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UPFRONTS 2013: TV Spinoffs’ Almost Perfect Year 
EXCLUSIVE: After winning the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for The King’s Speech, David Seidler has committed to another WWII-era inspirational story. He will team with Italian writer Luca Manzi to script Games of 1940 for producers Kennedy/Marshall Company and RT Features.
The drama is based on the true tale of a group of multinational POWs in a Nazi prison camp who decide to compete against each other in their own version of the Olympics after the 1940 games were canceled due to the escalating war. They risked their lives to stage the games under the noses of the guards. Seidler and Manzi have collaborated in the past, and they came across the event while touring a Polish sports museum.
Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy will produce for Kennedy/Marshall Company along with RT Features’ Rodrigo Teixeira and Fernando Loureiro. Brazil-based RT Features is funding development. The company, which produced the Jose Henrique Fonseca-directed Heleno and the Karim Ainouz-directed Violet, is stepping up its output in Hollywood. Other Brazilian films include Drained, The Marriage of Romeo and Juliet, and Stillborn. Jeff Aghassi will be executive producer.
UTA and manager Aghassi rep Seidler, and the agency reps RT Films.
It is nice to see Seidler getting to capitalize on his Academy Award. After all, he was 73 when he began getting acclaim for his The King’s Speech script, which he planned to write after finishing the 1988 film Tucker for Francis Coppola. He waited 28 years at the request of the Queen Mother, the wife of King George VI, who said it would be too painful to watch such a film while she were still alive. Seidler granted her wish, not knowing she’d hang on nearly that long.
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If this isn’t evidence of good karma coming back around, I don’t know what is.
Love David. He has been working from his heart for years. And while the fools we call executives were passing on his work they are all drooling now on the same work. Fools. I have watched David write write write. Never give up. Never write crap like Limitless. And yes, it is crap. David…keep it up. Don’t give in. We need your honest writing in today’s ridiculous world of 21st Century crapola.
Ta-da.
It’s awesome to see a writer get hot in his 70s. It’s positively surreal and gives hope to us all!
If you’re a writer in your 70s, try writing a real book instead of churning out screenplays. Screenwriting is to pay the bills. Novels are to leave behind something of value.
This is the greatest example of oscar bait i’ve ever heard in my life.
the industry does love it some hollycaust/WWII movies
David Seidler must wish he were 20 years younger. But for all the struggling writers out there, he is a beacon of hope – never give up, success may come your way some day, but it could be a long way off.
A “beacon of hope”? Don’t buy it.
Every 20 years or so, some old writer gets an Oscar and people start waving the “beacon of hope” flag.
For every Seidler, 100′s of thousands of wanna-be screenwriters vanish at sea with nary a beacon of hope.
Seidler lucked out like a lottery winner. His win means nothing in the real-world of Hollywood TV & movie screenwriting, and serves as no such “beacon”.
By age 40, if your script hasn’t found some real, tangible interest with real, live agents/studios/producers, you’re not going to make it.
Kids in their 20′s routinely get their scripts optioned.
If you’re much older, and yours hasn’t, give up.
Because in 99.99% of the cases, writing success won’t be coming your way some day…most assuredly not sometime “a long way off”.
Nothing offers such false hope to unsuccessful writers than an old writer who hits the script lottery.
Just know…
What happened to Seidler WON’T happen to YOU!
Do you know how many of this year’s Academy Award nominees for writing are under the age of 40?
You misunderstood my point.
I never said 40 was the cut off for winning a writing Oscar.
I said that if your writing has never attracted the interest of a real-life agent/studio/producer by 40, get another hobby. Because your chances of winning a writing Oscar are statistically equivalent to those of winning the State lottery-roughly one in 10 million.
Forget winning a writing Oscar.
If you haven’t gotten paid for writing a script, doing a re-write, or punching up a script, by the age of 40, your odds of ever getting paid for your script writing are somewhat better than winning the lottery or an Oscar-say, one in 100,000.
By the way, in the entire history of the Oscars, how many 40+ Best Screenplay Oscars went to first-timers? One? Two? EVERY other 40+ Oscar winner got their trophy after many years in the biz.
Wow, way to rain on a parade, eh, Bloom? Isn’t it possible that there *are* indeed many executives that understand that it doesn’t matter what age the writer is, since he or she isn’t going to be seen onscreen, anyway? I think you’re painting the film industry to be much more exclusionary than perhaps it really is at this time. Studios and networks want to make money, and these days, with that happening less and less, anything that looks like it’ll do that, no matter where (or who) it comes from, is fair game.
When it comes to Hollywood, to quote the often-used maxim of William Goldman, an excellent (and still working) writer, nobody knows anything.
“Rain on someone’s parade”?
Sometimes it’s better to cancel the parade when the sky turns dark, rather than send people parading through the streets of false hope in the pouring rain, which drowns out the music, as the crowds along the parade route thin out to a few die-hard stragglers, leaving the marchers to finish the parade alone, cold & wet, with no one left to cheer.
As to “nobody knows anything”, that’s a bullshit line often quoted to give false inspiration to those dreamers with their noses pressed up against the glass!
People who actually make money in Hollywood know plenty. Studios know to buy scripts from writers vetted by agents and producers. Now, more than ever, studious go with remakes, proven script formulas (action + sex), book adaptations, re-worked TV shows, and generally scripts from established writers.
