A big six-figure script sale comes from another Scriptshadow reader!
Genre: Horror
Premise: When a scientist ventures deep into the Amazon rainforest in search of a rare fungus that could save her dying daughter, she finds herself trapped high above the jungle floor, hunted by a terrifying creature that lives among the treetops.
About: Today’s script sale is one of those dream scenarios for scriptwriters. This thing sold fast! And since it comes from a Scriptshadow reader, I’ve got the inside scoop. More details below.
Writer: Brandon Feldman
Details: 98 pages – First Draft
Today’s review is a special one because I’ve known Brandon for a while now. I’ve given him notes on several of his scripts and, as a matter of fact, I was supposed to give him notes on this one but the darn thing sold so fast, he never got a chance to send it to me! (get notes from Carson!)
So I reached out to Brandon and said, “Okay, you have to tell me how this happened.” And he was more than happy to share.
Brandon has been writing comedy scripts with his writing partner, Ben Agron, for about 15 years. They’ve had some success, the biggest being a rom-com they wrote called Manimony, about a woman who owns the world’s biggest dating app and needs her ex-husband off her payroll so she uses the app to find him a new wife.
But a few years ago, Brandon started writing horror scripts on his own. Canopy was his third horror attempt. Now here’s where this story gets crazy. Brandon came up with the idea for Canopy in late July and ended up selling it in October!
How did this happen?? Well, he started by pitching the idea to his writers group. All of them loved it. This is a detail I think a lot of aspiring screenwriters will overlook. Brandon didn’t just come up with an idea and start writing. He tested the idea first. You guys know how much I preach this. It’s the whole reason I created The High Concept Club Contest. I want writers to know whether they have a good idea before they spend six months writing the script.
So Brandon spent August outlining the script. His final outline was forty pages long. He then sent that outline to his manager, who liked it enough to tell him to go write the script. And Brandon proceeded to write the entire thing in five weeks, finishing in mid-September.
How was he able to write it so fast? Because he had a 40 page outline! I keep telling you guys, the more you outline, the easier the writing process becomes. If you’re someone who routinely gets stuck in the middle of your scripts, consider outlining. And if you’re already outlining and still running into trouble, consider making your 5 page outline a 20 page outline. The more specific you are, the easier it is to know where to take your story.
Anyway, before Brandon’s manager even had a chance to read the script, Brandon uploaded it to the Black List to get a feel for where it was. He ended up getting an 8 out of 10 on his first evaluation. For those of you who don’t know, an 8 on the Black List gets your script included in their newsletter, which goes out to industry professionals.
That newsletter went out on a Monday and Brandon’s script got something like 20 downloads. By that night, a producer had already emailed him saying he loved the script and wanted to send it to Netflix.
Oh, and just to show you how wacky the Black List is, Brandon’s second evaluation eventually came back. He got a 4! Just goes to show how inconsistent that site is but for Brandon, it worked out. He now had buzz.
Around this time, Brandon’s manager got back from vacation, read the script, and said, “Yeah, let’s take it out.” So his manager started sending it to producers and production companies. Meanwhile, one of Brandon’s buddies sent it to a producer who eventually took it to Sony. Another friend sent it to David Boxerbaum at Verve.
This is the great thing about having a script that you know is good. All those favors you’ve been saving up? Now’s the time to use them. Because you know you’re using them on a script that’s worth it. I’ve seen so many writers waste favors on bad scripts, and in a lot of those cases, you never get another shot with that contact.
By the end of that week, they were assigning territories and had multiple studios reading the script. And in the end, Netflix won out. Canopy was sold. Which meant from the moment Brandon came up with the idea to the moment he sold the script, just 15 weeks had passed.
FIFTEEN WEEKS!
This is the kind of script sale story you used to hear about in 1997. Not 2026! Certainly not in an industry where everybody keeps telling us that nobody’s buying anything anymore.
And here’s the craziest part. It was one draft. No notes. No rewrites. A huge congratulations to Brandon. And now, finally, I get to read it. To Brandon’s credit, when I told him I was going to review it, he said, “Be as brutal as you want.”
Careful what you wish for. :)
Laurel Reed is a scientist whose young daughter is dying from a rare disease. Deep in the Amazon rainforest, there’s a fungus that grows on the bark of these enormous trees and research suggests it could help treat her daughter’s illness. So Laurel heads into one of the most remote parts of the world with her fellow scientist, Cole, to find it.
