. Deadpool and Cable having a difference of opinion on how to treat Russell is character development. Cable carrying around his boy’s burnt stuffed bunny is character development. Deadpool’s dreams where he’s back with his wife are character development. Russell desperate to find a friend he can trust is character development. In fact, Russell’s entire character (a boy who’s been abused his whole life and is now taking it out on the world) is character development.
I reminded the writer that anybody can write action. But very few writers can develop character. That’s the hot commodity in screenwriting. If you can do that? Hollywood will hire you from now until the end of time.
As much as I admired the crafting of Deadpool – the chances it took and the overall writing – I did have one problem with it. Its biggest strength – Ryan Reynolds – is also its biggest weakness. The fourth-wall-breaking joke-a-minute schtick is tiring. It’s so tiring. Yes, Deadpool does it better than anyone. But it’s still a gimmick. And gimmicks have short shelf lives. Note how in Ferris Bueller, Ferris only does the fourth wall breaking in that opening sequence. During the rest of the movie, it happens only a handful of times. And that’s because John Hughes knew that the audience would get tired of it. Deadpool’s commentary started to irk me towards the end. And that’s the only reason this movie doesn’t finish with an impressive.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Action films have way less action than you think they do. It’s roughly around 30% of screen time, usually less. Let this be a lesson that you need to learn to develop character if you’re going to be a successful writer in this genre.
Are you trying to sell a script? Do you want to make the Black List? Then today’s article is for you! I’ll be going through each and every major genre and break down how likely it is to sell a script or make the Black List in that genre. This is not meant as an end-all be-all determination for what you should write. There is no 100% sure-fire formula for writing a script. But you do want to load the odds up in your favor. All genres will be rated on a scale of 1-10 in the two categories, 10 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. Spec sales are hard to come by so don’t expect any 9s or 10s in that category. But you can still sell a spec in the right genre. Let’s take a look…
Genre: Super-Hero
Script Sale: 1 out of 10
Black List: 1 out of 10
Comps: Black Panther, The Dark Knight, Avengers: Infinity War
Breakdown: There’s no point writing in this genre unless you’re adapting from something else that was successful in another medium. I suppose if you did an action-comedy type thing with it, like Will Smith’s “Hancock,” that could work. But generally speaking, the super-hero genre is strictly an IP zone. Screenwriters should steer clear of it at all costs.
Genre: Contained Thriller (Horror)
Script Sale: 8 out of 10
Black List: 5 out of 10
Comps: 10 Cloverfield Lane, Get Out, Saw
Breakdown: Welcome, my friends, to the most lucrative genre for spec screenwriters and filmmakers. Contained horror is cheap to produce. Horror audiences don’t require much from the genre other than to be scared. You’re not going to get a million dollar paycheck writing in this genre. But your chances of selling one of these is better than in any other genre on this list.
Genre: Contained Thriller (Sci-Fi)
Script Sale: 7 out of 10
Black List: 3 out of 10
Comps: Alien, Ex-Machina, Primer
Breakdown: These movies don’t do as well at the box office as horror, which is why their numbers are lower. They’re also more expensive to make than contained horror. Your best bet is probably to mix the two, like they did with the original Alien.
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Script Sale: 3 out of 10
Black List: 4 out of 10
Comps: How to be Single, Love Simon
Breakdown: This is how bad the romantic comedy has gotten. One of the biggest romantic comedies of 2016, “Why Him,” didn’t even focus on the romantic relationship. It focused on the hero and the romantic interest’s father. With that said, I think I saw a romantic comedy on last year’s Black List for the first time in a long time (Daddio?). So maybe there’s hope. Here’s my take on the romantic comedy. Someone needs to do with the rom-com what Christopher Nolan did with the super-hero movie when he made The Dark Knight. Cut out all this goofy wish- fulfillment nonsense and make it more realistic.
