Why Most Scripts Never Become Movies

This week’s rebroadcast collects posts from 2006 and 2012 to consider how selling a script isn’t a guarantee, and why writing a film that never gets made is still work worthy of compensation.

You’ve said that “most scripts don’t become movies, and a hundred things could go wrong in the process.” What exactly was meant by this, and of the scripts that you have written and you deemed worthy of the silver screen, how many actually made it there?

–Sweta

A minor miracle

We’ll start with the second part first. By my count, I’ve written 18 feature-length scripts. I have seven produced credits, which means I have a 39% production rate.^[1]

That’s actually not bad. It gives the illusion of being prolific when in fact it’s just a combination of luck and careful picking. As I’ve said before, my favorite genre is “movies that get made.”

I’ve also done significant-but-uncredited rewrite work on several other screenplays, some of which have been made.

Your question includes the qualifier, “[that] you deemed worthy of the silver screen.” I can honestly say that at the time I wrote them, I considered every one of my scripts worthy of the screen.

Now? Not so much.

But for the sake of example, let's look at some of my never-made scripts and briefly explain why they won’t be playing soon at a theatre near you.

Here and Now
My first script. Nicely written but largely plotless.

How to Eat Fried Worms
Was actually made, but with a script by a different writer.

A Wrinkle in Time
Was made for television, with a draft that pre-dated mine.

Untitled Zombie Western
I bet there will be a zombie western at some point, but it won’t be mine.

Fenwick’s Suit
The studio didn’t like my script, and let the underlying rights lapse.

Demonology
The studio thought it was too expensive for what it was.

Thief of Always
The director and the author hated my draft. Hated.

Barbarella
The two studios bickered and dickered until the underlying rights fell out.

Studios develop a lot of projects that never end up getting made. Every few years, an outsider with a lot of money will come to Hollywood and vow, “We’re not going to waste money. We’re only going to develop the projects we’re going to make!”

And a few years later, they’ll have a dozen projects in various stages of development, and maybe one or two movies. Because it’s not just the script that determines whether a movie gets made. You need the right director, the right stars, the right way to market the movie. You can be a week from shooting when a hurricane destroys your location, or a strike shuts down production. Or the exchange rate takes a dive.

As the screenwriter, there are hundreds of variables I can’t control. So I consider it a minor miracle any time a movie gets made.

Gregory Poirier argues that movies have suffered because of misguided cost-cutting:

A few years ago (pre-strike, though it is impolitic to say so), studios developed lots of material. Many creative minds (that would be writers) doing lots of good work led to lots of options for the studios as to what made it to the screen. Even though there was a lot more development then, the costs were small compared to the rest of the movie-making process. Writers are, for better or worse, usually a tiny percentage of a major studio film’s budget. As the corporations that own the studios searched for ways to cut spending, writers became an obvious target. All of these writers being paid for things that never got made? Preposterous! Development funds were slashed and the number of good scripts in circulation cratered.

Ironically, although this has been difficult for writers as a whole, the ones hardest hit by this disastrous policy are the studios themselves. They have crippled themselves in their ability to make good films.

Writers do the R&D work of the film industry

Like any other business, a quick way to boost profits is to cut way back on research. But that costs companies in the long run, because they’re unlikely to have innovative products down the road.

Television hasn’t cut back in the same way. Even with the rise of reality television, the number of pilots ordered has increased, reaching a high of 169 produced pilots in 2012.^[2]

TV hits more home runs when they take more swings.

Television pilots cost several million dollars each — more money than any feature is likely to spend on a script. But in TV, shooting a pilot that doesn’t get picked up isn’t considered a failure. It’s par for the course. It’s the cost of doing business.

Poirier wishes movie studios would emulate the TV mindset:

More writers working on more projects, with more freedom as to where the story leads, and with the knowledge that they have partners at the studio they can trust to see the solutions as well as the issues; this is what will return movies to their rightful place as the most fertile ground for good storytelling. The corporations that run Hollywood now and the MBAs that develop for them must come to see that writers are, in practicality, the smallest expense in the entire pipeline.

There’s always the risk of a golden-age fallacy — “things were so much better back then” — and truthfully, writing for television can suck in its own special ways. So let’s not chase too many rainbows, or pretend that throwing money at the problem will fix everything.

We’ve created a culture of sweepstakes pitching, pre-writes and unpaid rewrites that won’t magically go away. For the current generation of development execs, this fear-based cover-your-ass approach to screenwriters is completely normal.

And with more movies in development, that would also mean more scripts that never shoot. Trust me: getting paid to write an unproduced movie is not the Hollywood dream.

Still, the exodus of feature writers to television might slow or even reverse if studios were willing to gamble even a little bit. TV will roll the dice on risky ideas — “It’s a show about a plane crash on an island with a smoke monster!” — because when these shows work, they break out.

Movie studios won’t even try. In most cases, if they can’t see the poster, they won’t even consider the pitch.

Maybe that makes the studio system ripe for disruption. Money is money, and there are new billionaires every day. But I suspect the solution is slower and steadier, with studios reframing their approach: paying writers pays dividends, both in the short term and the long run.