Genre: Fairy-tale Mash-up
Premise: Snow White teams up with a local hunter to take down her evil step-mother, Ravenna.
About: This is the spec script that sold for 1.5 million last week. Evan Daugherty was working as an intern a couple of years ago. He won the Script Pimp contest in 2008 with his script, “Shrapnel,” which John McTiernan later committed to direct. Something tells me that one’s going to be in development for at least another year. Shrapnel led to him doing a rewrite on He-Man, which eventually led to this huge sale. If there is such a thing as the moment every screenwriter dreams of, this would be it. 
Writer: Evan Daugherty (inspired by the Brothers Grimm’s “Little Snow White.”)
Details: 110 pages – undated (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

When this sale happened, my first thought was, “I couldn’t write a script like that in a million years.” This subject matter is so far out of my field of expertise (whatever that is) I felt a little like a member of the Cannes jury having just been told the plot to Star Wars Episode 1, The Phantom Menace. i.e. Confused.

So there’s…Snow White? And she…teams up with a huntsman? But isn’t Snow White dead? Doesn’t she live with dwarves? I was definitely the grandma someone was trying to explain the internet to.

Yet these reimagining fairy tale/historical mash-ups are plugging their way through the Hollywood pipeline and everyone’s banking on them becoming the next big thing (costing no money for rights cause they’re in the public domain certainly doesn’t hurt).

Snow White and The Huntsman follows Miss White’s life as a princess, which for all intents and purposes is pretty sweet. She’s got a strapping young prince doting over her. She loves her family. And paparazzi won’t be invented for another 300 years.

But then her mother, the queen, dies, and because pops can’t keep it in his pants, he marries some hot young trophy wife, the evil Ravenna. Ravenna’s got all sorts of issues, but her biggest one is her desperate desire to look prettier than everyone else in the land.

So obsessed is she with this desire that she hires a local huntsman to seek out the hottest women he can find, capture them, and bring them back to her. She then puts them through the hot girl juicer, a machine that sucks the youth out of these poor women, turning it into juice, which Ravenna then drinks so she can stay young and hot.

Well word on the street is that Snow White is eerily close to becoming the fairest woman in the land, so it’s time for that bitch to get juiced too. But Snow White doesn’t wanna get juiced, and runs into the forest, where she eventually teams up with The Hunstman, who reluctantly helps her escape to freedom.

Of course, in a nod to films like Romancing The Stone and The Princess Bride, these two simply don’t like each other, so there’s a lot of arguing, a lot of not understanding the other’s way, and a lot of repressed desiring.

Eventually Snow White realizes that if she’s going to survive in the wild, she’ll need the particular skillset of the huntsman, and so she forces Hunty to teach her the way of the land. Now I know the question all of you are dying to have me answer so I’ll confirm it right here: YES, our seven dwarfs make an appearance.  In fact, our seven dwarfs are pretty badass, and become a key component later in defeating the queen.  

I’m always amazed by the imagination of these worlds. First of all, let’s face it, fairy tales are fucked up to begin with. Who thinks up a story where a dead woman sleeps in a coffin with a bunch of gnomes?  Since when do wolves have super-human blowing powers and blow down houses…with PIGS in them???  And isn’t there a fairy tale where a bunch of people live in a giant shoe?  They must have smoked a lot of dope back in the 1600s, I’ll tell you that.  So to then take an already freaky premise and further freak it into something weirder has to be considered a unique talent.  So I give credit to Daugherty there.

From a structural perspective, I was also impressed. Snow White having to escape off into the woods was a solid first act break. But more importantly, Daugherty knows how to build through that second act, realizing that if he just gave us Snow White and The Huntsman arguing for 60 pages we’d be bored out of our minds. So he adds plenty of complications (the seven dwarves, an old boyfriend, some bounty hunters, Ravenna’s impending second marriage) to keep us on our toes. It all builds to a solid third act, where the forces of good and evil engage in a final smackdown, and while it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it definitely works.

