Is today a holiday?
Somebody told me today was a holiday. That because New Year’s Day landed on a Sunday, they didn’t feel it was right that we should waste a holiday on a day we already had off, so they added an additional day off and called it New Years Day Adjacent.
Man, I thought screenwriters were the worst procrastinators. Apparently our government is angling to steal our title. They don’t even want to start the year!
I’m curious what the new year is going to bring on the movie front. On the one hand you have the, “movies are dead, TV is king” crowd. And that’s a hard crowd to argue against. TV is pretty freaking amazing at the moment. You still don’t get the level of production value you do on a movie. But it’s close!
Then you have the, “Do you not see what Avatar is doing at the box office” crowd. And they’re pretty convincing too. Because you will never ever get the full experience of Avatar 2 at home. It’s so much better seeing it in the theater. And, apparently, a lot of people agree.
But once Avatar 2’s run is over, we’re in for some dark days, folks. They’re calling 2023’s movie line-up one of the worst in history. I don’t know if that’s true. But the very fact that some people think it’s true is scary.
With that said, I don’t want to get bogged down in theatrical prognostications. Instead, I want to highlight five interesting movie releases in 2023 and talk about the screenwriting obstacles they present.
As I’ve said many times before, every screenplay has its own unique challenges. One of the major jobs of a screenwriter is identifying these challenges and coming up with a game plan for how to tackle them. So let’s jump into it!
Cocaine Bear – Feb 24
Cocaine Bear has a classic screenwriting conundrum. It’s got a “poster-only” premise. What that means is that Cocaine Bear looks great on a poster. It looks great in a trailer. But because the story’s success is so dependent on its wacky titular character, what happens 10 minutes after the bear has been introduced and the shock factor has worn off?
I see this happen all the time in screenwriting. The solution is to come up with a plot that assumes the concept is weaker than it is. In other words, don’t mail in your execution. This is exactly what happened with Snakes on a Plane. It thought its concept was so great that they didn’t have to bother with good characters or a good plot. Never assume that the concept is going to do the work for you. You have to roll up your sleeves and give the reader a great story that could survive whether there’s a cocaine bear in your screenplay or not.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny – June 30
(Spoilers) Rumor has it that this is going to be a time travel Indiana Jones movie. Anyone who has tried to write a time travel movie will tell you the same thing. It’s one of the hardest narratives you’ll ever have to write, cause you’re always dealing with a paradox. If the plan doesn’t work, you simply go back in time and try again.
Sure, you can come up with rules like, “You can only time travel two (or three) times,” but therein lies why the genre is so difficult. Cause the second you start adding hard rules, those rules need to make sense within the mythology. They can’t just be rules that the screenwriter needed to be there. That’s when movies start feeling fake.
So, with time travel, you have to outline like an insane person and rewrite like crazy. There’s no other way around it. A well-executed time-travel script will take you twice as long as any other genre script in order to work out all the kinks and make the time travel stuff as seamless as possible. If you’re willing to make that commitment, go for it!
Oppenheimer – July 21
When it comes to biopics, there are two versions you want to avoid. You want to avoid the cradle-to-grave biopic. It’s like the real life version of an origin story — predictable and bland. But you also want to avoid the two-years-in-the-life-of biopic. This is exactly what it sounds like. You’re covering two years of the main character’s life. The reason why both of these are bad is because movies don’t do well with extended timelines. They do well with short contained timelines. Most of the movies you’ve loved have taken place in under two weeks. Why? Because movies go hand in hand with urgency. When we feel like every minute spent onscreen is important, due to time running out, everything about the story feels charged. And if you’re going to write a movie about the biggest bomb in history, it only makes sense that you create a ticking time bomb element to it. If Nolan keeps this timeline tight, the movie has a chance at being good. If we do a slow-burn two-year lead-up to the bomb, I promise you the movie will fail. You can’t make slow-burn studio movies in 2023. You just can’t. And Nolan understands this. Dunkirk takes place in under two hours, right? Then again, Interstellar takes a year so who knows what Nolan will do.
Barbie – July 21
Barbie is, by far, the most challenging screenwriting assignment of the year. And it’s relevant because when you make it as a screenwriter, you will be given impossible assignments like this. And it’ll be your job to come up with an angle that’s compelling. The most notorious example of this is Charlie Kaufman’s, “Adaptation.” The book (about flowers) Kaufman was paid to adapt was so mundane, so boring, so without narrative, that he went crazy while adapting it, to the point of inserting himself into the narrative. I don’t see Greta Gerwig inserting herself into Barbie. But she’s going to have to come up with a really clever way to adapt this because not only is adapting a toy hard, but she’s adapting a toy that is thought of as a prime symbol of the patriarchy. Which means she’s going to have to change the character into something acceptable for modern-day audiences. And it never works when you change something that was super popular for being something else. Normally, that would be my screenwriting advice: Stay true to the character. There’s a reason the world fell in love with Barbie. Highlight that in your adaptation. But you can’t do that with Barbie. It would cause a Twitter meltdown. This is the one property that I have no solution for. If they hired me, I would not know how to turn this into a good movie. Which makes me all the more curious what they come up with.
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 – July 14
If you are writing a big action movie, it is imperative that you have at least three set pieces that nobody’s ever seen before. Which is why I actually nudge people away from writing movies like Mission Impossible. Because Mission Impossible exists in the real world and, therefore, is going up against 100 years of action movies that have also existed in the real world. Finding three brand new set pieces in a 100 year old genre is its own mission impossible. Which is why I advocate for unique high budget concepts that grant you access to set pieces that haven’t been done before.
For example, if you make an action movie about dream heists, you’re providing yourself with a unique world that contains all sorts of new set piece possibilities. Mission Impossible has found the weirdest way around this issue, which is to promote Tom Cruise doing his own stunts. This way, even though we’ve seen the set piece before, we’re watching it with the knowledge that Tom Cruise really did the stunt, which heightens the experience. If you don’t have the greatest movie star in history to do his own stunts, though, you need to put off writing a traditional action film UNTIL you have three set pieces that have never been seen before. Because, I promise you, if your best set piece is something the reader saw last year at the movies, they’ll forget your script the second they finish it. Another thing to remember is that one hands-down amazing set piece can be enough to get a producer to want to make your movie. Even more incentive to take your time and come up with great original set pieces!
