Hello folks,
I just see I'm still registered despite my wish to delete my account. So I can put a lil' answer here.
Just to say it once again, I don't get (I really don't, I'm sorry) why a producer should NOT look for products which people like and therefore want to see. Automobile enterprises do also make cars which people most likely would buy. Where else is profit? But ok, I don't get it, so lets bury this plain and simply.
Concerning my "Seed of Blood" script - I don't want to make money with it - I want to help someone with it, and actually, a producer could get it for free, if this particular 'deal' is fulfilled.
Anyway, I sent out about 15 letters to the agencies, starting with the ones listed under A and working down the alphabet, now. I (and others) think the story can easily hold ground against a lot of the productions from the last 10 years, TV and DVD - direct included. However I know that my chances are zero, because no one even takes a look at the script because of a lot of things.
Well, I cannot marry a producer, I don't know any famous actor personally, I cannot bribe with I don't know what and the only person who could've helped me and promised to do so (WITHOUT me asking, I might point out) totally pulled back without explanation. After pestering what all could be done for me. So, this is life - if you need someone, no one will be there.
So I try it on my own until I have reached the end of the alphabet in the agencies list. And I go and pray for success, not for me, but for the specific cause I wrote this thing. So in the end I can say to myself I have done all I could.
Thats what I wanted to say concerning this.
I don't know whether this post constitutes "parting words" or whether you're actually looking for a reply, but in the event that it's the latter, I'm going to try to respond, hopefully in a way that will help you to understand what I tried previously to explain and obviously failed to make clear.
Obviously, you are correct in the sense that producers want to sell movies that the public wants to buy.
What you fail to understand is that a script is not a movie and that what producers are looking for in terms of the scripts they are looking for to *buy* is not the same thing at all as what they are necessarily looking for to sell as a finished product or as a "package."
Let's say you have a successful video game that's sold millions of units, has multiple sequels - and the owner of that video game goes to a producer and says, "We'd like to turn this property into a movie."
So they make a deal to acquire the movie rights to that game, hire someone to right the screenplay, develop the screenplay (which might involve multiple drafts and multiple writers) -- at some point, if the process is successful, they'll bring on a director, budget the project, and attach a star or stars who have sufficient name value -- and it's at that point and not before that the movie will get "green lit" but a studio - they'll go ahead and make the movie.
But in deals like that -- and most movies happen something like that, although books, graphic novels, earlier movies or what-have-you are usually the engendering entity, the screenplay is simply one step in a very long process that leads to the "green light" and the final production.
In only a handful of cases in a given year is the engendering step a spec screenplay.
And there's a good reason for that.
In the case above, for instance, if instead of that multi-million selling video game you'd started with just a screenplay -- even if it were identical to the screenplay that they finally approved -- it would never have gotten through the door.
Why not, if that identical screenplay was the one they went with and ultimately greenlit?
Because they *didn't* green light the screenplay. They greenlit a project of which the screenplay was only a single part. And one of the biggest and most significant parts was the fact that it was based on a well-known and extremely popular video-game. Thus it had name recognition and was, in that sense, already "pre-sold."
The identical screenplay without any name recognition might be a fine piece of writing in itself, but that's not enough, from the perspective of a studio, to invest a hundred or a hundred and fifty million dollars in a production. On the other hand, when you can point to the game and show that an audience has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying the game (or buying the comic book, or whatever it might be) that gives the studio that sense of fiscal confidence that makes want to invest that kind of money in the project.
A spec script always has the built-in disadvantage, from the perspective of the studio, of being unknown. That's why people always tend to sell scripts as X meets Y -- where X is one well-known recent and successful movie and Y is some other well-known recent and successful movie.
That is something that a studio can understand. What is this unknown script like? Oh, it's like this other movie that made us a lot of money.
Because ultimately, that is the basis on which they have to justify their decisions.
In making their decisions, they are also taking into consideration all sorts of things of which you, as a writer, are often unaware -- such as other projects that in the development pipeline that they know about and you don't which may be similar to your movie in plot or premise (because obviously, they don't want to be second to the theaters with some very specific story idea). They have a sense of what sorts of ideas are "hot" and which have already been over-sold and have glutted the market.
If, for instance, your story requires a very particular kind of lead -- an older leading man, an older leading woman, or a fat man, or whatever. Sure, there are certain stars who can play those roles -- but a very limited number of them who are genuine stars -- and if those stars are booked, as they frequently are, for the next couple years, they're going to look at your script and say -- we can't make this movie with a no-name lead, it doesn't make economic sense -- and the only person who can really star in it is X -- and X is booked for the next three years. So thanks -- see you around.
On the other hand, if I had a "package" -- the script based on a pre-existing property, a director attached, that rare "green-light-able" actor signed on - and I took all three to a studio with a budget that made sense for the project -- then we're in a different world. Then they'd be saying yes, not to a "screenplay" -- but to a project that had the elements that, from their perspective, made the whole thing saleable.
Even with a spec script, if the star was big enough, or if the concept was strong enough (and the budget low enough) -- they can juggle the various numbers and maybe the various factors make it all work.
But among the factors that they aren't interested in are the motives that the writer had in writing the script or whether or not he's willing to give the script away because of those motives. Seriously. This is a business. Your work, like everyone else's, if it has value, deserves to be paid for, no less than anybody else who contributes something of value to a production. Buyers will try to get your work for as little as they can get away with anyway, even without your stating your willingness to accept that initial offer up front.
Regarding the latter part of your statement above -- fifteen letters is a drop in the bucket, and query letters, as I indicated in the long post that I gave you the link to, is probably the least effective way to try to sell your work, and sending your work to agents rather than directly to producers is, likewise, far from the most effective way of marketing your work, early in your career.
But let me give you a specific example. I wasn't married to a producer. I didn't know any famous actors or anyone else in the business. I didn't have an agent. I was raised in Boston, moved to New York to go to NYU film school - that was around thirty years ago.
I made contacts through cold-calling development companies and asking them to send them my scripts. Some said no, some said yes, some agreed to send me release forms to sign.
And I got meetings this way (in New York). I got my work read -- and I made sales. Later, I convinced my wife, who had a much better phone manner that I had, to act as my manager and she started making calls on my behalf -- and she made a lot more calls on my behalf. With around two and a half years, she'd gotten one script of mine optioned by Twentieth Century Fox and sold another outright to Dimension for mid-six figures.
No agent. No contacts. I still live in New York (although I do now have an agent -- and my wife is still my manager).
Now if you want to tell yourself -- it can't be done, I've sent out my fifteen letters and exhausted all the possibilities, you have to be on the inside, it's a fixed game -- go right ahead.
But there are a lot of other people who know different. And part of what they know is that one of the ways to lose is stop playing and one of the ways to win is to keep playing.
Before I wrote those two scripts that sold to the majors, I'd written something like eighty screenplays -- some good, most of them not very good. And for every call that made a sale, my wife made fifty calls that ended up with a no or got a read -- and then a no. Or sometimes a "no" and a "what else have you got?"
In fact, that six figure sale started out as a "no" and a "what else have you got?" and it was the "something else that we had" that turned out to be the project that sold.
I don't know if you bothered to read this far or even if you've read any of this, but if you have -- take if for what it's worth.
NMS
Was all I wanted to know (however, there's a possibility you can choose "movie/TV" in the query...)