Now I’ve been reading quite a few of these mash-up scripts on the amateur front and the reason Snow White is better is that everything’s been thought through here. The amateur scripts always feel like a bunch of wacky ideas haphazardly spilled onto the page. It’s like the writers just want credit for being weird and different.  Form, structure, character, really aren’t that important to them.

But this script pays attention to the details.  Take the character of The Huntsman for example. This isn’t just a wise-cracking rogue who’s winking at the audience. His wife was killed years ago by a wolf, and he’s been hunting that wolf ever since. There’s a sadness to this man, a void in him that gives his character weight, that makes him a real person.

I really felt like all the edges of this house were inspected before they put it on the market.  I can’t say the same for the amateur scripts I read, where 60-75% effort is the norm.

I guess the big question I have about Snow White and The Huntsman is, who is it being marketed to? Snow White is very much a little girl’s fairy tale, so that’s your built in demographic right there. Yet this is an edgy grown-up reimagining of the character. So who goes to see it? Will 14 year old boy’s flock to see a Snow White film? I don’t know. And what about adults? Isn’t this too kiddie for them? It’s one of those weird films that seems to be targeted to everyone and yet to no one. Okay, I’m starting to sound like Matrix Reloaded dialogue now, so I’ll move on.

This was a hard script to judge. As a piece of screenwriting, there’s a lot of good stuff in here. But if I’m being honest there isn’t a single aspect of this subject matter that interests me. I felt like I was reading two stories, the one I was admiring as a screenplay and the one about a fairy tale I could care less about. In the end, there’s too much good here not to recommend, but you definitely won’t be catching me at the premiere.

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

What I learned: If I were a studio executive and this landed on my desk, I would’ve passed. My response? “Wasn’t my thing.” Does that mean it didn’t deserve to be bought? Of course not. One of the sucky things about this business is that many times when someone passes on a script of yours, you have no idea why. Talking with managers and agents and producers, one of the things I’ve realized is that sometimes people pass simply because it “wasn’t their thing.” It could be expertly written. It could be a great concept. It could have a killer main character. But that particular producer has no interest in that kind of movie. This can actually empower you when you think about it. If someone passes on your script, don’t let it get you down. Simply assume that it wasn’t their thing and move on to the next guy. Cause that next guy might end up paying you 1.5 million dollars for it.

GET YOUR THRILLER ON
Scribe Dana Stevens will write the thriller, “The Au Pair,” for Ghost House Pictures. It’s about a woman who takes a nanny job in the Hamptons only to have some bad shit start happening. The script will be adapted from the book, “The Sitter,” by R.L. Stine. Ghost House is Sam Raimi’s company. Stevens scripted City of Angels and Life or Something Like it.

BIGELOW
Kathryn Bigelow, the director of The Hurt Locker, is finally getting her next movie with Locker scripter Mark Boal ready to roll. The super serious premise, centering around crime in the border zone between Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, is attracting some big name stars who want to work with the new Oscar queen, according to Deadline Hollywood. Yes, Tom Hanks and Johnny Depp may be playing the leads. This is critical, as one of the main reasons Locker only made 20 million bucks was because it didn’t have any big names. If Bigelow can pull this off, her next film won’t suffer the same fate.

GRAVITY
It sounds like poor Alfonso Cuarón is getting desperate to find a lead for what I’m hoping will be one of the most amazing technical feats ever put on film, his story about a female astronaut who gets trapped up in space after an explosion.  Jolie said no. Portman’s decided to pass. Now they’re going to Sandra Bullock. Bullock will get the movie made, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Cuaron would not be happy using her.

YUCATAN
I was reading over at Slash-Film about this secret movie idea Steve McQueen had before he died called, “Yucatan,” an epic treasure hunter heist film. I guess McQueen had written over 1700 pages worth of notes before he died. Warner Brothers has been trying to put it together ever since and they’ve finally hired writer Anthony Peckham, who wrote the first Sherlock Holmes, to write it as a vehicle for Robert Downey Jr.