Genre: Action-Comedy
Script Sale: 7 out of 10
Black List: 2 out of 10
Comps: The Spy Who Dumped Me, Central Intelligence
Breakdown: I consider the Action-Comedy to be a hidden gem for spec sales. Hollywood has always loved making these movies. Unlike the straight comedy, which has fallen in recent years because it doesn’t travel well, any sort of action plays well to international audiences. So Hollywood has shifted their priorities over to this genre from the comedy, despite the fact that they cost more to make.
Genre: Western
Script Sale: 5 out of 10
Black List: 7 out of 10
Comps: Bone Tomahawk, Hostiles, The Homesman
Breakdown: This is a tricky genre. At first glance, it seems antiquated. Yet they continue to make 3-4 Westerns a year. I think the reason for this is that directors love to shoot them and actors love to be in them. There’s something inexorably cool about playing a gunslinger or getting that classic wide shot of the old country. You just can’t go crazy when you write these. Nobody’s making big budget Westerns anymore. The ideal setup would be something like “High Noon” where everything is localized (aka “cheap”).
Genre: Period (War)
Script Sale: 6 out of 10
Black List: 7 out of 10
Comps: Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan, Dunkirk, Hacksaw Ridge
Breakdown: When I say “Period War,” I mean any war dating back 2000 years. From the 300 Spartans to the Iraq War. War always sells. There’s something visceral about it that speaks to audiences on multiple levels. But these days, your war film MUST BE BASED ON A TRUE STORY. Otherwise don’t bother. The only reason this gets a 6 on the “sale” rating instead of a “7” is because these movies are expensive to make. So studios have to think a little harder before pulling the trigger.
Genre: Zombie
Script Sale: 5 out of 10
Black List: 3 out of 10
Comps: Train to Busan, Maggie, 28 Days Later
Breakdown: Five years ago, the zombie genre would’ve been a good 2-3 points higher. But the genre is currently in an ice age. Luckily, ice ages only last five years in Hollywood, which means it’s only a matter of time before the zombie pic comes back to life! You like that? “Back to life?” Ah, I kill myself. Then I re-animate myself. Just remember to always ALWAYS try to reinvent this genre. If your zombie script is anything like what I’ve seen in the past, I’m throwing it in the trash. And so is every other reader in Hollywood.
Genre: Romance
Script Sale: 3 out of 10
Black List: 5 out of 10
Comps: Call Me By Your Name, The Notebook, Dear John
Breakdown: This is the least glorious of the genres. Nobody remembers who wrote or directed these movies. But there’s definitely a market for them. Unfortunately, for right now, that market is dominated by Nicholas Sparks, and, to a lesser extent, John Green. It’s not a spec-friendly genre, which means you should probably steer clear of it. Self-publish a novel instead.
Genre: Comedy
Script Sale: 5 out of 10
Black List: 3 out of 10
Comps: Father Figures, Daddy’s Home, Bad Moms
Breakdown: Like I said above, if you’re going to write a comedy, I’d suggest writing an action-comedy. But you can still sell a straight comedy. Right now, the trend for a sale has three branches. 1) Make it female-centric. 2) Go with an age old situation that has built-in conflict (a step-father being forced to co-parent with the real father). Or 3) Pick whatever the latest trendy tech thing is and write about that (those two Uber comedy spec sales from a couple of years ago are an example). The nice thing about this genre is that the big name comedy actors have cut their fees, so comedies can be made for cheap. That means there are still sales to be had!
Genre: Biopic
Script Sale: 8 out of 10
Black List: 10 out of 10
Comps: The Founder, Catch Me If You Can, The Imitation Game
Breakdown: This genre is right up there with Contained Horror as the most lucrative on the list. The reason being that this is the last outlet where movie stars can still be movie stars, as opposed to cogs in a machine. Also, as long as you can spell, your biopic will make The Black List.
