Sometimes, you have to get dirty to convey a great sceenwriting lesson.

Before I get into what I mean, let me share with you the impetus behind today’s article.

I’ve been reading a lot of scripts lately and many of them have this “tame” feel. They’re pleasantly executed stories that never push the hero beyond mild irritability.

The truth is, most scripts are tame. This is because most writers treat their main characters like friends. Cause if they do that, writing the script is like going on a journey with your best friend. And that sounds a lot more fun than going on a journey with your enemy.

Yet, that’s how you should be seeing your hero – as the enemy. Your job, as the writer, is to try and destroy them.

Now, I’ve written several articles about this. And yet I continue to receive these pleasant casual stories where the main character is never pushed far enough.  So I’m obviously not doing my job.

I think I finally found a video that can effectively get my point across.

Now, if you’re afraid of flying, I STRONGLY recommend avoiding this video and the remainder of this article. Cause things get dark. There is no happy ending here.

But, if you can stomach it, it’s one of the most valuable lessons you will ever learn in regards to how to write a great screenplay. So, with that in mind, go ahead and watch it.

If you don’t have half an hour, the video covers a UPS flight out of Dubai where, about 30 minutes into the flight, a fire alarm goes off. What the pilots don’t know yet is that, in their cargo hold, several enormous packs of lithium-ion batteries have caught fire. The video details how they try and get the plane back to the airport while fighting the growing fire, which is so bad, that thick black smoke starts making its way into the cockpit.

Now, before I get into today’s lesson, let’s take note of how perfectly this situation mimics a screenplay. It has the ultimate GSU. A problem arises (a fire), which creates the story’s goal: Get the plane back on the ground. The stakes are enormous (they will definitely die if they fail). And then you’ve got extreme urgency (Estimates are that a plane has roughly 17 minutes to get on the ground once a fire starts before the plane becomes unflyable).

But, there’s a key difference in this story compared to the stories you write. In this story, which is based on a real life event, the heroes do not win. This is not Apollo 13. The two pilots flying the plane die. But not before enduring a harrowing and heroic attempt at survival.

One of the things that struck me while I was watching this story was the number of times the narrator would say something akin to, “But a new problem emerged.” Or, “But things were about to take a horrific turn for the worse.” These phrases kept coming again and again.

It started with the fire alarm. That was the first moment when the pilots realized they were in trouble.

“But things were about to take a horrific turn for the worse.”

Three minutes later is when smoke first enters the cabin, making it difficult for them to see and forcing them to put their oxygen masks on.

“But a new problem emerged.”

The captain realizes that his control column no longer controls the pitch. Which means he can’t steer the plane up or down.

“But things were about to take a horrific turn for the worse.”

The smoke in the cockpit starts getting thicker and thicker, making even small tasks overwhelmingly difficult. Because now they can barely see the control panel in front of them.

“But a new problem emerged.”

The fire has become so bad that it has eaten through the captain’s oxygen tank line, cutting off his oxygen supply. The captain has no choice but to head to the back of the cockpit to get the supplementary oxygen tank. But the toxic black smoke has gotten so thick that he can’t find it and, within seconds, he dies of smoke inhalation.

“But things were about to take a horrific turn for the worse.”

The communications go down. So, the first officer can’t talk to the Dubai control tower to find out where he is. This forces him to call another nearby plane, to relay his messages to a second control tower, which then manually calls the Dubai control tower to ask the question the first officer needs to ask. And then this whole process is reversed to get the information back to the first officer. This, for a situation where every second is precious.

“But a new problem emerged.”

The first officer can’t see out the window or see the instrumentation due to the black smoke and learns, too late, that he’s way too high up to land at Dubai. So he begins a desperate process of getting the plane lower.

“But things were about to take a horrific turn for the worse.”

When he gets the latest info from his wacky communication process, he learns that he is directly over the airport, still at 4000 feet. And he doesn’t have time to loop around and try again. Which means he’ll have to try and land at a nearby secondary airport 10 miles away. The controller gives him the coordinates to put into his plane to get to that airport.

“But a new problem emerged.”

