While the box office helps screenwriters keep track of industry trends, which helps inform them when it comes time to write something, the majority of that data is useless. To screenwriters, I mean. There isn’t anything the average screenwriter can learn from Super Mario Brothers making a billion dollars. All movies in the top 10 live in Studio IP La-La Land, a destination reserved exclusively for the titans of the industry.
In order to learn something from the box office as a screenwriter, you want to track ORIGINAL projects. Projects that you could’ve written yourself, had you the foresight to do so. These are the projects that savvy screenwriters should be emulating and inspired by, as these are the scripts from screenwriters that actually get made.
Today I’m going to list the top 10 original projects, ranked by worldwide box office take, and tell you what you can learn from each of them. I’m sure there will be some comments about the underwhelming box office take of some of these films. But let’s keep things in perspective. M3GAN, the number one original movie of the year, cost 1/20th the budget of Super Mario Brothers, the number one overall movie of the year. When you take that into consideration, you realize these box office performances are a lot better than they first look.
M3GAN
Genre: Horror
Domestic: 95 million
Worldwide: 176 million
Lesson: I confess I did not see M3GAN’s success coming. I thought the living doll horror story had been done to death (see what I did there?). They couldn’t even get a better known doll franchise, Child’s Play, to drive ticket sales. Why would I think rando M3GAN would be able to? But if there’s anything M3GAN’S success reminds us, it’s that horror is the go-to genre if you’re a spec screenwriter who actually wants to make money. It honestly can’t be beat. And looking back at previously successful horror templates is a great starting point for coming up with an idea that gets buyers salivating.
AIR
Genre: Sports Drama
Domestic: 52 million
Worldwide: 90 million
Lesson: Yet another savvy business idea is to mine true sports stories for concepts. They usually do well. Weirdly, they all do well on the Black List (I guess because all those assistants are big sports fans), further improving the chances of them getting purchased. Air was a departure from the usual formula, though, since it was less about the on-field stuff and more about what happens behind the curtain. The hack the writers are using here is that they know a lot of actors love sports. And they know those same actors are either too old or not in good enough shape to play professional athletes. But anybody can play a schlub in a suit. If you make that schlub talk a lot, you’re going to find a big actor who wants to play him. That big actor is the start of a flashy package that’s going to make sure your movie gets a big marketing push.
COCAINE BEAR
Genre: Comedy/Horror
Domestic: 64 million
Worldwide: 87 million
Lesson: Cocaine Bear is an example of a low-key growing trend in concept creation: viral concepts. These are concepts that either already went viral on social media (“Zola”) or the ideas are so wacky, the producers are banking on the fact that the movie itself will go viral, which achieves that all-important awareness, and also saves some money on the back end of the marketing budget. That was the plan here, although it’s difficult to tell if it was successful or not. Cocaine Bear landed in that monetary zone where you can’t call it a success or a failure. Which means even these newer flashier ways to construct concepts are susceptible to the same roll of the roulette wheel that movies have had to deal with since day 1 of the business: You never know what’s going to click with audiences.
THE POPE’S EXORCIST
Genre: Horror
Domestic: 20 million
Worldwide: 74 million
Lesson: This was based on a book but I included it because it’s still an idea any writer could’ve come up with. You don’t even need the book to write about it, since it’s based on a real person. One of the most dependable horror specs you can write is an exorcist script. If I had any interest in exorcisms, I would be writing one of these every month. How dependable is the genre? Well, the script doesn’t really have a hook. I guess it’s kind of cool that the exorcist works directly for the Pope. But it’s not like the Pope is possessed. That would be a hook. Our exorcist still exorcises normal people, like every other exorcist. In other words, even without a hook, this movie made 74 million worldwide, and that’s all because of one word: EXORCIST.