Genre: Period
Script Sale: 1 out of 10
Black List: 5 out of 10
Comps: The Other Boleyn Girl, Victoria and Abdul, Love in the Time of Cholera, Tulip Fever, The Danish Girl
Breakdown: If you’re writing a period piece that isn’t associated with war, do so at your own risk. These movies make less than no money. Even the ones that get a boost from Oscar noms rarely do well. On the plus side, these movies do okay in the UK, on the Black List, and in the Nicholl Competition. So if you love these stories, there are outlets for you. But these are some of the toughest pitches in the business. You’ll get 1/1000 of the read requests than had you written a contained horror film. If I was a producer and someone pitched me a story set in the 17th century where an artist and his lover invested in the tulip business, I might just shoot myself right there.
Genre: Sci-Fi Fantasy
Script Sale: 0 out of 10
Black List: 1 out of 10
Comps: Star Wars, Jupiter Ascending, Avatar
Breakdown: This genre is a death-trap. It’s the most expensive genre to produce. The sprawling nature of these stories and their enormous character counts are the exact opposite of what screenplays do well. Don’t bother defending why the sci-fi fantasy script you’re working on is different. This is the one genre I can say, without knowing anything about your script, that if you’re working on one, STOP. You’re wasting your time.
Genre: Horror
Script Sale: 7 out of 10
Black List: 4 out of 10
Comps: It, The Conjuring
Breakdown: With the emergence of “It,” the straight horror film (not contained) is harder to gauge. Hollywood hates spending money on horror since the formula has proven for so long that you don’t need to. But 700 million worldwide is a quick way to change opinions. We also have to remember that these bigger budget horror flicks are based on IP. With that said, I think a good horror script, regardless of whether it’s contained or not, can sell. I also think big-budget horror is about to blow up. So better get on the trend early than late.
Genre: Action
Script Sale: 7 out of 10
Black List: 6 out of 10
Comps: John Wick, The Fast and the Furious, The Bourne Identity, Taken, Die Hard
Breakdown: Straight action plays EVERYWHERE. Everywhere, guys. Nobody needs subtitles for it. So studios are desperate to find that next great action property. They usually get it from books (fifth-tier versions of James Bond). But this is one of the few genres still open for spec screenwriters to create something on their own. They’re expensive to produce, so a sale isn’t guaranteed. But I don’t see this genre dying out… well… ever.
Genre: Drama
Script Sale: 3 out of 10
Black List: 7 out of 10
Comps: Three Billboards, Suburbicon, Room
Breakdown: This is a unique category because on the surface, you don’t want to mess with it. The genre requires more skill to pull off than any other genre. You have to rely strictly on great storytelling and strong character development, which most writers don’t master for a decade or more. A bad drama script is a script reader’s nightmare. Wrought with melodrama and cliched story beats, it’s the reading equivalent of Hell. With that said, these movies win studios Oscars. So studios are always going to be intrigued by them. It’s for this reason that if you write a drama, your aim should be to make The Black List and get the film made as opposed to secure that big flashy script sale.
Genre: Sci-Fi
Script Sale: 5 out of 10
Black List: 3 out of 10
Comps: The Matrix, Source Code, The Martian, Inception, Ready Player One
Breakdown: Straight sci-fi is fun but it’s such an expensive genre and it’s competing directly with such a juggernaut of a genre (Super-Hero) that it’s hard to get a studio to bite on non-IP material. The Black List doesn’t really like them either. If you like sci-fi, I’d write something in the time-travel or “time-travel adjacent” genre (like Source Code), where you can create a big premise for a smaller price tag.
Genre: Faith-Based
Script Sale: 6.5 out of 10
Black List: Negative 8 out of 10
Comps: Heaven is For Real, The Shack, I Can Only Imagine
Breakdown: I don’t know much about this genre. But I do know the faith-based market is coming of age. And if you’re a screenwriter looking to make a living, there’s no reason you shouldn’t take advantage of that. It seems like a lot of these movies are based on books, but as long as you convey a positive message in your script about doing the right thing, and wrap it inside a good idea, there’s no reason to think you can’t sell your screenplay. Also, if a writer can figure out how to subvert the overtly melodramatic tendencies of these scripts so that they can cross over, they’ll become extremely wealthy. Unfortunately, the Black List’s “No Conservatives Allowed” policy means you’ll have to wave goodbye to any Black List aspirations.