After putting the new heading in, the co-pilot watches, horrifically, as his plane turns in the opposite direction of the second airport. In all the chaos, and because he could barely see the control panel, he accidentally put in the wrong heading, sending the plane in the wrong direction.

And then the final problem emerges. The plane gave out on him, plunging into the desert sand.

Okay, so why am I going into the gory details of this event here? Because here’s the truth of the matter. There were eight “things got worse” moments here, all of which placed our pilots in a more precarious position than they were in before.

In fictional screenplays, the average screenwriter may include ONE “things got worse” moment. The more experienced screenwriter might have TWO. But EIGHT??? Nobody includes eight. Why? Let me explain.

In this recreation, the writer/narrator knows the pilots are going to die. Because of this, he doesn’t have to worry about saving them. All he has to worry about is telling the audience what happened. This allows him to write in as many “things get worse” moments as showed up that day.

If, however, our narrator was creating a *fictional* version of this story, where the pilots had to survive at the end, he probably never would’ve went past the third “things got worse” moment because, the more dire the predicament you place your characters in, the more you have to work, as the screenwriter, to figure out how to get them out of it.

In other words, most screenwriters are terrified of painting their characters into a corner. And, therefore, they make sure to leave a big unpainted trail that allows them to walk to the exit.

What’s the lesson here?

WRITE YOUR MOMENTS LIKE YOUR CHARACTERS ARE GOING TO FAIL AS OPPOSED TO WRITING THEM LIKE THEY’RE GOING TO SUCCEED.

If you have a “characters must succeed” mindset while writing, you subconsciously place protective armor around them to make sure that they can get out of any bad situation they’re in. You mainly do this by limiting the number of bad things that happen to them, or, if there are bad things, you make sure they’re only kind of bad.

But if you write sequences like your characters are going to fail, or, in this case, die, then you’ll keep adding more and more “things get worse” moments. Which digs your characters into deeper and deeper holes. The deeper those holes get, the more captivated the reader gets. Readers are never captivated by a 10 foot hole. They figure the character is going to figure out *some way* to scale those 10 feet. But if you put them in a 100 foot hole?? Now they have NO IDEA how that character is going to succeed.

This will create more work for you on the back end to get them out of that hole. But I promise you, it’ll be more dramatically captivating for the audience.

From now on, when you write your characters into tough situations, which you should be doing many times throughout your screenplay, I want you to remember this video. And ask yourself, “How can I make things even worse for my hero here?” Smoke in the cabin? Let’s make that smoke so thick he can’t see three inches in front of his face. Need to get the plane down? Let’s take his controls away from him. Needs oxygen? Let’s have the fire burn through his oxygen mask.

The more peril you put your hero through, the more captivated we’ll be. :)

Carson gives notes on just about everything related to screenwriting – feature scripts, pilot scripts, first acts, first ten pages, first scenes, loglines, outlines, and e-mail queries.  If you’re interested in getting some help with your writing, shoot him an e-mail at carsonreeves1@gmail.com

One of the more fascinating scripts I’ve read all year!

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A CIA agent must impersonate himself in order to fend off the most daring Russian double-agent plan in espionage history.
About: This was a big 7 figure spec sale that went to Ryan Coogler’s team and Skydance. Writer Aneesh Chaganty is one half of the “Searching” team and a graduate of the Scriptshadow approach to screenwriting (he and his writing partner used to read the site all the time and, to my knowledge, still pop by) so it should be no surprise that I was very into this one.
Writers: Aneesh Chaganty & Dan Frey
Details: 113 pages

Hey, Superman might as well parlay all his buzz into as many sexy projects as possible

Note: This is definitely one of those scripts that you’ll want to read FIRST before reading the review as it has a lot of twists and turns. Someone in the comments may be able to help you find it.

I’ve been reading a ton of scripts lately.

And what I become very sensitive to when I’m reading a lot of scripts is originality.

Is the writer giving you exactly what’s expected? Or are they going above and beyond to outthink you?

Cause that’s part of the job description of being a good writer. You have to outthink the reader.

As one of you just pointed out in the comments yesterday, Jon Watts got lazy writing Spider-Man: No Way Home. He had to come up with a way to bring in the other two Spider-Mans (Toby and Andrew) and he thought it would be a cool idea right after Aunt May’s death to do it right on the top of a building in the middle of New York.