65
Genre: Sci-fi
Domestic: 32 million
Worldwide: 60 million
Lesson: When people think of this film, they think, “Loser.” But it’s actually a winner. Every movie on this list is a winner because it’s an original idea that got made. Which is what most of you are trying to accomplish. 65 was actually a good idea. A couple of people crash land on earth during the dinosaur era just hours before the famous dinosaur-destroying asteroid arrives. Unfortunately, it made a couple of critical creative mistakes that tanked its RT score (main characters were, inexplicably, aliens and the tone was too dour). Since original movies are more dependent on good reviews than studio-backed mega-franchises, 65 didn’t survive its weak critical reception. To really take advantage of mid-budget sci-fi, you have to keep things here on earth and in the present. District 9, Arrival, and the upcoming The Creator. I still contend that 65 was a cool idea. But mass audiences tend not to like this story setup for some reason (they rejected “After Earth” as well).
PLANE
Genre: Action/Thriller
Domestic: 32 million
Worldwide: 52 million
Lesson: The great thing about these movies is that they always get made. These Thriller-Action B-movies might as well be printed on the same documents that authorize the financing transactions for production because that’s how dependable they are. With that said, you are going after the same group of actors here (Gerard Butler, Liam Neeson, Jason Statham, etc.) and it DOES help if you can give them anything unique. It’s very common for them to say, “I already played this part.” It’s why Statham got so excited to do The Beekeper. Sure, in the end, money talks. Neeson has done the same role for the last 20 movies. But what I’m saying is, you gain yourself a little bit of an edge if you not only come to the actor with an offer, but come to them with an offer and a role they haven’t gotten to play yet. Gerard Butler had not played a pilot yet. And that was all he needed.
MISSING
Genre: Thriller
Domestic: 32 million
Worldwide: 49 million
Lesson: Timur Bekmambetov is THE GUY for these computer-based movies. I know a writer who’s writing one for him right now. And since they’re so cheap to make, I see Bekmambetov’s production company continuing to spit them out until they squeeze every dollar out of the sub-genre. Just make sure that you keep the story moving, which Missing does an AMAZING job of. It isn’t just a thriller in name. It’s thrills every second. Remember that the main character is sitting down the whole movie (or most of it). Which is why you want the story to have extreme urgency and stakes. Cause if someone is sitting down the whole movie in front of a computer and their goal is weak and they have as long as they want to achieve that goal? That’s a script disaster waiting to happen.
80 FOR BRADY
Genre: Comedy
Domestic: 40 million
Worldwide: 40 million
Lesson: It may not be my thing. It’s probably not your thing either. But the 65+ female demographic has been known to come out for these movies. The formula right now is comedy + several older women. But that could change and be centered around 2 older women, or even 1, if she’s interesting enough. If you have a really good comedy idea for the older female demographic, it may be worth writing it just because this is one of the least competitive sub-genres out there. Very few writers are writing them. So if you had something good, you could sell a script.
RENFIELD
Genre: Comedy/Horror
Domestic: 17 million
Worldwide: 25 million
Lesson: What I’ve found with horror comedies is that there’s a segment of writers who love to write them and a segment of readers who love to read them. But when you get to the actual theater, not a lot of people like to come to them. The target demo for this genre combo is usually people bored at the end of the weekend who just want to throw on something mindless. Which is why this movie bombed. Plus, I think it was too weird. The comedy angle was odd – that Dracula’s assistant had powers of his own. It didn’t really make sense. That’s script suicide right there – when your main character’s unclear.
THE COVENANT
Genre: War/Action
Domestic: 16 million
Worldwide: 18 million
Lesson: These movies tend to play well to conservative audiences. This one was about a guy carrying another guy across the battlefield for a long distance. But it’s a tough genre to hit the bullseye with. American Sniper showed what was possible at the box office. Lone Survivor did well. Hacksaw Ridge did solid. So you would think this would’ve done better. What was the difference? Out of these four films, only The Covenant was not based on a true story. The thing with these conservative-leaning war stories is that the Rust Belt idolizes these soldiers. They’ve been celebrating them long before anyone made a movie about them. You could say that they’re conservative IP. So I think that’s the trick if you’re going to write one of these. Making it completely fiction, especially with such a weak hook (carrying a guy across a battlefield), was the stake in this movie’s box office heart.
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