TIME MACHINE
Always nice to see writers make the hop from their laptops to the sound stage, and the writers of Hot Tub Time Machine have done just that. Sean Anders and John Morris will direct the script “We’re The Millers.” Steve Faber and Bob Fisher, who wrote Wedding Crashers wrote the original script. Millers does have a funny premise. It involves a pot dealer creating a fake family to transfer a large amount of pot across the Mexican border.

RAY
Risky Business reports that perennial script doctor Billy Ray, who took a pass at Source Code , is stepping into the director’s chair for his third film, a remake of the Argentinian thriller, “The Secret in Their Eyes” for Warner Bros. (Warner Brothers again!). The film won the foreign language Oscar in March, and is about a retired criminal investigator haunted by an unresolved rape from 30 years ago.

HIGH RISE CHAOS
Richard Stanley is taking a crack at the script for director Vincenzo Natalie’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel, High Rise. Vincenzo is the director of cult favorite “Cube,” as well as “Splice.” Reading the book’s synopsis kind of makes my head hurt but as best I can tell, the story is about the residents of a high rise who engage in some sort of multi-story war, I guess Lord Of The Flies with adults in a building? Collider has more on the story.

I’ve been hearing from a few of you that you made the quarterfinals so congrats!  To see the full list, head on over to Jim’s blog.  I also spoke with Jim.  If you want to take his class and mention Scriptshadow, you get $100 off.  Go there.  Be merry.  Enjoy!

Note: This is a “script-as-film” review, where I review the screenplay through watching the film. I have not read the actual script for “Monsters.”

Genre: Horror/Drama/Sci-Fi/Love Story/Indie
Premise: (from IMDB) Six years after Earth has suffered an alien invasion a cynical journalist agrees to escort a shaken American tourist through an infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the US border.
About: This sleeper film emerged out of Cannes with a lot of buzz, due in part to Slash Film’s religious coverage of it. One of the main factors contributing to the buzz was the rumor that the film was shot in several countries with huge special effects shots for under 15 thousand dollars. It just didn’t seem possible, but that Rodriguez-inspired rumor gave the project enough legs to land a theatrical release. Although people keep telling me the budget is way off and that even director Gareth Edwards admitted the figure was wrong, I haven’t been able to find any official quotes from him online confirming it. Edwards, who both wrote and directed the film, said his goal was to make “the most realistic monster movie ever made.” He possesses a unique talent in that he’s been a long time visual effects artist, mostly for British TV. A good quote from his interview below: “Creativity is being stupid enough not to realize you can’t do something.”
Writer: Gareth Edwards

These are my favorite stories to follow in Hollywood. Young filmmakers who say “fuck you” to the system and go ahead and do everything the establishment tells them they can’t do. Neil Blomkamp did it last year with District 9, but Gareth Edwards is taking it to a new extreme, approaching a movie with top notch visual effects and 1/100th the budget of that hit film. I don’t know how you can’t be inspired as an artist by this story.

Monsters takes place in the very near future.  Five years ago, a satellite fell to Mexico with some kind of bacteria on it. That bacteria grew, eventually becoming a family of huge monsters, which are now terrorizing the country. Andrew Kaulder is a sort of cranky selfish photojournalist on the hunt for an elusive photo of people who were killed by one of these creatures. One money shot could pay his salary for an entire year.

But Andrew gets a call from his publisher informing him his plans have changed. He must escort Samantha, the recently injured daughter of a newspaper magnate, to a crossing point so she can get back to America. Even though, technically, it gives him a better chance at getting the shot he wants, he’s pissed off about this interruption.

When the two meet, it’s clear that they’re from different worlds. Him a financially strapped pessimist who does everything himself, her a humanitarian whose father has all the money in the world.

Because of their differences, they don’t have much to talk about, so we spend a majority of the time following them through lush forests and dying South American towns. It’s during this time that best line of dialogue is uttered. Disgusted by his profession, she asks him, “Does it bother you that you profit only when bad things happen to people?” And he responds, “You mean like a doctor?”