Genre: Fantasy
Script Sale: 1 out of 10
Black List: 5 out of 10
Comps: The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The BFG
Breakdown: The only reason this genre isn’t at zero is that it’s a little more accessible than sci-fi fantasy. Still, this genre is built exclusively off of IP, usually books. I occasionally see fantasy scripts hit the Black List (A Monster Calls) but if you have a great fantasy idea, it’s highly advisable that you write a novel instead of a screenplay.
Genre: Action-Adventure
Script Sale: 4.5 out of 10
Black List: 2 out of 10
Comps: Indiana Jones, Jurassic World, Pirates of the Caribbean
Breakdown: This is a weird genre because it SHOULD be a great outlet for spec screenwriters. It seems to be open for new ideas. And the family-friendly aspect of the genre means that they’ll play to anybody. That’s the main reason a movie as average as Jurassic World can make 1.6 billion dollars. I suppose that when movies in a genre start making that much money, studios are more likely to look for previous success in other mediums than buy a spec. Still, something tells me that a writer who comes up with the next Indiana Jones could quickly find themselves on the front page of the trades.
Genre: Dark Comedy
Script Sale: 2 out of 10
Black List: 8 out of 10
Comps: Ingrid Goes West, Me Earl and The Dying Girl, Little Miss Sunshine, Fargo
Breakdown: There’s a lot of crossover with Drama here. Dark Comedy is a really tough genre to master. But, when done well, it could put you in the Oscar race. So it can’t be dismissed completely. With that said, these movies rarely make money. Even the good ones. There’s one every five years that becomes a mega-hit but other than that, there are hundreds of dark comedies that are never seen or heard from again. The good news is, the Black List looooooves dark comedies. It’s probably their favorite genre behind biopics. And if your script makes the list, there’s a 50/50 chance it’ll get made into a movie.
Genre: Straight Thriller
Script Sale: 6 out of 10
Black List: 3 out of 10
Comps: Gone Girl, Buried, The Girl on the Train, The Circle, The Gift
Breakdown: There’s some natural crossover between Thrillers and Action-Thrillers. So to distinguish the two, I see straight Thrillers as more real-world based and suspense-driven. In the past we may have called them Hithcockian Thrillers. These movies aren’t as lucrative as horror, but there’s a market for them for sure. If you’re going to write a thriller, try to have a really clever concept and one great twist. Those two things make these reads a lot more memorable, which increases the chance of a sale exponentially.
Genre: Family
Script Sale: 5 out of 10
Black List: 1 out of 10
Comps: Night at the Museum, Goosebumps, The Goonies
Breakdown: The reason this gets a slight nod on the script sale chart over the more mature Action-Adventure is because I know that Hollywood has been spending 25 years now looking for the next Goonies. Which means they’re willing to buy good family scripts. And let’s not forget that Night at the Museum was a spec sale as well. And that spawned a huge franchise.
Genre: Musicals
Script Sale: 2 out of 10
Black List: 6 out of 10
Comps: La La Land, The Greatest Showman, A Star is Born
Breakdown: The simple fact is that these movies tend to be either director driven (La La Land) or studio driven (The Greatest Showman). They rarely, if ever, are driven by a screenwriter. And the reason for that is simple: it’s hard to imagine songs on a page. With that said, the few times I’ve seen this work are when a writer tries something really zany. Like a zombie musical. Or a post-apocalyptic musical. So it can be done. It’s just rare.
There you have it. Now get to arguing in the comments!
Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or 5 for $75. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. I highly recommend not writing a script unless it gets a 7 or above. All logline consultations come with an 8 hour turnaround. If you’re interested in any sort of consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!
Usually I give you guys formal screenwriting advice. But today I’m going to change things up and give you screenwriting HACKS, flashy tips that aren’t meant to guide you to the perfect screenplay so much as spice your script up. You can use two of them. You can use seven of them. It’s up to you. They will never make nor break your script. But they will HELP. Let’s begin!