But then he was reading Spider-Man subreddits and saw that someone already came up with that exact assumption of how they would be introduced. The poster even generated an image of it. Jon Watts said, “Well I can’t do that anymore.” And he changed it to what we eventually saw in the movie.

None of us are fortunate enough to be guiding franchises that have subreddits where commenters can keep us honest. But we can keep ourselves honest if we’re honest with ourselves.

There’s a version of today’s concept that 99 out of 100 writers would’ve gone with. Today’s writers would be the 1 out of 100 that pushed the idea a step further. Which is why the script sold. I’ll talk about that in a second. First, let me summarize the plot for you.

Veer Miller is a CIA agent who has a wife and two kids. Although we don’t get to see him a whole lot with his family, we get the sense that he might not be the best husband or father. He also may not be very good at recognizing that.

One day Veer is shocked to be brought into the CIA Director’s office, who tells him that he’s been picked for a very unique mission. The Russians have located a man in Brazil, Pedro Barbosa, who looks identical to him. Their plan is to get Pedro and teach him to be Veer. They will then kill Veer and replace him with doppelgänger Pedro so that they have a mole inside the CIA.

The CIA’s counter-plan is to send Veer to Brazil to secure doppelgänger Pedro, then take his place, pretending to be Pedro. This way, the Russians will recruit him instead, and replace Veer with… Veer. This will mean that Veer will be in constant contact with the Russians, who think he’s Pedro, and the U.S. will be able to manipulate Russia by having Veer tell them false information.

So, Veer is sent to Brazil. Pedro is secured and sent back to America, where he’ll be forced to play Veer while Veer is gone. Veer then meets up with the Russians, who pose the first big snag to Veer’s mission. There are three other doppelgängers!!! That was not part of the intel. The Russians want to make sure that they send the perfect double-agent. So this is a six-month competition to become the most convincing Veer. Whoever wins, goes to America.

Naturally, you would think that Veer has a leg up on everyone. But as the training begins, he constantly fails all of the tests, many of which amount to seeing what he would do in a specific situation. Veer gradually realizes that he has always viewed himself as an idealized version rather than his true self.

In order to win, he must see who he really is and become that person. And who Veer really is, is the person Veer least wants to be.

This is one of the more clever setups to a movie I’ve read in a while. Going back to what I was talking about earlier, I receive spy ideas a lot. But the version of this story that I receive (99 out of 100 times) has the US using our protagonist CIA agent, who they realize looks similar to a Russian KGB agent, to replace that agent in order to accumulate intelligence. In other words, it’s the straight-forward version of a doppelgänger idea.

Chagantry and Frey ask themselves, “What’s the next iteration up from this idea?” And that’s how they come with this really clever version of a spy concept.

I can already hear some of you chirping about the believability of the doppelgänger conceit. But these guys actually do a perfect job of setting that up. They play footage of a real Russian theorist who had this obsession with how many people in the world look exactly like each other, and that’s the basis for how the Russians came up with this idea.

One of the things that all good writers do is they take risks. These writers could’ve written “Salt,” here. “Salt” was a gangbusters spec script from Kurt Wimmer that was just a good old fashioned fun spy thriller. And we could’ve gone that same route with Doppelgänger.

But Changantry and Frey took this giant risk and decided to make this a character piece. This story is more about who Veer is and how we, as human beings, see ourselves, versus how the world sees us.

And there’s some good stuff in here. There’s an actress playing Veer’s wife in the training and he has to have deep conversations with her about their relationship and the specific circumstances help him realize that he’s the world’s worst husband and has been terrible to her.

There’s a lot of that.

I’m not going to lie – I wasn’t 100% onboard with this decision. I understood why they did it. But I assumed, at some point, we were going to go back to the US and see some cool spy shit. We never did, though, and I had some FOMO about that. Or, since we didn’t go, maybe it’s the opposite of FOMO. Cause FOMO is when you’re missing out on something. Or maybe that is the appropriate way to say it—

—ANYWAY!

