Denise Di Novi, Bill Gerber And Edward Saxon To Produce First Amazon Studios Projects

COMMENTS (12)

• Bill Gerber is the absolute, most perfect producer to be involved developing material with young writers. Listen carefully to his notes, write down every last one, and then go in the exact 180 degree opposite direction. Not 179, not 181, but precisely the opposite of what he says and success will lap at your feet.

  Comment by bounder — Thursday December 15, 2011 @ 1:35pm PST  Reply to this post

• Here we go…

  Comment by bobby snatch — Thursday December 15, 2011 @ 1:36pm PST  Reply to this post

• These sound horrible. Crowdsourcing development for films is a bad idea. Amazon’s whole structure devalues the creative talent, is based on the faulty premise that the suffering artist creates better art. What if the residential or commercial development and construction business worked this way and asked people to go out and build a bunch of houses or shopping centers and then people would move in to the one they like, not paying for the materials or the construction workers along the way.

  Comment by reds — Thursday December 15, 2011 @ 2:01pm PST  Reply to this post

  • Reds,
    Sorry but I have to disagree. I am an architect working in the construction industry for the last 3 decades, and seen a shift that has permeated into many different fields. Architects have been layed off, turned a second bedroom into an office, and now low ball the market dropping development bid fees. The same is happening with the spec sale industry as producers are taking advantage of finding the unproven spec writer as the source to write their next movie project. They are giving opportunity to the novice writer, and that is the wave of the future.

    Comment by Peter Killam — Friday December 16, 2011 @ 6:41am PST  Reply to this post

• All comedies, right? I laughed out loud at that third one.

  Comment by Stewart Skelton — Thursday December 15, 2011 @ 2:49pm PST  Reply to this post

• And Triggerstreet just got knocked off the highway. Only a matter of time before they crash and burn in a ball of flame.

  Comment by Truth-o-Meter — Thursday December 15, 2011 @ 3:43pm PST  Reply to this post

• Hollywood is run by an established egocentric regime. Open it up, if you have sapient materiel everyone deserves to be heard and not subject to the sometimes oblivious “creative” executives who are basically just bouncers to Producers too important to look at written material. Good for Amazon. Take a look – if it all sucks no one will be a victim. If they find something amazing; even better.

  Comment by Jason — Thursday December 15, 2011 @ 3:54pm PST  Reply to this post

• This is what you get when 1,000 writers contribute to the same script ….

  Well it honestly ain’t much worse than most the crap Hollywood puts out these days.

  Comment by 1,000 writers — Thursday December 15, 2011 @ 4:01pm PST  Reply to this post

• Just checked out these movies at amazonstudios. They have full length test movies, meaning full script readthroughs with moving slightly animated storyboards with sound design. A lot of work. Not a bad way to test whether a movie works beyond the screenplay but there is very little community engagement. Most movies have less than 5 comments . What amazon studios is missing is any actual interest from a larger public or the community. Basically its just cheap development as is and comes off as such. I think they’d be better suited to hold a more normal screenplay contest requiring 5 votes from other members (free method to enter which encourages community engagement) or $30 submission fee for consideration of a script, then pick the top 15 screenplays voted by judges. Top 5 by public… which doesn’t seem like it really matters currently with so little community involvement…. 20 additional scripts get runnerup status… which allows for submission to next round along with feedback from amazonstudios.

  Those winners get 2.5 grand for 6 month options on material along with studio notes and ability to resubmit with or without changes to the next round in which 10 will be picked to have a test movie made.

  50K spent

  Once next hopefully better drafts are resubmitted, 10 new winners are picked (10 grand for 1 year option) that includes involving the writer in a recorded read-through with an amazon studio director and future animator that will help cast the read through and deliver both an exciting trailer and feature length test movie.(will likely cost amazon 10-30K per script… but well worth it in how polished the after effects movies and trailers will be.

  Then use those more polished trailers and feature length test movies to engage a much larger audience on amazon, imdb, facebook, youtube and beyond, and award the winners based on both judge’s input but also just as importantly on public votes.

  The top 3 winners beyond that would get 75K (3 year option on material) and get a live action high octane trailer shot for their movie. (cost estimated at additional 100K per trailer)

  Then take these live action trailers to youtube, blogs and the like (most likely to gain real traction if well shot) and those that get real enthusiasm may just be worth making in to full length feature since they may generate an early vested audience while also hopefully being a good story. They need to get rid of the true “crowdsource.. sign away your rights mentality” that exists now. It keeps the best writers away from it and gives them very little back with people rewriting eachothers work which is rare anyway.

