Genre: Slasher
Premise: In the cutthroat world of K-POP, a group’s debut is threatened when someone begins to violently attack its members.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List. The writer, Lynn Q. Yu, came up with the idea during the pandemic when she went down the K-pop rabbit hole after watching Netflix’s documentary about Blackpink (Light Up the Sky). “That was my first time sort of learning about the trainee camp system, and how insanely competitive it is.” The script almost sold before the strike. “Going into late April, we actually had four parties that were very interested in it. At the end of April, we got a studio to offer money. But ultimately, they low-balled us. We had to walk away from the deal because it was right before the strike. I remember negotiating on April 28 and the strike started on May 1. They were basically trying to buy me out for a very low price, hoping I would accept the floor right before the strike.” You can read more about the writer and Unnie over at Joysauce.
Writer: Lynn Q. Yu
Details: 106 pages
Sometimes I wonder why every script isn’t about K-Pop.
Don’t you?
Okay not really but…
One of the big challenges in screenwriting is the decision you have to make at the concept stage. You can write something more personal that resonates with you and, therefore, will be more enjoyable to write. Or you can write something that is more saleable, a juicier more marketable concept. Unfortunately, those are harder to write since you don’t care about them as much.
There are a few blessed screenwriters out there whose passions align with what’s marketable. So, for them, it’s easier. There is another option, though. Try to find the heart in the marketable idea – something you resonate with – and use that to guide your script. That way, you’re incorporating the best of both worlds. That’s what happened with Lynn Q. Yu here.
“I had hit a moment in my career, where I felt I had hit a wall. I was questioning whether I was good enough, whether I was talented enough. I wanted to write a story where a protagonist was really struggling with their own talent and adequacy. What if the reason they failed wasn’t because of the system? But because someone younger and hotter and more talented came up and supplanted them, which is something that I think most creatives have to deal with and have to go through. I combined those themes, but set them in this K-pop world.”
26 year-old Hoyeon Cho is known in her group as “Unnie,” which means “older sister” in Korean. In this case, it might as well be a racial slur. Nobody wants to be called older anything in the youth obsessed world of K-Pop. Unnie is part of a 7 person group of K-Pop members who are trying out to make the final group, which will consist of only 4 of them.
The other members are 22 year old butch Jae, wisp thin 20 year old, Raya, religious 20 year old, Nari, loud 21 year old Hana, spoiled rich 18 year old Min-Ji, and 20 year old adventurous Chaeyoung.
When Chaeyoung is attacked in Koreatown (in LA) and beaten into a coma by a young woman dressed in a pixie K-Pop costume, a new girl, 19 year old Sara, comes in. Sara is super-odd and spends a lot of her time staring at people while saying nothing. Creeeeepy.
Unnie is suspicious of Sara right away and begins watching her every move. With only 2 weeks left before the final four are chosen, she’s not leaving anything to chance. On the second night Sara is there, Raya is beaten to death in the tool shed outside the house they’re all staying at.
Next thing you know, Sara is seducing Jae, who’s more than happy that this hot young whippersnapper is into her. It appears that Sara is manipulating everything, pulling the strings to ensure that she makes the group. Meanwhile, Unnie battles with their overbearing manager, Grace, who also happens to be her older sister.
Just when Unnie thinks she has the smoking gun to take Sara down, she realizes that the real disruptor may be closer to home.
There comes this moment in every script I read where I know that this is going to be a script of value or a script I’ll forget as soon as I finish. It typically comes within the first 40 pages. Usually earlier but it has happened later.
It amounts to a featured scene where something of significance happens. In this script, it happened around page 40 when the group was practicing their dance moves. Sara is new to the group and has, so far, been told to watch and pick up what she can.
But the manager decides to throw her into the mix. “Get in there and do your best.” In that moment, I thought to myself, “If Sara goes in there and is perfect and better than everyone else, this is going to be the type of script I forget as soon as it’s over. But if, instead, something unexpected happens, I’m probably going to like this script.”
So, what happened?
Sara went in and was perfect. I knew then the script wasn’t going to clear my, admittedly, high bar.
To be clear, I’m not saying the script is bad. I actually thought the script was fine. But there are SO MANY FINE SCRIPTS IN HOLLYWOOD. There are maybe 500 fine scripts. 1000 possibly. Maybe as many as 5000. In order to write a script that resonates with people, you must aim for above fine. WAY above fine.
And even though there’s no singular way to achieve this, one of the things you definitely want to do is place yourself in the reader’s mind while you’re writing and check in with that mind to see what they’re expecting. Once you know what they’re expecting, you can play with that. You can sometimes give them exactly what they’re expecting. But, at key moments, you should probably use what they’re expecting against them.
I knew as soon as Sara went in there and was perfect how this script was going to play out. It was a leverage moment in the script where the writer, whether they knew it or not, was telegraphing to the reader what kind of creative choices they were going to make. In this case, safe expected choices.
If Sara had screwed up or was lost or buckled under the pressure or was laughably bad, I would’ve had no idea where this script was going. And that’s where I want to be.
I remember reading the screenplay for Black Swan before it came out — another high pressure young dancer movie – and there was this scene where the main character has sex with her rival one night. I didn’t know what was coming next. Those are the kinds of choices that elevate a read.
I *do* think this script is marketable. It feels a bit like Smile 2, which looks good and will probably make a lot of money. But it doesn’t do anything that gets you excited. It plays out like you think it will. There’s a late script reveal where we learn who the killer is and it surprised me. But because the lead up to that reveal was by-the-numbers, it didn’t move the needle. You have to try and move the needle with your script. Even if you don’t succeed, you need to try.
This, like a K-Pop group, felt too safe.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: In these ensemble scripts ESPECIALLY, where you have seven girls around the same age in a lot of scenes together, you must spend your script prep differentiating how they speak so that we can pick up who’s talking just by the dialogue alone. If they’re all using the same vocabulary, the same subject matter, the same slang, the same rhythm, the same number of lines every time they speak, we won’t be able to differentiate them. So take that extra time and try and separate each of them through their dialogue alone. That’s REALLY going to improve the read.