It doesn’t upset me that much because I SO respect the risk the writers took because it made this script different from any script that’s been written in the past three years. It’s unique. And how often do we get unique scripts? We don’t. If we would’ve gone back to the US and had some US-Russian spy set pieces, then it’s just like John Wick. It’s just like Mission Impossible. We think we want those things until we get to the theater and we watch the film and we say, “That was just like every other action movie I’ve seen.”

Also, if you have a movie idea that allows a director to cast the same actor in multiple roles, SEND IT TO RYAN COOGLER. This is clearly his thing now. And this has even more roles than Sinners. The actor gets to play 4 roles!

This is an imperfect script. It becomes a character-driven story and I’m not convinced they nailed the character-driven parts. But it’s such a fresh premise with a fresh execution – two things you RARELY SEE TOGETHER in scripts these days (I see fresh concepts with standard executions and standard concepts with fresh executions, but I never see fresh concepts with fresh executions) and, for that reason, I have to recommend this script.

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

What I learned: Double up interesting plot beats and exposition delivery devices. Doppelgänger has an early scene where they need to test Veer so they can make sure that, when he returns, he’s the real Veer. So they ask him all these questions (i.e. what was your happiest memory, what was your saddest memory). This allows us a quick and easy way to deliver exposition (Veer’s backstory) via an entertaining, and necessary, scene. That’s good writing!

Genre: Horror
Premise: Two sisters come back to their hometown after their mentally ill mother dies, and are dragged back into the mystery of what happened to their third sister, who drowned when they were children.
About: Universal preemptively purchased this short story. Janelle Monáe will star and produce. Akela Cooper (M3GAN, Malignant) will adapt the screenplay, which is based on the short story of one of the highest-concept writers in Hollywood, Colin Bannon, who’s made the Black List a record 7 times.
Writer: Colin Bannon
Details: 27 pages

I don’t have a lot of time today so I have to speed through this one. Apologies in advance for any grammatical errors. And I encourage everyone to read the short story first because it’s a spoiler type read. And if you know the spoiler ahead of time, the story’s no fun. With that said, the only way to talk about this story is to talk about the spoiler, so you’ve been warned.

The quick and dirty plot breakdown is that a young girl named Sam lives in the South with her sisters, Riley, and Maddie. Maddie is the youngest. One day, when their mother was at the lake watching Maddie swim, she looked down at her book, looked back at the lake and Maddie was gone.

After that, both the mother and father went crazy. The dad just upped and hightailed it out of there without ever saying goodbye. And the mom was so mentally diseased that she poured bleach into her eyes, blinding herself forever. Social services came in, ripped away Sam and Riley, and the two lived the rest of their youth in foster care before heading out and trying to make it in the real world.

Sam would move to New York and become an addict and a dealer. Then, one day, she got word that her mom had died so she and Riley went back to their hometown to bury their mother. They hadn’t been in the house since they’d been taken away, and the first thing they were greeted with was a snake. Welcome home!

At the funeral, some real estate dude offers 800 grand to buy the house. Sam didn’t have to be told twice and invites the man to stop by the next day. But, on that day, as Sam and Riley clean up the house for his visit, they go downstairs and find a secret passageway, a la Barbarian.

They walk down a hallway and find an exact recreation of Maddie’s bedroom. Even freakier, they also find Maddie!!!! But Maddie is now 30 years old and wears a hood that keeps her face in shadow. She then screams, “DON’T LOOK!”

The girls run upstairs where they see the real estate agent. But it’s not just the real estate agent. It’s the real estate agent WITH A CHAINSAW!!!!!! WTF??????? He starts screaming to let him have her head or something. And then he’s attacking the girls. And then Maddie appears, lowers her hood, and we see her hair. Which is all snakes. The agent looks at her and, seconds later, he’s stone.

Yes, it appears that Maddie is Medusa. And that’s why all of this needed to happen like it did. And poor dad? Didn’t leave. Accidentally found her secret room one day, looked her in the eyes, and turned to stone. The problem now is that others are coming. Maddie can’t hide here anymore. Which means the girls will all have to leave together. And once they’re out in the real world, they’ll have to learn to live under these new supernatural circumstances. The end.

For the Win burger

All in all, this story was kinda clever.