1 – A concept you don’t have to defend – I see this all the time. Someone will pitch me an idea like, “A group of people trying to make it in Los Angeles endure a series of obstacles but eventually come out on top.” The writer will then immediately launch into a defense of his logline before I even say anything. “I know that sounds generic. But what it’s really about is this guy who runs an acting workshop and see…” I’m not saying the above idea would make a terrible script. If the writer knows character, it could be great. But we’re talking about hacks here, things to make your job easier. You do this by coming up with a concept that speaks for itself, that isn’t so boring that you have to defend it. “A young African-American man visits his white girlfriend’s creepy parents for the weekend, and begins to suspect that they’ve brought him here to hurt him.”
2 – At least one big character – Big characters jump off the page and get big actors attached. The kind of character you’re generally looking for here is a chatterbox with opinions who’s a little bit crazy. Juno. Ladybird. Walter from The Big Lebowski. Louis from Nightcrawler. Mildred from Three Billboards. Dixon from Three Billboards. This is one of the easiest ways to make your script stand out.
3 – A flashy opening scene – This is a TV pilot staple. But they’re available to you feature writers as well. Give us a scene that grabs us right away. If it doesn’t fit into the timeline of your story, you can make it a flash-forward. Those first 5 pages are when you’re being judged the harshest. It’s when the reader is literally thinking, “I have to read another terrible script before I can get to my own writing??” Give’em a hell of a great scene, like the opening of Scream (one of the most famous spec scripts ever), Inception, or all the James Bond films, and they’ll want to stick around.
4 – Efficient description – Keep your paragraphs to THREE LINES AT MOST. Make most of them TWO LINES AT MOST. If that scares you, good! Scripts are supposed to be easy to read. Not a chore. Learn to be a poet, to say as much as possible in as few words as possible.
5 – A small group of strong characters as opposed to a large group of average characters – Spec scripts work best with a tight cast of characters. Fight it all you want. It doesn’t change the fact that the screenwriting format LOVES setups with 4-5 main characters. Cloverfield 13, Get Out, Ex Machina, Room. All of these superhero movies with 30 characters are not spec scripts and therefore don’t require an overworked reader to keep track of all 30 people. Also, a small group of characters allows you to focus the story and give those characters more attention. So look for ideas that favor this setup.
6 – Dialogue that’s a model, not a mannequin – Mannequin dialogue is the bare essentials. It’s the shape of the human, but there’s no expression or individuality to it yet. A model, on the other hand, has a face that can express emotion. Hair that can be styled. You can dress her in something classy, sassy, slutty, distinguished, whatever you want. Here’s a scene from Three Billboards, where Dixon (Sam Rockwell) is drunk and badgering Mildred at the bar. A patron tells Mildred she sounded great in her TV interview yesterday. Here’s the “mannequin” version of Dixon’s dialogue: “Why are you encouraging her? What she’s doing is wrong.” Note how straightforward and generic that is. Anybody in the world could’ve said it. Now here’s the “model” version, which was used in the movie: “I didn’t think you came across really good in the things you were saying. I thought you came across stupid-ass.” Dixon is an idiot, a 6th grader in a man’s body. We see that here in his butchered grammar and low level vocabulary. This is how you dress up dialogue. You have it express the individual who’s speaking.
7 – An antagonist with personal motivation rather than general motivation – Marvel keeps screwing this up but there are signs of course-correction. Having a bad guy who wants to collect some item so they can harm the world is boring because it’s generic. But a bad guy who has a personal beef with the hero, as we saw with Black Panther, is interesting because it’s specific. If that doesn’t work, consider a personal beef adjacent to your hero. This is what Spider-Man: Homecoming did. The Vulture wanted to hurt the city because they went back on their contract with him, leaving him high and dry in his career and his family. Villains with solid motivations juice a story up.
8 – One giant setup and payoff – You can have as many setups and payoffs as you like. But you need one great one. Setups and payoffs are so fun and audiences LOVE them. Unfortunately, I don’t see as many of them as I used to. The Rita Hayworth poster in The Shawshank Redemption. The snakes in Indy. The clock tower storm in Back to the Future. Where are my current setups and payoffs at?