A local guide sends them off in the right direction and the two finally reach their destination, a group of gigantic trees, some of them 250 feet tall. They split up, each climbing a different tree, and eventually reach what’s known as the canopy, this upper section of the rainforest where branches and vines form almost a second forest floating above the first one.
Laurel finds her fungus, which is great. But then they both discover something that isn’t so great. Hidden inside the trees is a structure made of HUMAN BONES. Laurel quickly loses contact with Cole and before she can reach him, this creature that looks almost exactly like the bark of the trees comes out of nowhere, grabs Cole, and yanks him up into the darkness.
Laurel realizes she needs to get the hell out of here. Except that’s easier said than done when you’re 175 feet above the ground and there’s a giant tree monster who wants to turn you into bone soup. So Laurel starts making her way down, dealing with bullet ants, pumas, and these evil little monkeys that seem determined to make escape life as hard as possible.
Meanwhile, the creature is moving through the trees, sometimes so well camouflaged she can’t even see it. But she soon finds out that the creature refuses to go to the forest floor. Which means if she can just get to the ground, she’s safe.
But just when Laurel is getting close , human blood starts dripping on her. She realizes somebody might still be alive up there and makes the decision to CLIMB BACK UP.
Girrrlllll. No you didn’t.
That’s where she finds Kenji, a Japanese scientist from the cold open, who’s been woven into this horrifying architecture of bones and branches. He’s begging to die, but Laurel insists on saving him. And that’s when Kenji drops a bombshell. There isn’t just one creature. There are TWO OF THEM. A big one and a smaller one. So now Laurel has to figure out how to get them both down before these things turn them into their next construction project.
There’s fifteen years of craft on display here, no doubt.
The writing is hella confident. Brandon understands character, he understands cold opens, quick plot setups, how to create a sympathetic protagonist, how to place that protagonist in a high-stakes situation that’s unique, and he knows how to stretch a potentially thin situation out into the 3-act structure.
Conclusion: Brandon knows his shit.
I think one of the reasons his writing group loved this idea is that it takes us somewhere we haven’t been before. There was a time when simply taking an audience somewhere unfamiliar was worth something. It’s why James Bond movies were such a big deal back in the day. They took you to exotic locations most people would never get a chance to visit. And even if the story wasn’t great, you still got something out of the experience.
That’s what Brandon does here. Instead of giving us the 5,000th horror movie about a haunted house, or the 5,000th masked psycho chasing us around, he takes us into one of the most remote rainforests in the world.
We’ve got bullet ants out here. You don’t see those in San Francisco. We’ve got strangler trees, weird little monkeys, evil spiders, mega-snakes, and enormous trees that practically have their own ecosystems. All of that is interesting before you even introduce the horror element.
Another thing Brandon does really well here is his setups and payoffs. This is pretty impressive for a first draft, by the way. We’re told about the bullet ants ahead of time. We’re told about the little tamarin monkeys. We’re introduced to the strangler tree and the jungle cats. And all of these things eventually come back into the story.
Now, I did have a few issues with the script.
I struggled to understand exactly what a canopy was. I always felt like I had about a 75 to 80% understanding of what Brandon was describing but I eventually had to look it up. And even then, I was a little confused. The best way I could understand it was that it’s sort of an upper-forest version of the ground. Considering it’s the title of the movie, I would’ve liked more clarity there.
Another issue I had was Cole. Cole is a weak-ass character. And look, I get it. When you’re writing a first draft, you’re usually focused on making your main character as good as possible, and the supporting characters get overlooked.
But Cole doesn’t have much of anything going on. He doesn’t have a memorable personality or an interesting relationship with Laurel. And I’m not saying he needs to be her husband. But he needs SOMETHING. Because right now, he’s another scientist whose sole purpose is to be sacrificed.
The other issue is the dying daughter storyline. This is one of the trickier things to pull off in scripts like this. You want your protagonist to have a personal reason for going on the journey. And an easy way to create those personal stakes is to give your hero a dying kid.
But the more you think about this particular storyline, the less sense it makes. Laurel’s daughter only has months to live. So even if Laurel finds this fungus, they still have to study it, develop the medicine, and put it through trials. Meanwhile, her daughter has months to live if she’s lucky.