It presents itself as a haunted house movie. The focus is on the girls coming back to their home and the home being freaky. And then, like I say you gotta do with all ideas, the author introduces a fresh unexpected angle. This isn’t your traditional haunted house movie at all. It’s a Medusa movie.

Bannon did a great job with his setup. There are about a dozen setups (the mother got into making sculptures – which actually turned out to be Maddie’s victims, there are snakes everywhere in the house, the mom bleached her eyes so she didn’t risk turning to stone herself, they find old stories about how their great grandmother decapitated one of her daughters, etc.) in this movie so that when the payoff finally comes (she’s Medusa), it makes sense immediately. Also, unlike most stories, the writer never tips his hand with any setup because we don’t even know this is a Medusa story.

So that reveal was fun.

I will say that it’s always a risk when you do the genre change-up. With this movie, you have no option other than to promote it as a haunted house movie. Which means that the type of audience that likes ghosts, maybe even monsters, are the ones who are going to show up. Unfortunately, that’s not always the same audience that likes Greek mythology. So when the Greek mythology payoff comes, you’re going to have some disappointed people.

I secretly like the genre change-up because it’s so challenging to pull off. You want to see if you can be one of the few authors to do it. Can you start a song with rap and end it with country? So I’m curious how people will react to this.

One more thing I want to point out to anyone who’s thinking about writing a script or a short story in this same vein. You’re probably looking at this and thinking, “I just gotta go high concept and that solves all my problems!” And you’re kind of right. It makes things easier for sure. But if that’s all you do, you won’t sell the script. I guarantee that the reason this sold to Janelle Monae is because of the sisters’ relationship.

Most of the smart successful people in Hollywood need to have an emotional connection to the story for them to pull the trigger. So, draw them in with the highest concept you can think of then grab onto their hearts with the best character story you’re capable of writing.

I’m proud of Bannon here. This is his most focused story yet. And, for that reason, it’s probably his best.

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

What I learned: Genre change-ups MUST BE SET UP BETTER THAN SINGLE GENRE STORIES. Remember, you’re bringing people in who may not like what your story is going to turn into later. However, if you have a ton of setups, like Bannon does here, then when we switch over to that second genre, we’re at least not surprised by it. It makes sense to us. That, to me, is what saved this story.

Genre: Comedy Horror
Premise: When a group of new hires gets invited to their company’s corporate retreat, things
quickly take a turn as they discover the only way to land the job is to survive the
weekend. Literally.
About: I believe today’s writer, Jackson Kellard, has a couple of scripts in development. But this is the one that’s gotten him the most attention, as it ended up on the Black List with 10 votes.
Writer: Jackson Kellard
Details: 117 pages

I feel like, 1000%, this actor would be in this movie.  Playing… someone.

There are a dozen ways to tell, right off the bat, if a script is doomed. One of those ways is if you see a high page count in a low-page count genre. Contained concepts. Thrillers. Comedies. Most horror. These are all genres that should hover between 90-105 pages. When you write a 118 page version of one of these films, it’s a tell-tale sign that you haven’t been around screenwriting for very long.

Yes, it’s true, there are 120 page scripts that read like 90 page scripts and 90 page scripts that read like 120 page scripts. But the reality is, when you’re writing spec scripts, a MAJOR FACTOR in their success is making things as easy on the reader as possible.

Because you’re not getting the high-level “decision-making” dude at the studio reading these scripts. You’re getting the secretary, who’s hoping to move up in the company, and they’re told that they have to read six scripts over the weekend and tell their boss which one is best. That’s the reader you’re getting. So, your scripts are never being read under ideal circumstances.  Therefore: Make it easy for them!

Now, I’ll give it to today’s writer that he has a concept that will get people to open his script. Which is how I’m guessing Onboarding got enough votes to make the Black List. The Black List is very much a ‘quantity’ game these days. The more reads you can get, the more people you have who could potentially vote on your script. This is a concept people will check out. But as I’ll point out after the plot summary, even the concept, here, has issues.

New employees for the company, West Bridge Capital, are informed that they need to go on an orientation on a remote island. There are about 80 of these new employees and when they get there, during the opening ceremonies, they all pass out. When they wake up, they’re spread throughout the island in various scenarios where their lives are in danger.