Indies can fool around with 40+ year old first time screenwriters. Although even they’re more likely to take a chance on a 20+ new kid writer.
Studios aren’t employment agencies for 40+ wanna-be screenwriters. That’s not exclusionary-just good business.
Stupid, bitter, ageist rant. You are wrong. The film business is a meritocracy when it comes to story material. You can be a 7 foot tall gay pink flamingo who’s 100 years old with an alarming skin disease, and if your script delivers on the page, producers will fight each other to the death over it.
“The film business is a meritocracy”.
You obviously don’t work in the film business.
PS In today’s Hollywood, producers lunch at the Ivy, they don’t fight to the death over scripts. They leave those death matches to the agents.
Mr. Bloom…..what is your association with Hollywood?…in general….no specifics to protect your identity. And I’m asking in all seriousness….you seem to have very strong opinions from someone who has worked in the biz for quite some time.
An old guy fixated on WWII and ancient history.
Enough already.
More power to him, though. 70′s and an Oscar winner. What more can he do but spin tales of the last century.
News flash…
It’s the god damn 21st century.
The “Games of 1940″? More nazis & prison crap shit?
Good luck K/M Co & RT Feat. You’re putting your money on a movie with an incredibly narrow demographic: 70+ year olds!
Name me anyone under 40 that’ll pay to watch ancient history.
You really are a narrow minded blockhead, 21st!
Dah — KING’S SPEECH 133M domestic 360M world wide… it all boils down to — good movie or not good movie — that is the box office!!
Re: “King’s Speech”…
Saw a minute of the trailer here on DH.
Old people, WWII shit, British accents…another god awful stuffy Masterpiece Theater-type crap.
Doesn’t surprise me that 2/3rds B.O. comes from overseas. They’re still fixated on WWII shit.
But 133M domestic…that’s surprising.
Was there a sexy woman in it? I don’t remember.
Because other than watching a sexy gal, how did “King’s Speech” lure 12 million Americans to pay to watch old Brits bullshitting about a speech during the ancient history of WWII?
Now THAT’s real movie magic!
Yeah, 21st century, we need more Green Hornet movies, right!.
Back to your comic books now.
You watched a full 60 seconds of a trailer before making your informed opinion? Wow. We need more erudite moviegoers like you, Mr. 21st Century. Hey, can we spend $150M on a comic book remake that you can then stream illegally on your smartphone while texting and listening to Ke$ha and posting dumb comments on message boards?
I’d see it. I’d even pay exorbitant arclight prices to see it. And I’m under 30, beeeeotch!
Um…All those people who paid to watch a film about king from the 1930′s with a speech impediment?
You must be great fun at parties.
21st Century, your comment is truly inane. People are attracted to great stories about the human condition, no matter what era they take place in. Should they not re-make Cleopatra because everyone who was alive then is dead. What about True Grit which takes place in the 19th century? Why was that so successful. Please make smarter comments.
Cleopatra was a babe, so says history.
Babes are timeless. Remake Cleopatra every god year-just don’t hire A. Jolie to ruin it.
True Grit? What was that, a remake of some cowboy shit first made famous by dickhead John Wayne? Americans love cowboys. Go figure.
And as to “People are attracted to great stories about the human condition,…”…yea, some are.
But by the time most of us reach 30, we’ve had enough of the fucking “human condition”.
We want entertainment from Hollywood, not more human interest, sentimental, tear-jerking, movies with Oscar-worthy, sensitive portrayals of the fucked up “human condition”.
More prison camps? I seriously cannot take it.
When I look on Netflix, I swear 1/4 of the movies are about WWII or shorthand for that, Nazis
Yeah, and World War I just sits on the shelf.
Don’t worry “21st century” and “new topic” – for you we’ll do it “in space.”
“In space”?
Fuck space! As god damn boring as WWII, unless…
That space portrays hot looking babes cavorting about in zero-gravity, then I’m in!
Hell let’s throw in a few kung fu monkeys and we’ve got something here.
In a world of Apatows and Jackass 3-D, it’s nice to see some quality artists being given a chance.
‘The King’s Speech’ was a safe, boring victor – the ‘Chariots of Fire’ of this decade. Now he’s writing a film that’s even MORE like ‘Chariots of Fire’? Ugh.
holy fucking shit people – pardon my french but seriously ‘angry comment people’ you need to chill!
good for this guy – he was successful before Kings Speech (and even if he wasn’t who cares!) this new project has a great story and sounds like a great film!
you should start drinking immediately
21st Century makes me laugh. I’m hiring him to reboot the Sucker Punch franchise. Eat it, old dudes!
hey WWI was a damn good war…just kidding! seriously it’s all about dramatic potential and what has more than a war? and WWII had so many stories, villians and heroes they will be telling ‘em for a long time, me included I hope. It’s all in the telling, a good story, well told.
So…wait. Instead of making an inspirational true story about British royalty, disabilities and WWII….he’s making a true story inspirational sports film set during WWII…with a concentration camp? Well, it took him long enough to figure out how to win awards in this town. The Academy will eat that bait up too, I am sure.
Brazilians love ww2 stories?
Leo was actually making a valid point; in fact, older writers can sell their scripts, it is the material that counts (and DS is obviously a real writer, he’s written and sold scripts all his life). BUT, if you are 40 and haven’t sold or at lest optioned your material, an awful lot of talented judges: agents, managers, executives have not found your material well written/interesting enough to buy them – an overwhelming indication that you just don’t have it.