9 – A twist ending – I hesitate to put this here but nothing affects a reader more than a twist ending they never saw coming. It’s got to make sense for the movie. But there isn’t a single device that can upgrade a script faster than a great twist ending.
10 – At least one scene you KNOW everyone will be talking about when they leave the theater – I can’t tell you how many scripts I read without a SINGLE memorable scene. You need a scene that defines your movie. Achieving this is easier than you think. Just come up with a scene idea that you know audiences will have a strong reaction to. Fish sex for The Shape of Water. The peach scene in Call Me By Your Name. Dixon throwing the advertising agent out the window in Three Billboards.
There ya go. Now go hack at it!
Genre: Drama-Thriller
Premise: The U.S. attempts to incite a cartel war in Mexico in the hopes of branding Mexico a terrorist state, a label which will give them broader powers in managing the border.
About: You thought Sicario was a one-off. Incorrect, son. The badass drug-trafficking drama has inspired a sequel, whose buzz-meter skyrocketed with that great trailer that debuted a couple of weeks ago. Here we were ready to bury Benicio Del Toro after his turn as “DJ” in “The Last Jedi.” But one look at badass Benicio in Soldado and you can see that he’s been reborn, baby! Newly-minted A-list screenwriter Taylor Sheridan is back for the sequel. However, Denis Villeneuve has been replaced by relatively unknown Italian director, Stefano Sollima. Useless note of the week – Lots of S’s today. Sicario, screenplay, stefano, sequel, sollima, sheridan, soldado.
Writer: Taylor Sheridan
Details: 128 pages1
There were thoughts by some that Emily Blunt’s character in Sicario was too passive. How did they correct this in the sequel? By getting rid of her! Maybe if her name was Sandy Smith it would’ve been different. The choice is curious when you consider it runs counter to the current trend in Hollywood that dictates all lead characters must be female.
Can a testosterone heavy romp into the world of the drug trade compete? I don’t know but the trailer sure looked awesome. Let’s see what the sequel to one of my favorite scripts from 2015 has in store, and if the increasingly busy Taylor Sheridan brought it.
Black Ops agent Matt Graver is used to taking down terrorists in the Middle East. But the government needs him for one of the most complicated missions ever attempted on North American soil. They want Matt to kill the biggest cartel leader in Mexico and make it look like a rival cartel did it.
You see, the government wants to paint the cartels as violent threats to the U.S., which would allow them to designate all of them “terrorists.” Under that label, the government would have ten times the leniency to police the border, which would make their jobs so much easier. All that red tape would blow away in the wind.
So Matt is given a blank check and access to any toys he wants. Soldiers, SEALS, boats, tanks, drones, you name it. “To do this right, I’ve got to … I just want to be clear — Does the resolve exist to see this through?” Matt asks. “Because to achieve this objective I need to get dirty, sir.” His superior leans forward: “Dirty is exactly why you’re here.”
Matt calls his highly sketchy buddy and Mexico expert, Alejandro (Benicio), to be his operations manager. The plan is to kidnap the cartel leader’s teenage daughter, Isabel, and use her to find her elusive father. However, things start going wrong immediately. The group is ambushed by the Mexican police once they cross the border, and have no choice but to turn them into ground beef.
That dustup allows the daughter to escape. Matt has Alejandro go after her while he heads back to the U.S. with his tail between his legs and tries to explain how, even with all the toys he’s been given, he managed to fuck this up. The government becomes convinced that if the daughter gets to the press, she’ll expose details of the mission, and things will get really bad. What they don’t know is that their fate is now in Alejandro’s hands. He catches up to Isabel, and will have to decide what to do with her. All while Matt’s superiors look for a way to salvage the mission.
Wow, this was one hell of an ambitious sequel. The scope of which we’re working from here rivals that of a James Bond flick. We’re jumping to the U.S., to Mexico, to the Middle East. Costcos are getting blown up. Veteran terrorists are getting tortured. Teenage terrorists are getting trained. We’re meeting TONS of characters. We’re introduced to TONS of story threads. I have to admit, it was overwhelming. If you let your mind drift for even a couple of lines, you were out of the loop.