And to Brandon’s credit, he acknowledges this. We get a flashback where Laurel’s husband says, what are you doing? Even if you find this thing, it’s not going to save our daughter in time. And Laurel’s response is basically, I HAVE TO DO SOMETHING. I can’t sit here and watch my daughter die. And you know what? I kind of bought that. Not completely, but enough.
Now, if Brandon had sent this script to me for notes, there’s one big creative note I would’ve given him. And I’m curious what you guys think of it.
Late in the script, Laurel is trying to escape the creature and she finds herself in this terrible situation where there’s a puma below her and the creature above her. The creature eventually goes after the puma and kills it easily.
I would’ve changed this. I would’ve made this puma the KING OF THE JUNGLE. Whatever the biggest, meanest jungle cat you can find in the Amazon is, that’s what this thing needs to be.
And when the creature attacks it, I want an EPIC BATTLE. I want these two animals going at it like it will be talked about for generations. And preferably, I’d find a way for the fight to get close enough to Laurel that she could actually contribute somehow. Maybe she helps the puma at a critical moment. And the big important creative change is that the puma would WIN. It kills the creature.
Now, why would I do that?
Because there’s a moment shortly afterward that didn’t make a lick of sense. Laurel is finally getting close to the ground. She’s practically home free. And then blood starts dripping on her. She realizes there’s a person up above her somewhere who might still be alive. So she climbs back up!
I’m sorry but come on. This woman just watched a giant monster kill her partner. She watched it easily kill this puma. She’s spent the last however many hours trying desperately to escape it. And now, when she’s finally about to escape, she’s going to climb back UP into the monster’s territory to save some rando?????
NOT. A. CHANCE.
But in my version, the creature is now DEAD. So now, when she sees the blood dripping from above, it makes sense for her to go back up. If somebody’s still alive up there, she’s going to try and save them.
So she climbs back up and finds Kenji, the Japanese scientist from the opening scene. And Kenji is in bad shape. He’s been woven into this horrifying architecture of bones and branches. And as Laurel tries to free him, Kenji is freaking out. He’s telling her they need to get out of there. And Laurel says something like, “Don’t worry. It’s dead.”
Kenji looks at her. “What?”
“The creature. I watched it die.”
Kenji stares at her, confused. “What do you mean you watched it die?”
“I saw it. It’s dead.”
And then Kenji says…
“There’s two of them.”
Now, in the current script, Kenji also reveals that there are two creatures. But he tells Laurel that there’s a big one, which is the one we’ve been seeing, and a smaller one that we haven’t seen yet. I would REVERSE THAT.
Because in my version, Kenji would say…
“There’s a small one.”
A beat.
“And there’s a big one.”
And that’s when Laurel realizes…
The creature that’s been terrorizing her this entire movie? THAT WAS THE SMALL ONE!
Which means the big one… IS STILL OUT THERE.
And we haven’t even seen it yet.
Now that’s a third act.
Because one of the most important things about writing a movie like this is that things have to keep getting worse. The closer we get to the ending, the more desperate the situation should become.
The spiritual predecessor to this movie, Predator, does this as well as any movie ever made. Things keep getting worse and worse and worse. And while Brandon flirts with that philosophy here, he doesn’t fully embrace it. This would change that.
Because now Laurel’s gone from thinking she’s survived the monster to realizing she hasn’t even met the real monster yet. That’s gettin me to lean all the way the fuck forward for act 3!!!
Look, there’s no way to predict with any certainty which scripts are going to get this kind of traction. Which ones are going to get passed around town, create a bidding war, sell almost immediately. But if I were a betting man, and this script came across my desk, I would’ve bet that this was one of those scripts. It’s a great premise and an extremely solid execution.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One of the most important things about writing a horror script like this is creating a monster that’s not only terrifying but also believable. Because the more believable the monster is, the more we buy into the story, and the more scared we are for our hero. This Canopy Monster feels like something that could actually exist. We’re deep in the rainforest, far away from civilization, where it’s not hard to imagine some undiscovered creature living in the trees. And the creature isn’t designed in some crazy, over-the-top way. Every aspect of it is designed to exist in this environment (camouflage, bark/moss skin, eyes that see in dark, strong arms, weak legs). I’m not saying every horror movie monster has to be realistic. But the more reality you can build into your monster, the scarier it’s going to be. Because what’s scarier than something that might actually exist?
