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That was the message for budding screenwriters at today’s London Book Fair seminar on writing for Hollywood. Andy Briggs, a British screenwriter who’s worked for Paramount and is currently rebooting the Tarzan and King Kong franchises, said US agents he’d spoken to during his most recent trip to Los Angeles advised him to avoid drama. These days drama is seen as being the purview of television, which does it so much better than movies, he said.
Rob Kraitt, an agent at venerable London literary agency AP Watt, said that it’s become much harder for British agents to sell books as movies to the studios. AP Watt — whose clients include Jon Ronson (The Men Who Stared at Goats), Lyn Barber (An Education) and Giles Foden (The Last King of Scotland) — works with CAA and Rabineau Wachter Sanford Gillett in Los Angeles putting projects together.
The more you can do to help the sale, the better, added Briggs, who pointed out that screenwriters are converting unsold screenplays such as 30 Days of Night into graphic novels. You must do anything you can to help executives see the finished movie, he stressed.
Kraitt added, “What’s changed over the past few years is that studios are looking for sure-fire hits, properties which already have an audience built in.”
What this means is that nobody’s interested in anything that is not high concept. And it’s not just Hollywood that is being cautious. European financiers are only looking for high-concept movies too. “In Europe it may not be high budget, but it’s still high concept,” said Briggs, who recently worked on Forever Man with Stan Lee for The Robert Evans Company. Questioned as to what he meant by “high concept” – the term is not as familiar over here as it is in the States – Briggs grinned and said, “Whorishly commercial.”
Briggs, who is working with the estate of original King Kong director Merian C Cooper on prequel Kong: King of Skull Island, said it seems as if sometimes the industry is putting up its own barriers to success. Take sales agents’ insistence that they will only put money into your film providing a certain actor is attached, for example. Both panellists argued these lists of who’s bankable or not have become a fetish. “There are only two British male stars who are bankable,” said Kraitt. “And they are Clive Owen and Daniel Craig.”
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Ok, here’s what you do. First, take that drama screenplay you wrote. Re-write a few scenes so you will have a character either point or throw something at the camera. That will help with the 3-D conversion. Second, add a character with some sort of superpower. That will take care of the comic book/graphic novel aspect. Third, delete half of the dialogue and add scenes where characters run through empty city streets in the rain. At night. That will also give you graphic novel cred. Problem solved! That screenplay should sell like crazy! Cause it will be so AWESOME DUDE!
That’s funny!! But so true!
add a vampire/zombie element and you got your novelization / video game crossover covered.
And you should have the person who edits it direct it, but get someone else to do the music, even if you can. Just good to mix 3 up as many ways as possible. Help the creative gene pool out.
The sad reality is, that would probably work.
Riiiiight…since when do agents know what studios want? Better yet, what anyone wants. “Drama is Dead”, what a dramatic headline.
Sorry to break it to them, but Clive Owen is anything but bankable. Just goes to show how the industries (both here and abroad) are incredibly disconnected from reality when it comes to bankability. Here in the states, Hollywood thinks people like Reese Witherspoon are still bankable and over there they say Clive Owen. No wonder the studios are losing money, they have no idea what they’re talking about.
Anyway, as for the rest, it’s a sad day when the only screenwriters who will be working in the coming months are those writing “whorishly commercial” scripts based on pre-existing work. And since that work is always owned by big companies, that means those writers were assigned. Which means original work is ignored. Lovely.
Umm… I strongly disagree. Clive Owen is EMINENTLY bankable.
Sandra
Script Supervisor
That’s why you mark up paper for a living. NO CLIVE OWEN FILM HAS EVER MADE A DIME
Typical- likes to throw her weight(title) around, thinks it makes her seem real smart to use words like ‘eminently’ in all caps (bet she had to spell-check), though not a very intelligent use of the word, really. Guess I’m supposed to think, wow, a script SUPERVISOR “strongly disagrees”!! Wow, this woman must be sooo powerful!! Wow! I should imitate her!
Finally someone who ‘gets it.’
The pendulum will swing in the other direction when ‘Hollywood’ realizes that ticket sales, meaning butts in seats, have gone steadily downward. They don’t see this right now, simply because theatre chains keep raising prices, to keep up with the ‘demand’ of the studios. I’m hoping that social media becoming mainstream will change this paradigm, but I doubt it….
As a disappointed moviegoer it seems that decently-budgeted non-biopic movies for adults are dead too. Green Zone tanking comes to mind. regardless of the merits of the film i so wished it did better just to show the suits that there is an appetite for something more than vfx demo reels.
It is a shitty time for movies if you’re not a vamp-obsessed-nerd-comic-fan with one eye.
Scorsese doing a kids movie next and branagh doing thor… ugh. I find it hard to imagine a movie like say, Heat being made in these conditions.