The group we’re with consists of Charlie (the nerd), Eva (cool tattoo girl), AJ (crypto bro), Andre (gay and loving it), Jane (old chick who tries to act young), and Erik (son of the CEO of the company).

Our group wakes up on a giant platform in the sky. When the ropes of that platform are released, they’re basically standing on a giant tilting piece of wood. They realize that the only way to survive is to spread out and balance the board, or else it will tilt and they’ll slide off to their deaths. They somehow make it off of this and quickly realize that the company is trying to kill them.

Charlie, however, reminds everyone just how hard it was out there in the job market. If they can just survive this orientation, they get to work at one of the top companies in the country. They all agree and away they go. Charlie, by the way, has his sights set on Eva, who’s way too cool for him. But that doesn’t mean he won’t shoot his shot.

They next end up in a cave that’s quickly filling with lava. An LED TV turns on and they’re on a zoom call with one of the managers, who informs them that she’s going to play a game of charades with them. Every answer they get right, a stairway is lowered. And if it’s lowered enough, they’ll be able to walk up it and get out of here before they’re burned alive. The answers include pop culture things such as “Scandavol” and “Caitlin Clark.”

Eventually, Charlie and Eva are split up from the main group (after they tumble down a waterfall) and Eva is able to hack her and Charlie’s tracking devices so the company can’t find them. While in the jungle, they stumble across a little mini town that previous survivors of West Bridge Capital’s initiation weekend have formed. There, they have little pun stands like, “The NY Steak Exchange,” where a woman cuts and cooks steaks for you.

The CEO of the company, Jonathan Marks, gets so pissed that Eva outsmarted him that he empowers his primary operator, Hank, to go into the game and kill her, along with everyone on her team. But Johnathan has pissed Hank off so many times, Hank does the unthinkable and teams up with the new employees instead.

Let’s start at the top. This concept is dated. I’ve come across this concept two-dozen times at least. I’ve probably read ten versions of this story. So, already, you’re in the hole.

Whenever you choose a well-tread concept, your only hope of writing a good script is taking that story in a unique direction. Either the execution is unexpected. Or the writer’s voice is unexpected. Cause the worst thing that you can do is pick a common concept and execute it commonly.

Now, while I wouldn’t say Onboarding’s execution was 100% obvious. It’d say it was about 80% obvious.

I got the sense that the writer wanted to separate himself via the humor. This is a very comedic script. But screenwriters writers don’t seem to realize that they’re competing with a level of comedy that’s beyond what even the solidly funny comedic writers are capable of.

It’s the same thing with tennis (hey, Wimbledon is going on, let me make this analogy). I competed up to a certain point, playing several low-level professional tournaments after college. And I’ll never forget the day I played this guy in the first round of the biggest tournament I’d ever played in and he hit the ball so hard and with so much spin that when my racket made contact with his shots, the ball would push my racket backwards against my wrist so severely, that it was painful to hit the ball. I’d never experienced anything like that.

I knew, after that match, I could never compete with these people.  Which is why I moved to Hollywood instead.  Yaaaayyyy!!!

Nowadays, any average person who sees me play, they say, “Wow, you’re good.”  And I am pretty good!  But I know that when I play against someone who’s an actual competitor, I’m not even in the same stratosphere.

That’s how I felt reading all the jokes in this script. They were fine. Yeah, watching Andre The Gay Guy get upset whenever he couldn’t vape made me chuckle. But to compete in the comedy space where people are giving you 40 million dollars to make a movie? You have to operate at a different freaking level. And this script never got there comedically.

Onboarding may have been able to still entertain me if the set pieces were strong. But they weren’t. We get a classic screenwriting beginner mistake where the opening set piece (the one on the tilting platform) was about 75% clear. Instead of what it needed to be. Which was 100% clear.

I had a hard time visualizing what I was looking at. To make things worse, the second half of the set piece had them opening up hatches and then bungee jumping down to the ground. Is this task about balancing or is it about bungee jumping? You gotta pick one. Cause I didn’t understand for the life of me how you keep the balancing goal while also bungee jumping. It was very confusing.