  Any movie that gets made within that 3 year option period gets an additional 75K.

  87.5K writing fee with a potential of 162.5K full fee if you movie is made without selling away long term rights to your movie by entering alone seems like a way to get the best nonunion writers to consider it rather than the way it is currently which scare most writers away.

  Comment by comersuerte — Thursday December 15, 2011 @ 4:13pm PST  Reply to this post

• Amazon Studios have the same problem they had the very day they started this venture. Who exactly is going to pay for all these films? Because Amazon sure aren’t.

  I also like who they claim to be all about user generated projects but one of the three ‘films’ selected was actually ‘generated’ by the interns working at Amazon Studios and no by user of the site. What does that tell you?!

  They tout their first look deal with WB but that’s a vanity deal and nothing more. Amazon pays WB a fortune for their films to stream on their online service and as part of that Warners let them stick their logo on the Amazon Studios website and call them their ‘Hollywood partners’.

  Amazon might be happy to throw $5-10m at this film experiment of theirs but what happens when no one wants to finance any of these films? Will Amazon be quite so chipper when they are faced with a $50m+ bill to finance one of these awful sounding films and then spend even more on the P&A for it?

  This whole venture is no further down the road than it was a year ago. Amazon Studios is the very definition of a snake eating it’s tail.

  Anything else is just white noise.

  Comment by Warner Borg — Friday December 16, 2011 @ 3:13am PST  Reply to this post

• It’s the same ‘ole, same ‘ole Hollywood that just simply will never change! How genius of an idea to hold an open call for script submissions and then get the same ‘ole producers to further put the projects into development hell. And of by the way, who is going to pay for the project? Amazon may pay for the first one, lose all of their money and never to be heard again.

  Comment by Lorie — Saturday December 17, 2011 @ 5:36am PST  Reply to this post

• I have to consider this as an option as an aspiring movie maker myself. You have to understand the fact that the entire structure and dynamic of the film industry is changing and Amazon is only the first of many to stick their little fingers in the giant, delicious, moviedom pie. Technology and social media is paving the way for people who would otherwise never have a shot to put their ideas out there, however shitty they may be…which brings me to another point: the unfortunate thing about the film industry today is that everyone thinks they can make movies which means we will be seeing quantity over quality until Hollywood gets organized again and learns how to delegate tasks appropriately. For example, most of the folks working in Hollywood today aren’t even good enough to fetch a mocha for real storytellers and yet these are the douche bags who are allowed to helm a film be it as a director or otherwise. There’s something to be said about an industry that wants to remain exclusive, ironically, the mediocre “talent” on the inside steadily bitching about how this is a bad idea couldn’t tell a real story to save their life. They’re afraid that someone who has actual talent and cinematic balls will come in and rain on their mediocre parade. Well, get your umbrellas out assholes because we are coming!

  Anyone who is smart might wait it out. We aren’t going to submit our masterpieces just yet but we also aren’t dismissing Amazon Studios as yet another great avenue to get our stories out there. But I think it’s wrong that the people coming up with these ideas and taking a risk by submitting them, considering the optioning agreement, is a bad move by Amazon. When one writes, one usually plans to direct as well not to mention the fact that many writers usually have the actors in mind who will fill the roles accordingly. This is a difficult choice for someone who has written original material that is commercially viable and artistically innovative to just blindly submit to the “contest’s” terms and conditions and let some mediocre jackass of a producer get their grubby, greedy fingers on it. They’re not going to be seeing REAL talent any time soon unless they change some of these terms.

  It’s time to give a chance to real talent and give them ultimate creative freedom. That of course, is the antithesis of all that Hollywood stands for but my hope is that someday they realize not only the benefits for the medium, but the profits to be made and I’m not just talking about breaking even… not to mention the potential for social and cultural benefits.

  This is an opportunity for real talent and real cinematic voices to be heard, but I agree with Lorie in that it’s really just the same ol’ Hollywood. Thanks to Amazon, it starts yet another thread in the long and tiring conversation of how the powers that be within Hollywood’s oligarchy have a choke hole on creativity, progression and innovation.

  Comment by Fed Up But Curious — Monday December 19, 2011 @ 7:05pm PST  Reply to this post