Today we get a pilot script from Hollywood’s newest golden child screenwriter
Genre: TV Pilot – 1 hour – Horror/Slasher/Sci-Fi
Premise: Set 15-20 years in the future, a group of high school kids ensconced in future technology are shocked when one of their friends is murdered, seeing as murder rarely happens anymore.
About: Today’s pilot comes from Hollywood’s screenwriting wunderkind, Shay Hatten, he who has basically taken over writing all the John Wick movies. He wrote this pilot in 2018 for the SyFy channel. They cast the show and shot a pilot but it was apparently so bad they didn’t go to series with it. Hatten was on my list of Top 10 future great screenwriters in Hollywood.
Writer: Shay Hatten
Details: 54 pages
We’ve got ourselves a Shay Hatten script today.
Hatten is known for his big energetic writing voice, which he definitely brings to today’s pilot. Hatten, who is not shy about his desire to emulate his hero, Shane Black, gives us all sorts of 4th-wall breaking action to digest in (Future) Cult Classic.
“If this scene doesn’t make every single person watching it vomit, I quit. Andy’s Dad’s guts have been, like, forking splorked all over the Goddamn place.”
Since I know some of you hate that writing style, tread carefully going forward.
The year is 2025 or 2030 — somewhere in that range – and 17 year old cool rebellious girl, Bree, is heading to her best friend, Andy’s, place so they can go to the first day of school together. The two are besties times a thousand, although you kind of get the impression Andy loves Bree.
Needless to say, he’s not happy that Super Cool Guy, Henry, has lowered himself from his cool guy pedestal to date Bree. We know this wasn’t easy because the social credit app the teens use has lowered Henry’s popularity out of the top 1%. Meanwhile, Bree and Andy are the two lowest-ranked students on the app, on purpose. They do bad things to stay at the bottom.
After a few oddly injected “Trump is evil” remarks that didn’t have anything to do with the story, all the students put on their virtual reality goggles, where they’re then transferred into a virtual environment, where their principal makes several announcements about the coming school year.
After this VR excursion ends, the principal tells everyone to meet him in the auditorium as he just received some devastating news (I can’t emphasize how clumsy this is – after the principal greets them in the VR world, he then says he wants to greet them in the real world, creating two scenes in what easily could’ve been one!). The principal then announces that one of the students (who we met earlier at a party) has been killed.
What we eventually learn is that some masked killer is running around killing people. It’ll be up to Bree and her friends to figure out who it is. Of course, they’ll also be hoping it isn’t one of them.
I’ve seen some bad ideas before. But this is up there.
A horror slasher story set in the future with the unofficial tone inspiration being Back to The Future 2. Who needs a regular horror show when you can integrate virtual reality, social credit apps, and hoverboards?
I’m sorry but horror and the future don’t mix.
Let’s not forget the last horror movie that tried to be futuristic. Demonic? Remember that masterpiece? There were a confirmed 13 deaths from the 100 people who went to see that movie in theaters. Cause of death? Boredom.
Horror is the one genre that gets better the further back in time you go. If you go back just 30 years, we couldn’t call anybody when we were in trouble. We just had to deal with it. That alone makes for horror situations that are a thousand times scarier.
I just watched Silence of the Lambs again (yes, for my dialogue book, in case you were wondering) and I was thinking that great scene where Clarice accidentally visits Buffalo Bill’s house couldn’t have been written today. Her boss would’ve called her to warn her. And, if she didn’t answer, he would’ve texted, which she would’ve checked.
But things get really scary if you go back 50 years, 100 years, 150 years. In those days, not only was everything spookier, but you were really on your own if you were stuck in a bad situation.
The badness of this pilot didn’t stop there, though.
It’s set 15 years in the future and we would occasionally flash back eight years to when Bree was a kid. So now we’re flashing back despite the fact that this show’s flashback is still our present’s flash-forward. It’s just weird. It twists your mind in all the wrong ways. You’re thinking about things that have nothing to do with the story itself, which means the suspension of disbelief is constantly being broken.