And then you straight up lost me with the lava-cave charades. That’s not even creative. It’s dumb. Again, a lot of what scripts come down to is writers either wanting to work hard, pushing their creativity to its limit, or taking the easy route. In other words, are you going to work that creative brain of yours until you come up with an exceptional set piece or are you just going to go with the first or second idea that pops into your head? Lava charades definitely felt like a first idea. And I was out after that. I knew after that scene that there was nothing this script could do to win me back.

With all that said, there’s a base level of know-how here which, these days, is enough to get you on the Black List. If you have a concept that’s juicy enough to get read requests, you will have enough people to potentially vote on your script come Black List voting time. From there, it’s just making sure not to make any drastic mistakes. Your script has to be professional. It’s got to have a 3-Act structure, it’s gotta move, it’s got to have basic character stuff (an arc for one or two characters). This script does all of that. It just doesn’t do anything more than that.

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

What I learned: This concept is dated. If you come up with an idea like this, you should acknowledge that it’s too common, and look for a version of that idea that’s fresher, more modern. How bout “Love (And Death) Island?” A bunch of Islanders stuck in one of those Love Island villa shows.  Instead of trying to stay in the villa, they’re trying to get out. Cause if you stay in the villa for too long, you die.  That sounds more current to me.

How to make a bad pitch that will actually get you the screenwriting gig

If you are lucky, one day you will be able to pitch your take on a major motion picture sequel. And when that day comes, I want you to think back to Megan 2.0. Because this pitch destroyed a franchise. Yet here’s the irony: It’s the angle you should’ve pitched as well. I’ll explain in a moment.

I don’t like dancing on the grave of failed movies but I’m ecstatic Megan 2.0 tanked at the box office this weekend. It brought in just 10 million dollars. For comparison, the first film brought in 30 million dollars on its opening weekend.

Why am I happy? Well, it’s my job – as it is for all screenwriters – to know what works at the box office. The better the understanding you have of what makes people show up to movie theaters, the more successful you’re going to be. Because you’re going to choose to write movies that people actually like.

I never understood the success of Megan. I thought it was bargain basement horror. Sure. Just how sophisticated is a movie about a killer girl robot supposed to be? I get that it’s not trying to be Casablanca. But even the design of the doll sucked. And that stupid dance it did that wasn’t even well-choreographed. The whole time that movie was doing well, I thought I was being gaslit. I’m looking at this pile of trash and saying to anyone who will notice, “Do you not see how bad this is?”

The utter collapse of the franchise confirmed what I knew all along – which was that this Megan doll was a dud. It reaffirmed my understanding of the box office. Cause if this movie had made a bunch of money, I would’ve thrown up my hands and said, “I don’t understand Hollywood anymore.” Especially after the success of The Minecraft Movie. A double dose of dumbness doing well? I would not be able to pretend like I understood things anymore.

But here’s the relevant part of Megan 2.0 as far as screenwriting is concerned. When you are a professional screenwriter, you are constantly asked to come in and pitch your angle for writing stories. Whether you get the job or not often comes down to how good your “angle” is.

Now, as it so happens, the creative team behind Megan 2.0 is the same as Megan 1.0 (Akela Cooper, James Wan, and Gerard Johnstone). So there was no official person coming in to pitch. It was them pitching each other. But for the sake of this lesson, I want you to focus on the pitch that won here.

The pitch was: “Megan 1 was Alien. Megan 2 is Aliens.” In other words, Alien was a straight horror film. Aliens was an action film. That’s the exact same thing they did here. They went away from horror and turned this into some action movie where Megan has to take on a bigger scarier robot woman.

This highlights the problem with pitching. Is that sometimes the pitches that sound the best in the room are the worst thing you can do for your movie. I can only imagine how excited everyone in that room got when that pitch was made. Cause it sounds so right! “Alien to Aliens.” Who didn’t love the jump between those two films? Now you’re going to do the same for my movie? Hell yeah I’m in.

But Megan has completely different DNA from Alien. Alien was dark. It was almost nihilistic in its portrayal of these characters’ lives. Megan 1 was a goofy half-comedy horror film. It didn’t have the seriousness required to upgrade to an action movie. And you saw that in the turnout. People don’t want to see a goofy doll in an action movie. They want more of the same. They want horror. This franchise was never complex enough to be more than that.