Eventually they get to the crossing point, which consists of a ferry that will take them around what’s known as the “Infected Zone.” It’s here where the bulk of the monsters are. Naturally, some complications arise, and the two find themselves having to traverse *through* the Infected Zone, where we can only assume, many monsters await them.Will they make it to America?  Will they die at the tentacles of one of these beasts?  You’ll have to watch to find out.

In many ways, Monsters isn’t a screenplay. And I don’t say that with any cynicism, but everything about this movie seems to be generated from the mind of a director first and writer second. Indeed, the entire film is one big stream-of-conscious travelogue, as we watch our characters drift from town to town, house to house, meal to meal, simply…existing.

If you like long shots, not a lot of dialogue, played against a haunting beautiful score, this movie is definitely for you. But there’s no denying that story-wise, the film is lacking. Part of that is due to the limited budget, but most of it is due to ignoring basic storytelling principles.

First, what they did right. The script has a clear goal – get to America. So the narrative as a whole is focused. The characters are also aptly conflicted. The last thing Andrew wants to do is escort this rich girl to America. Samantha, on the other hand, is getting married, inserting a nice barrier between the two when he starts to fall for her.

But that’s where the good stuff ends. Basically, the hook of this movie, what we’ve come to see, is these two having to travel through the Infected Monster Zone to get to America. But it takes us waaay too long to get there, which would be okay if there was enough story to keep us interested in the meantime. But the first 45 minutes of this film is running on a treadmill, with shots of our couple at hotels, checking out the local towns, eating, getting drunk, talking about their pasts, repeat repeat repeat.

There’s simply not enough new happening to keep our interest.

The script noticeably sputters when they get to the crossing point and negotiate a price for these very expensive ferry tickets that take them around the Infected Zone to safety.  Now normally, after negotiating for these tickets, our characters would hop on the ferry and go. Instead, because the story has to be feature length, the ferry isn’t leaving til tomorrow, so we spend an entire extra night here.  When they wake up, they realize their tickets are stolen, forcing them to have the EXACT SAME NEGOTIATING scene that they just had, which comes off as super sloppy.

There’s another big hole here as well. Once the ferry leaves, they now decide to go with the other option, walking through the Infected Zone to get to the American border. Why do the characters need to get back to America so badly that they knowingly walk through a foreign forest known as “The Infected Zone” where GIANT KILLER MONSTERS ARE WAITING TO KILL THEM??! There’s no reason why they can’t just wait a couple more days for the next ferry and go around the zone safely.  In these situations, you have to write in some impending life or death situation to justify such a drastic action as knowingly marching into your own death makes no sense.

The characters also act oddly at times. For example, videos of these monsters apparently play on TV 24/7, so everybody’s seen them and know what they look like. When our characters, as well as their seasoned veteran escorts, are camped out square in the middle of the Infected Zone, they hear this loud guttural monster-ish drawl. After hearing it, everybody looks around at each other, confused, and our hero says, “What was that?” I mean, come on. It’s a FUCKING MONSTER! You’re in the Infected Zone! I don’t know.  Little details like that are easy to catch in the script stage.  So I don’t like when they slip through.

Now we have to be realistic here. This is a movie with two characters and a 4-man crew. There aren’t a lot of things you can pull off with that kind of minimal fire power. But whenever you’re writing one of these low-budget shoot-it-yourself movies, one of your jobs is to recognize that issue, and build more drama, more conflict, more twists and turns, into the human relationship, to make up for the lack of money and options. I think the problem here is that that’s what Gareth thought he was doing with the alien effects shots, but out of all the alien scenes, there’s really only one where I felt the characters were in any danger (when they were in the van).

Okay, elitist screenwriting rant over. Time to give credit where credit is due.

