The Screenplay Business

Managing Creativity and Script Development in the Film Industry

Peter Bloore

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415613330
• eBook ISBN: 9781136501395
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Business

The development of a film screenplay is a complex and collaborative process, beginning with an initial story and continuing through drafting and financing to the start of the shoot. And yet the best ways of understanding and managing this process have never been properly studied. The Screenplay Business is the first book to do exactly that, addressing such questions as:

• How do film scripts get written, and what are the tensions between creativity and business?
• How can the team of the writer, producer, director and development executive work together most effectively?

The Screenplay Business presents a theoretical and practical framework for understanding the business of independent script development, and encompasses ideas about creativity, motivation, managing creative people, value chains, and MBA leadership theories.

This book will help producers and writers to nurture their stories through the long development process to the screen. It explains the international film business, and contains new research and extensive interviews with leading industry figures, including practical advice on how to run script meetings and handle notes; how to build a sustainable business; and how to understand what really happens when a script is written.

The Screenplay Business is a new key text for academics and students researching film and media, and indispensable reading for anyone working in film screenplay development today.

Part I

The complex world of film development

Part I of the book deals with the film business, how films are financed, and how this affects development and creativity. It looks at the people who work in development; the creative triangle of the writer, producer and director; and the pressures that the development process and commerce will exert on their relationship. It also looks at how the development executive and script editor fit into the process.

Part II looks more at business theories about managing creative people and teams, and considers how they might be applied to the film industry. What is the best way to manage the development process to create a film that is both successful and creatively satisfying? And how can producers and their development executives build profitable and sustainable businesses, based on strong relationships with creative talent? Taken as a whole the book tries to answer the question:

How can the creative team of the writer, producer, director and development executive work together most effectively?

1 The bigger picture

How films are developed

I have just spent three months negotiating one writer’s agreement, where not a word has been written on the script. By the time we lawyers have finished I sometimes wonder if they will still want to work together.

(Anonymized media lawyer)

What is film script development?

Tell me the story so far ...

These are the words that Alfred Hitchcock used to say every day to screenwriter Evan Hunter as they sat down to work on their adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s short story The Birds.¹ So, what is the story so far? This chapter will provide an introduction to the process and business of screenplay development. Subsequent chapters will then analyse the wider business of film finance and distribution, before returning to development in more detail.

The development of a film script is a long and complex process, beginning with the initial story concept and continuing through drafting and financing, hopefully to the start of the shoot. Initially, it is often creatively driven by the writer, but it is a team effort and is managed by a producer or development executive. No professional script is developed in a vacuum and the context is money: to pay for the writing of the script and the production of the film. And yet the best ways of understanding and managing this important development process have until now not been properly researched and studied. First, here is a working definition of independent film development:

Screenplay development is the creative and industrial collaborative process in which a story idea (either an original idea or an adaptation of an existing idea, such as a play, novel, or real life event) is turned into a script; and is then repeatedly rewritten to reach a stage when it is attractive to a suitable director, actors and relevant film production funders; so that enough money can be raised to get the film made.²

The reason that the definition refers to development being an industrial process is that it requires interaction with the film industry, with an eye to the eventual market. Film is one of the most expensive art forms, and that requires investment. The development process requires payment for acquisition of the rights to the story and payments to the writer for his work. Production then requires further massive investment; and without it there is no product or art form, since an unproduced screenplay has virtually no inherent value.

Aristotle argued that a play does not need to be performed to have impact on an audience, because it can still be read as a text; however, with film the visualization of the text by the director is considered vital. A film is made, not written. That process of making involves the screenwriter dreaming it up, the producer raising the funding, the actors playing their parts, the director calling the shots, the film editor reassembling it, and the distributors and cinemas marketing it and getting it out there to the audience. This industrial collaboration of different creative and commercial agendas is one of the many things that makes the film business so fascinating and complex. But the value chain does not end there, because films are also dependent on reception for their reputational value, including critical reaction and audience response (through box office figures and DVD sales). The problem with development is that the producer is trying to predict what the audience may choose to watch and enjoy in several years’ time; and yet like many cultural industries that audience’s eventual choices are predicated on a complex and conflicting mixture of motivations – including subjective personal taste, response to marketing influence, trends that are current at the time, peer influence, and even a sense of differentiation of the self from others.

To go back to the definition, the inclusion of the word relevant before production funders is important because different types of funders want different things from a film project: for example the arthouse specialist production funders want a certain type of script, supported by certain directors and actors; whereas mainstream production funders want other types of script and other actors attached. An actor with huge value in the specialist marketplace may have no impact at all in the blockbuster mainstream marketplace. Crucially, if there is a mismatch between the project, the talent attachments and the size of the budget, then it can prevent the film making it into production, as shown in Chapter 3. Therefore the producers and development executives should have the finance sources and the market for the films very much in their minds during development. It helps for the professional writer also to be aware of this context, and how his collaborators are thinking. Whilst the industrial context should not be allowed to stifle creativity, it pays to be aware that the vision of the script will only be realized through this market. It also helps for the student of film to be fully aware of these tensions, and to understand that no completed film has been made without influence from them during the process.