Shay was probably frustrated because he was trying something different here. And isn’t that what we’re told to do as writers? Be unique. Show a new voice. Find a different angle. Be subversive.
Then we do all those things and everyone’s like, ‘well that was dumb’ so we shrivel up into a ball and spend three weeks eating 5 dollar donuts from Slider’s even though they make your tummy hurt cause all the yeast is natural and therefore expands way further than all that fake yeast and you promise yourself you will never ever try something original or eat donuts again. You’re going to play by the rules from now on.
Look, I’m not telling you to play it safe.
But “different” is a dicier path. It has a much higher failure rate. That’s because if something hasn’t been tried already, it’s not because you’re the one genius who came up with the idea. It’s more likely because it’s been tried before and failed badly, so everyone forgot about it.
This begs the question, how does a writer recognize that they have a bad idea?
Well, the best way to find out is to poll the idea with people who have no connection to you. Put your idea here in the comments and see what commenters say. Don’t listen to the commenters who are your friends as they will likely be nice to you. Look at the people who you have no connection to. They’re going to be the most honest.
If the ratio of dislike to like is around 5 to 1, you’ve got a bad idea on your hands. Anything worse, you’ve got a really bad idea on your hands. You want to be closer to the 4 likes for every 1 dislike ratio.
But let’s say you’re private about your ideas and don’t want to post them on the internet. What then? If you truly want to figure it out privately, you need to be extremely honest with yourself. Start by asking, is writing this script like pulling teeth? Does every scene and moment feel forced? Do you dread writing the script because it’s always difficult to come up with pages?
Deep down, do you have this constant feeling that the story doesn’t work?
If so, you probably have a bad idea. I’m not going to go so far as to say this is true all the time. Some genius works are hard to write. But I think we all know, deep down inside, if something is working or not. And if you’re unsure, you always have me. You can get a consultation and I’ll tell you straight up, if you genuinely want to know, whether the idea works or not. You can even get a logline consult done BEFORE you write the script to potentially save yourself a lot of time.
Also keep in mind that you can pivot. You don’t have to completely abandon a script if you love the idea. Sometimes it’s a matter of changing the main character POV. Sometimes it’s about changing genres (from a slasher to a mystery, or a drama to a horror). Sometimes you haven’t unlocked the best angle to tell the story from yet.
When it comes to today’s story, it does start to come together a teensy bit towards the back end of the pilot. Once we start looking into Emily’s murder, there is a slightly fresh perspective we’re exploring this genre from – this idea that a murder has been committed in a world where murder has basically been eradicated.
But, again, the tone is so off here. The comedy and the horror don’t mix organically. You throw in the “Back to the Future 2” future speculation stuff (“Zoinks! There’s one of them hoverboarders!”) and it gets even jankier. The story just doesn’t know what it is.
And I could totally see this playing out when they tried to shoot the thing. I could see five actors playing five different tones. That’s how poorly constructed this mushy mythology is.
I struggled through this one from the get-go. I’m surprised I was able to make it through the whole thing, to be honest. It was that bad.
Script link: (Future) Cult Classic
[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: When it comes to comedy-horror, the comedy has to be organically built into the story. That’s why yesterday’s comedy-horror film, Deadstream, was so good. The main character was an annoying Youtuber. So that’s where all the comedy came from – him being one of those annoying Youtube personalities. When you’re just trying to add comedy to add it, cause you want to, you get today’s pilot. Everything feels forced.
OFFICER KIPPER
Peyton, the boyfriend. It’s his SnapStream feed.
MOSCOVITZ
Is that like SnapChat?
Kipper stifles a laugh. Moscovitz glares at him.
OFFICER KIPPER
Sorry, just– SnapChat was over ten years ago. This is totally different.
Ooph. This is what passes for humor in this script. Forced humor is the worst humor.
What I learned 2: Unless you have an amazing horror idea that needs to be set in the present, I highly suggest you set you horror script at some point in the past.