If I’m being 100, the script can’t keep up with itself. By trying to do so much, it loses its focus. And because of that, the events that occur don’t always make sense. I’ll give you an example. Early in the script, an entire Coscto is blown up on American soil. Hundreds of people die. Yet throughout the rest of the script, that moment is only referenced once, in a throwaway line.
Then later in the script, Matt’s team kills all those Mexican police. His boss is furious about this, fearing that the entire country is going to turn on the government if they find out America is responsible. Except the story has already established a rule-set by which an entire Costco can be destroyed and not a single person in America bats on eye. Why would we think those same people would care about a bunch of people killed in another country? Cops or not.
The central plan here is also confusing. They want to kill this cartel leader. Which is fine. But they never introduce us to him, which seems odd. This script has a 40+ character count. But it doesn’t introduce us to the most important enemy in the story?? This makes it harder to care about Isabel, the daughter of the cartel leader, since we don’t establish a physical connection between her and her father. As a result she just seems like some girl.
And then I wasn’t clear what they were trying to do with her. At first I thought it was to draw the father out. But instead we have this convoluted plan where they’re using her to draw out the rival cartel, I suppose to kill her? Or try to kill her? Which would then result in retaliation from her father? A father we’ve never seen? It was WAAAAY too complicated. In my experience, if you’re writing something with this kind of scope, the central goal driving your hero’s actions must be simple. This was not.
Writers need to understand that these “high-difficulty routine” scripts require more time than your average script. You’re not going to be able to bang one of these out in the same amount of time it takes to write Cloverfield Lane. The logistics behind interconnecting so many characters and story threads alone is going to add an untold number of hours. So I’d never say don’t write a script like this. But if you do, be prepared for the extra work. Cause stories like this are a logistical nightmare.
And one of the things that happens when you have to juggle so many balls is that you miss opportunities. You miss potentially great story directions because your eyes are looking in so many places at once.
That happened with Alejandro and Isabel, the daughter. I liked how Sheridan formed a reluctant bond between the two. Their equally tough and selfish demeanors made for an interesting dynamic. As a result, their storyline had the potential to do some great things.
Keep in mind we established Alejandro as a ruthless killer at the beginning of the script. He doesn’t give a shit about anybody and will kill anyone if that’s what the job requires. Imagine, then, after Alejandro retrieves Isabel, he’s given the directive by Matt to kill her. This is actually what the story hints at, since Matt’s boss is telling him that, under no circumstances can that girl get to the press. Here Alejandro is, finally, for the first time in his life, connecting with somebody. Then he’s given the order to kill her. What does he do?
But that’s not the route the story takes. Alejandro simply tells Matt, “I’m going to bring her to you” and we focus more on Alejandro teaching the sheltered Isabel what the “real” world is like (the two have to sneak across the border together). That is a MAJOR missed opportunity as far as I’m concerned. They could’ve gotten so much more out of it. And maybe they would’ve after a few drafts. Hell, maybe they DID after a few more drafts. That’d be a nice surprise.
However, that’s my big beef with Sicario 2. Taylor Sheridan has earned his spot on the A-list. He writes movies that don’t have superheroes, creepy clowns, or The Rock in them – the types of movies that don’t do well theatrically anymore – and he gets people to show up. But a story as ambitious and cool as this needed more development. And as Sheridan’s star rises, I’m not sure he has time for that anymore. He might need to branch out into producing and get writers to flesh these stories out.
Anyway, lots of potential here. But that potential fell short of the border. :(
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I once showed a friend of mine a picture of my dream house. It was this giant southern mansion with this sprawling emerald green yard. I sent it to her and said, “This is my dream home.” She replied back. “But who’s going to mow that lawn?” I laughed but her comment has always stuck with me. The bigger the house, the bigger the lawn you have to mow. And that was the case here. You can be ambitious. You can take on the world. But it’s going to take a lot more time to mow that lawn.