I don’t care if this movie was made for $15,000 or $500,000 (like some are reporting). It’s an amazing filmmaking achievement. The cinematography is GORGEOUS. The score was the best score I’ve ever heard for any inde film at this level. The lead actress was really good. The lead actor was solid. The effects are all astonishing for this budget level. To get these performances under these conditions with this filmmaking approach was truly inspiring. I mean Gareth has a huge ace in the hole with his visual effects prowess – but even if he hadn’t had that, he still shot a movie that looked great, that didn’t resemble any Hollywood product and that, despite all my criticisms, was different. And that’s what this new-new type of Gurerilla filmmaking 2.0 allows you to do. It allows you to make the movie YOU want to make and actually have a shot at getting it distributed.

Script-wise, this didn’t work for me, but movie-wise, I think there’s something here, if only for the inspiring story behind the film.  It’s tracking at around 70% at Rotten Tomatoes. You can wait for it to come to theaters on October 29th, or watch it on demand right now.  If you see it, tell me what you think. 

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

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

What I learned: I am about to tell you something that may be the most important screenwriting advice anyone has ever told you……Okay, that’s an exaggeration (but it sure sounded good). Seriously though, the fastest way to advance in this industry is to write and direct your own material. Monsters is proof positive of that. Now sure it has some flashy effects, but every writer brings unique talents to the table. You have to find out what those are, write a script that takes advantage of them, then go shoot it. Tarantino focused on his dialogue. Rodriguez focused on production value. Kevin Smith wrote every funny thing he’s ever thought of and crammed it into a script. And these days, you don’t even have to drum up the money for a full feature. All you need is enough to shoot an innovative short and if it takes off online, there are people willing to offer you film deals. So what the hell are you waiting for? Go shoot something. Just make sure that afterwards you come back to Scriptshadow.

GANGSTA
One of the scripts getting a lot of heat lately is Tales from the Gangster Squad at Warner Bros. Some people tell me the script is awesome and others tell me it hasn’t even been written yet (IMDB lists it as “out to writers.”) The script chronicles the LAPD’s fight to keep East Coast Mafia types out of Los Angeles in the 40s and 50s. It was out to Ben Affleck after The Town’s big opening weekend and is now out to Darren Aronofsky, who is deciding between it and Wolverine 2. Apparently the reason Aronofsky lost the Superman job to Snyder was because WB’s brass knew he’d nitpick at the script for another two years, time they weren’t willing to spend.

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR
Tomas Alfredson who directed the amazing ORIGINAL “Let The Right One In” has decided to make his next project the Philip Reeve children’s novel, Larklight. The setting sounds like a children’s utopia, with Victorian-era alternate universes and renegade space pirates. Alfredson will first tackle the espionage thriller, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” The very busy Steve Knight, who wrote one of my Top 25 favorite scripts, is penning Larklight.  I’m not a betting man, but I’m willing to throw down 50 bucks that this is the first book in a trilogy? 

CRUISE – NICHOLSON
You know I only saw A Few Good Men for the first time six months ago? I don’t know why but I was just never interested in watching it. My thoughts afterwards? Pretty good film. And really solid screenplay. Well, Cruise and Jack may be back together again thanks to a script titled “El Presidente,” about a secret service agent assigned to protect a bumbling ex-president. Dan Goor, who writes on the underrated (and not yet canceled as far as I can tell!) Parks and Recreation, wrote the script. This sounds like it might be funny. If you have it, please pass it along.

SKIPPIDY WILLIS-AH
Writer Skip Woods has penned a script titled “Ten,” that Bruce Willis is interested in. I don’t know much about the project other than that it’s a drama. Woods is high grade though, penning X-Men: Origins, The A-Team, and the new Die Hard 5 script. If you have any more info on this script, please contact me. :)

WIZARD OF RAIMI
The other day we talked about Sam Raimi’s super sci-fi Independence Day like project he was thinking of directing. But Sam has now officially committed to another reimagining of The Wizard of Oz, this titled “Oz The Great and Powerful.” The script is being rewritten by David Lindsay-Abaire, who wrote the animated film, Robots, and the upcoming Dreamworks project, “The Guardians,” about Santa Clause banding together with other holiday creatures to take on the Bogeyman. If Sam’s going to do an Oz project, why not the script that won the Scriptshadow Screenplay Contest?  Come on Sam!