This high-profile spec sale achieves what many thought was impossible – it brings back the romantic comedy!
Genre: Romantic Comedy/Fairy Tale
Premise: When a fairy godmother is commissioned to help a young woman land the fairest prince in the land, things go awry when the godmother falls for the prince herself.
About: Fairy Godmother sold as a spec late last year to MGM. It comes from newbie screenwriter Chiara Atik, who honed her craft in the playwrighting world.
Writer: Chiara Atik
Details: 113 pages
May I suggest something to those of you scraping by on ramen noodles and that 3 year old bag of chicken cutlets in the back of your freezer?
LOOK INTO THE FAIRY TALE GENRE.
Let’s be honest. There aren’t a lot of lanes to sell spec scripts in at the moment. You’ve got your female John Wick-flicks. You’ve got your biopics. You’ve got a more recent and surprising fad – intense real-life story scripts (stuff dealing with Anne Frank or JFK’s mentally-challenged sister). And finally, you have the fairy tale world.
[note: This does not take into account whoever comes up with the next big fresh concept that starts the next spec-sale trend]
Studios buy fairy tale scripts because they’re IP without needing to pay for IP. Every person on the planet knows all the famous fairy tale tropes because they were all read to us when we were children. If the studios know that you know about something, that means they don’t have to do all of the work of explaining it to you when it’s time to advertise. They show you a fairy-tale world trailer and you know exactly what’s going on.
Familiarity gets butts in seats.
And the thing is, it really is a fertile ground for storytelling. No, that doesn’t mean you should write the 918th iteration of Cinderella. Simply find a new angle into the fairy tale world, then exploit it. It could be funny, it could be dark, it could be weird, it could be ironic, it could be scary, it could be mysterious. Bring some other genre or concept into the fairy tale world and you could have a spec sale faster than I can say, “You complete me.”
That’s what today’s writer, Chiara Atik, did. Atik took an age-old fairy tale trope, the young girl going to the ball who only has until midnight to win over the prince so the two can live happily ever after, and tells it from the point-of-view of the fairy godmother.
That fairy godmother’s name is Faye, a 40 year-old world-beater in the fairy godmother department. Faye works for a sort of “Fairy Godmother’s Incorporated” company, whereby families can hire a fairy godmother for a night to make their overly dramatic teenage daughters’ dreams come true.
And Faye has a nearly flawless record. Hell, she did Cinderella. But Faye’s about to meet her match in 18 year-old supermodel-in-training Kenzie, a hotter Selena Gomez if there is such a thing. Kenzie is, like, so obsessed with meeting the most eligible bachelor in the land, Prince Carl of Carbondale.
Faye makes a face like she’s just downed a bad shot of whisky and warns Kenzie that Prince Carl is kind of… well… promiscuous. Kenzie doesn’t care. All she wants is one night with the prince. That’s something Faye can manage, so she dresses Kenzie up for the big ball and looks forward to that big – cha-ching! – commission tomorrow morning.
Except that Kenzie is so nervous she demands that Faye come with her. Uhh, that’s not in the fairy godmother handbook, honey. But ya gotta do what ya gotta do. So Faye reluctantly joins her. Once there, Faye accidentally ends up in a back hallway with Prince Carl, who seems to… like her? Pfft, like she would ever get involved with a dumb young prince!
Cut to 20 minutes later, post-sex. What the hell did Faye just do??? I think you know where this red hood is riding. Kenzie, who’s unaware of her fairy godmother’s mishap, pleads with Faye to help her get Carl, and while Faye does just that – giving Kenzie a Pretty Woman style makeover – she keeps bumping into Carl herself, recharging the incredible chemistry the two have. But will the mature and responsible middle-age Faye really throw away her ideal job to be with a hot young piece of ass? Cue the juggling jester to find out!
One of the most common questions I get asked is, “How do I bring the romantic comedy back?” My response is uniformly, “Find a new way into the genre.” This answer is inevitably met with a second question: “How do I do that?”
Today’s script is how you do that.
Fairy Godmother is a romantic comedy. It has all the classic tropes laid out. The “uglier” main character helps the hot dumb client get the man, when all along our main character is falling in love with him as well.
The difference is: WE’RE NOT TELLING THAT STORY IN MODERN DAY NEW YORK CITY!
That’s the first way to make sure you’re not writing a cliche romantic comedy.
Instead, we’re getting the story 500 years ago in the fairy tale world. Now, had that been the only change Atik made, it wouldn’t have been enough. The secret sauce in Fairy Godmother was changing the character we usually see this scenario play out through. That’s what made the script spec-sale worthy.
On top of that, I loved that Fairy Godmother was racy. I mean, people have sex in this script. Our teenage co-lead initially just wants to have one night in Pound Town. In a fairy tale movie. It gave the story some edge and played against the squeaky clean fairy tale persona.
The only thing I had trouble with was that this 40 year old frumpy fairy godmother was so easily able to bag the most handsome prince in the land. That’s not to say Betty Crocker can’t bang Justin Bieber, but this is the kind of thing movies like Knocked Up get called out on all the time. That a guy who looks like Seth Rogen is able to get a woman who looks like Katherine Heigel.
In these instances, it is up to the screenwriter to convince us why this would happen. Is there a particular brand of humor the woman offers that’s right up the guy’s alley? Does she symbolize something that’s missing from his life? Do they connect in some unique way? I never got that answer here, and was always wondering what, exactly, Prince Carl saw in Faye that made him so easily overlook the most beautiful woman in the world.
Despite this, the ever-present charm of the script along with a seamless plot that never got in the way of the story (ahem, take some notes, Guardians 2), made up for any deficiencies the script had.
I also liked some of the offbeat choices Atik made, particular the one she made before the script even began. On the title page, she included a note that read: “Tonally, think a cross between My Best Friend’s Wedding and Into the Woods. Real, everyday people, who just happen to live in a Fairy Tale world.”
Screenwriting purists might scream out blasphemy at such a choice. Shouldn’t it be up to the writing alone to convey tone? But I find when it comes to comedy, tone can be tricky to get a handle on early. By letting us know right away exactly what the tone is, we go in knowing what kind of movie we’re reading. And, at least in this case, it was helpful.
Clever concept. Funny script. Solid execution. Totally see why this sold.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Clarity is important! This is something we don’t talk about much on the site but it’s often just as important as the creative side of writing. If we don’t understand what you’re saying, it doesn’t matter what you say. Here’s a rare mistake in Atik’s script. Take a look at this sentence.
Prince Carl is seated, eating breakfast. The only other two occupants are his balding, but affable older brother, PRINCE ALISTAIR, and his new(-ish) wife, PRINCESS GRISELDA.
What’s wrong with it? Well, it isn’t 100% clear whether Princess Griselda is the wife of Prince Alistair or Prince Carl. “…and his newish wife…” could be in reference to either. Now, at this point in the story, it had been made clear that Prince Carl was a bachelor, so I knew the answer. But I’ve read a lot of scripts where a sentence like this came early on, when familial connections hadn’t yet been disclosed, and a sentence like this provided a lot of confusion. Always err on the side of caution. So I’d go with something closer to…
Prince Carl is seated, eating breakfast. The only other two occupants are his balding, but affable older brother, PRINCE ALISTAIR, and Alistair’s new(-ish) wife, PRINCESS GRISELDA.