Strictly speaking development can be done by a single writer working entirely on his own, but since it is an industrial process it is usually a collaborative team activity (involving maybe more than one writer and incorporating the feedback of a script editor, director and other stakeholders), and managed by a producer (and possibly a development executive) who is responsible for the money-raising element. Good development involves open constructive feedback to make the story stronger and the characters more compelling. It shouldn’t be about producers and executives telling writers what is wrong or how to fix it – it should be a collaborative journey to make the story as good as it can possibly be, through rewrites and polishes and detailed discussions. In practice it can often end up confrontational, destructive and divisive, but that is where the skill of an experienced and skilful producer and executive comes in – to try to keep it on the rails. This journey is one of the key themes of this book.

The idea and the option

The idea for the story sometimes comes from the writer, but just as often it comes from the producer. It is either an original idea, or based on an underlying source like a stage play or novel or real-life story, which has caught the producer’s or development executive’s attention. Around 50 per cent of projects developed in Hollywood are based on adaptations.³ In interviews for this book Film4 executives estimated that in the UK it is closer to 40 per cent, and BBC executives suggested their current slate was about 40–50 per cent adaptations.⁴

The producer then either buys the film rights to the story idea (or underlying source material), or else he buys an option of the rights. An option is a smaller amount of money, paid up front or in instalments, in return for the exclusive right to develop the project into a screenplay for a set period of time; with an agreement to pay a much larger fee for the acquisition of all film-related rights on the first day of principal photography of the film. The producer does not yet own the rights, but he has an option over them which means that the writer cannot allow anyone else to develop the project. The option often requires renewal payments every year or every eighteen months to keep the rights holder happy, and sometimes these renewals may get more expensive or be contingent on other targets being passed. This all depends on the deal negotiated by the writer’s agents, powerful gatekeepers/intermediaries who defend the writer’s interests. Having obtained the rights or a window on those rights the producer then employs a screenwriter to transform them into a treatment and then a screenplay.

This means that the screenwriter often does not hold the rights (or the option) to the story that he is working on – the producer does. And if the screenwriter has come up with the original idea then the producer will ask him to assign or option the rights of the idea to the producer, as protection that the writer will not then go and work with a different producer on the project. But here is the catch-22: if the project idea is owned by the producer or production company or studio, and not by the writer, then the producer usually has the power to replace the writer if they so wish. Here lies the inherent insecurity of the writer – in order to get a film through development (and get paid themselves), and then financed for production by the producer, they have to give away their rights to the project and potentially their creative ownership of its future direction. In short, to get paid they have to accept losing control. This is why a fruitful and trusting relationship between the writer and producer is so vital. To try and avoid this catch-22 some writers will develop a screenplay without payment (known as a speculative or spec. script) and sell it only when they think it is strong enough for them to get better deal terms and resist losing as much control to the producer (maybe even gaining themselves an executive producer credit).

The advantages to developing a script based on an adaptation is that the overall tone, structure and ending of the story are probably apparent from the outset, and the producer and development funder have a clear idea of what they are going to get at the end of the process. If the book or play has been very successful there may even be a loyal fanbase that could be expected to pay to see the film (as long as the film is sufficiently faithful to the fans’ vision of the original). A novel also gives actors more to read about their characters and their motivations, and this may help convince them to commit to the project (a screenplay often has to leave various subtexts and motivations unsaid because it can only describe what is shown, whereas a novel can often describe the interior life of a character). All of this makes it easier for the producer to raise development funding on an adaptation. But the two substantial downsides are that, first, the producer is paying for the option as well as the work of the screenwriter on the adaptation, so his costs are higher; and that, second, there is a time limit on the process and if the option does expire before the film is made then the producer is left with nothing in return for his investment because he does not own the underlying story.

Another possibility for the agent representing the novel or play is not to go for an option at all, but demand a full assignment of rights in return for a much larger amount of money (with a turnaround opportunity for the writer to get the rights back after a specified number of years). Another deal point for writers with a successful underlying work is to demand that the title of the film adaptation must match the title of the book, to facilitate cross-selling of the book when the film comes out (the reason producers sometimes resist this is because they want the ability to change the title if required for marketing purposes).

Intellectual property and the labyrinth of rights

There are other existing books on contracts and intellectual property (IP) in film and the media,⁵ so it is enough at this stage to say that licensing content is highly complicated and becoming more so, as a result of the current fragmentation of markets and the proliferation of media platforms. A completed film’s value is optimized by exploiting the different factors of time (different exploitation windows offer the chance to see it immediately for a premium or after a delay); repeat consumption (via different platforms, such as cinema followed by DVD); exclusivity (only available at the moment on one platform); and differential pricing.⁶ As shown in Fig. 1.1, the film that is being exploited in these multiple ways can then also have multiple rights holders, only one of which is the writer (others include financiers, producers and distribution licence holders).⁷

Agents acting for the writer have to try and predict what these future rights might be worth, and negotiate a commensurate fee for the writer and share in future revenue, and this is all before the screenplay has even been written (the potential value of DVD and online consumption of movies and TV was at the heart of the strike by the Writers Guild of America in 2007–2008). The agent’s legitimate need to protect the writer’s interests results in potential problems for the producer in the early stages of development: first, the producer’s lawyer’s fees; second, the time spent negotiating terms with the writer’s agent; third, the cost of the option or assignment fee; and finally, a badly handled option negotiation process can damage the emerging relationship and trust betwe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of boxes
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction A world of stories and money
• Part I The complex world of film development
• Part II Managing creative people in film development: control versus freedom
• Appendix A Sternberg's analysis of levels of creative contribution, as applied to the science fiction film genre
• Appendix B Examples of script reader report forms
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index