But, again, here’s the irony. If you (as you in YOU reading this) were going in to pitch for this Megan sequel and you would’ve said you were going with an “Alien to Aliens” pitch, I would’ve told you to do it. Why? Cause I know it would’ve won the job. EVEN THOUGH I know that it’s ultimately going to be a terrible movie.

So, Carson, you’re sending us on a suicide mission? Listen. My job is to GET YOU THE JOB. It’s to get you paid. It’s to get you the movie credit. And that would’ve gotten you the credit because it’s the kind of pitch in the room that works. It’s the same reason Rian Johnson was able to get away with The Last Jedi and the depressing storyline that ruined Luke Skywalker’s legacy. Because he could say, “It’s just like going from Star Wars to Empire Strikes Back. It has to be darker!” And Kathleen Kennedy said hell yes because that pitch made sense.

It’s also the reason why this Nobody 2 movie has the storyline that it has – A family vacation. So many people came into that room and pitched a bigger badder version of “Nobody.” Think about why that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because studio execs could’ve thought of that on their own. They don’t need creative types to say, “Go bigger and badder.” They like when you come up with that angle that they couldn’t have thought of themselves and packaged it in a container that they instantly understand. “National Lampoon’s Vacation meets John Wick.” They go gaga over that shit – to the extent that they don’t even see the finished product. They just see the sexy unexpected angle of the pitch.

Fantastic Four is about to run into this problem itself. It went with a pitch that probably sounded good in the room but is not something that people actually want to see. The pitch was: The first Marvel movie for the whole family. That’s what the story is about. It’s about a family. They even bring in a baby, like those 90s sitcoms always did in the seventh season.

But you know what happened to those sitcoms once they brought in the baby? They lost all their young hip viewers. Those viewers ran for the hills when babies showed up. And the same thing is going to happen here because anybody who’s read comic books before knows that boys used comics to escape their families. You went and bought five comics then ran up to your room and went through each and every page with your best friend.

There has never been a time in history when the whole family sat around and read a comic book together. So Fantastic Four is about to get annihilated – not by Galactus. But by the general public. Who just aren’t going to be interested in this angle.

Speaking of angles, it’s going to be really interesting to watch what goes down with this Bond stuff. Now that the hipper younger-skewing Amazon Prime has it claws in the famed franchise, it’s going to go with a fresh and new angle. They’re even considering baby-faced Tom Holland to play the most manly of all manly roles. Which makes no sense but that’s the risk of trying a new angle. You’re gambling and you’re hoping everybody follows along.

For years, the Broccolis have been steadfast in keeping with Bond tradition. Any director that came in with a fresh angle, they kicked them right back out. They rejected Christopher Freaking Nolan! Cause Nolan said he wanted to do his own thing and not have anyone looking over his shoulder. That’s how much they protected their “angle” on Bond – that they rejected the number one director in the world. And it worked! The movies all did well.

It just goes to show, there’s no “right” way to do this. Everybody always says you should go with a fresh new angle because “fresh” and “new” sounds good. But there are certain franchises where you want to stick with what got you there. Marvel and Star Wars are in trouble these days specifically because they’ve strayed so far from their traditional model. Maybe had they stayed with what got them there, both franchises would be healthy.

You know what is healthy? F1. That movie came out of the gates pedal to the metal this weekend. I feel like it was just yesterday that Brad Pitt was threatening to retire, saying he wanted to leave the industry to the young guns. After one of his best openings ever (55 mil), he should be lining up projects for the next decade.

F1 used an age-old (and very basic) Hollywood formula, which is to make a movie about the hot thing of the moment (F1) and then really do the execution justice. Had they gone the Marvel route here and magic-CGI’d this movie together, I promise you no one would’ve shown up. Instead, they put you in the car with cameras. They had Pitt really racing. They clearly cared about a genuine real world experience. How ironic is that? That the new studio players in town (Apple TV) are making movies the way studios used to make them, whereas the old guard is ignoring that in favor of AI digital bits and bops. Maybe the Disney and WB and RKO will learn something from this. We customers value stuff that looks and feels real.

Did anybody see any of these movies this weekend? If so, what’d you think?