Commercial doesn’t necessarily have to be poorly written, under developed plot and characters. CLASH OF THE TITANS was horrific from a character and plot development stand point, but it didn’t have to be. It could have easily been a dramatic, emotionally engaging story with the big action pieces and FX that the film was sold on. Same applies for all films. You CAN do commercial and character in the same film if you’re patient developing the material.
Green Zone was if anything worse than the most formulaic Michael Bay movie. Consider: bad guys once again not Saddam, Al Qaeda, Iranian Agents, but the CIA and Dick Cheney.
The heart of the movie depended on a credible villain, and the movie offered up a PC, Code Pink Dogma villain. Particularly bad when Jihadis blow up their crotches to bring down airplanes over Detroit, blow up innocent Muscovites, or Muslims threaten to kill Matt and Trey over a South Park episode (again!)
Then there is Matt Damon, who had considerable likability from the first Bourne Movie, and threw it away by ticking off half his audience.
Finally, an incomprehensible plot line, making the action hard to follow, and the “cheat” of shaky-cam to disguise the inability to stage realistic and exciting action scenes. When the movie invites the audience to cheer the deaths of US soldiers, it is guaranteed to be a failure and morally, intellectually, and emotionally bankrupt.
A PC Dogma lecture disguised as a movie. At least Bay movies are dumb and loud, but mean to entertain not lecture.
Hollywood has the approval, according to Pew, of about 33% of Americans, and disapproval of around 55%. Movies like this, lectures instead of entertainment, are why. Along with support for Roman Polanski.
Hm…that’s kind of defeatist. I don’t believe the last batch of pics to get Best Picture have been side-splitting comedies.
Those who want to write dramas should just try harder. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
I’ve been told this for years from agents whenever I’m doing revisions or taking feedback, “just don’t turn it into a drama”.
Wasn’t the sitcom dead and now it’s back? Proclaimed dead by networks and studios and now they can’t by enough of them.
These second guessers know nothing.
Pathetic.
How about some good movies? The Blindside made how much??? Drama, female, African American…it has everything going against it.
Audiences loved it.
If screenwriters listen to Hollywood agents, they’ll be dead. What a lame pronouncement.
Can’t deny that the audience for TV drama is more reliable than MP dramas. How many fans of David Simon turned out for the Treme premiere on HBO versus lining up to see Paul Greengrass’s “Green Zone”? The problem is it’s harder than ever to get people to the theaters when most of what’s in them is comic book tripe. You can’t turn the market around overnight. Stop acting like the Auto industry and invest in doing it better over the long-term. The film industry’s reputation with the entertainment consumers in America is in the toilet and it’s not the consumer’s fault. Clint Eastwood’s a wonderful director but he’s not the only one in the world capable of provoking thought in a theater.
I’ve been told by the heads of production at two different studios that they simply aren’t buying dramas. Full stop. Next subject.
Did they give any indication of what they ARE buying?
Bupkiss?
Craig and Owen??? BALE OWNS THEM FOR CHRIST SAKE!
Clive Owen is bankable? The funniest thing I heard today.
Ahhhh….this explains The A-Team…..uhmmm…kinda…
More R comedy that is not a rom com.
Maybe it’s good news for the publishing biz: with fewer decent movies to be found, we’ll just have to read more books!
I’m all for more R comedy that isn’t Rom Com.
A sad state of affairs. I guess they have forgotten about all the films that were done for a price and won academy awards the last few years.
I think it is true, studios don’t know what people want. I can not imagine people really want to see another five 3D movies. I dont’ want to see any. One movie will slip through the cracks and then suddenly the studios will be yelling, “The people wanna move like (place genre here) It’s like now that Zach Galafinakis is famous all comedians show grow beards. That’s how dumb all this is. (PS notice how many comedians now have beards)
What did he say when asked what “whorishly commercial” means? Marked by an absence of restraint in making profit the chief end?
Profit is either the chief end or it isn’t. It can’t be very the chief end; it simply is the chief end.
When it comes to drama (that is, a story performed by actors), I don’t think quality and profit are necessarily at odds.
Besides, does he really think most aspiring screenwriters are out there thinking, “Hm, I’m going to write something not very good and then hope a studio wants to pay me half a million dollars for it?”
I think it’s more likely aspiring writers THINK they wrote something good but didn’t. So, I don’t think this agent has helped these writers.
A British screenwriter named Andy Briggs is rebooting Tarzan for Paramount? When did this happen?
And 30 Days of Night was never an unproduced screenplay. What gives, Andy Brigss?
Check the history of 30 Days Of Night, ‘huh?’, and you will find that it was indeed originally written as a screenplay. The writer(s) couldn’t sell it, but did get interest in it as a graphic novel. The graphic novel was a huge hit, which then resulted in the movie deal, right where they wanted to be to begin with.
Check the box office numbers, all of you. Those are the only numbers that matter when it comes to anyone answering the question, “What do audiences want to see?” All of the films and types of films that are getting deadpanned in this thread are at the top of the 2009 box office charts. Box office numbers equate to audience numbers, thus the reasons some movies get made and some don’t.
The headline is dead-on. In a down economy the studios can’t afford too many risks. That means built-in audiences, huge event films, more Michael Bay (a box office giant whether you like his stuff or not), and product placements. Dramas don’t draw big numbers. You can’t make a line of toys based on a drama (not one that sells, anyway), And, last but certainly not least, you can’t rally the Twilight Army of tweens with a character drama about stuff they see every day. Adventure, romance, big explosions, sexy actors and actresses, that’s what sells, draws the big crowds. A reality, whether we like it or not.
Clive Owen and Daniel Craig… bankable? That’s really funny.
For any screenwriters, producers, agents or others in the industry (or not!) that feel quality should come first before profit potential and/or mass appeal potential (i.e. the exact opposite of what Hollywood and Co. operates on now), please contact me on Facebook as I am looking to start a group on there related to this and see just how many like-minded individuals there are out there (for starters)!
Movies = Dead
The future of entertainment is “interactive” –
Grand Theft Auto 4 had more to offer than the last 10 years of filmmaking combined (minus “No Country For Old Men”) –
You know it’s true!
And then they would reach up to a point where there’s no MPA movies anymore ‘cos the audience consists of video-gamers.
Whorishly commercial is a dead giveaway of Hollywood and the entertainment industry’s problems globally.
They think of themselves as “great artistes” who are not subject to mundane considerations, holding themselves above as pseudo royalty because they are famous and make a lot of money. This is the basic problem — the huge social and cultural gap between the average person in the audience and the entertainers.
All, and I mean ALL this is really is telling stories. That’s it. Either the story amused people or it bored them. Once the whole business becomes about amusing the storytellers rather than the audience, the audience senses it and moves away. Along with technology (principally existing DVD libraries containing amusing rather than current boring stories) the audience has been willing to simply watch stuff done decades ago by storytellers intent on amusing them, rather than themselves.
Really, what was the point of say, Ghost or Green Zone? Moralistic PC Dogma lectures on what Roman Polanksi, who anally raped a 13 year old, considers moral and good wrt Jihadis intent on blowing people up, or what Matt Damon thought was evil in Iraq. Wow, no wonder those movies failed.
Or consider Margot at the Wedding, or Squid and the Whale, or any other movie that pushes the line that ordinary people suck, and only a tragically hip urbanite has value. That indeed, the basis for ordinary life, love, marriage, and family, are useless and stupid.
Hollywood is like Damien Hirst. Pushing embalmed sharks (done by an army of assistants) with a big “name” slapped on it as “art,” and finding that now that money is gone, globally, no one is really interested in the stuff, and properly consider it junk. Meanwhile, something beautiful and difficult is beyond them.
Can Hirst paint or sculpt something that is beautiful to look at, and provides peace and tranquility for the viewer? Ha! Can Hollywood or England provide movies that are beautiful to look at, and amuse and entertain the viewer?
… no. Hence the “whorishly commercial” crack.
[Sparkly vampires, comic book characters, and all this other stuff is avoidance of Hollywood in telling stories about real people, who they don't understand, fear/loathe, and hold in contempt, and avoiding real subjects.]
Dear Whiskey,
You…have never set foot in Los Angeles, have you? Your blanket contempt of all things Hollywood does make me laugh, however. Just because you ape disdain at what you call “whorishly commercial” doesn’t make you somehow more enlightened than those of us who figured out that this is a business that mixes art and commerce, and have committed to finding ways to do both.
“Once the whole business becomes about amusing the storytellers rather than the audience, the audience senses it and moves away.”
Please, give me 5 examples of how “THE WHOLE BUSINESS” has become about amusing the storytellers and not the audience. Seriously. No indie films allowed.
I’m truly curious to know what film you would consider an example of truly beautiful, that provides peace and tranquility, while portraying “real people,” because the last time I checked, people went to the movies to escape real people, life, and be entertained for awhile.
And while I’m thinking about it, did Noah Baumbach kill your puppy or something? I’m not the greatest fan of his work either, but I hardly think his films are conclusive proof of “Hollywood’s Major Contempt For Ordinary People.”
Sincerely,
An honest-to-God Los Angeles native who:
1. Actually knows “real people”
2. Does not fear or loathe said people
3. Holds more contempt towards a person who could be so moronically insulting to real working writers as to suggest an army of assistants write their work.
PS. I abhor sparkly vampires.