Screenwriting Tips

budget, filmmaking, interesting scripts, originality, Producers, screenwriting, storytelling - October 23, 2019

The Producer’s Guide to Saying Yes: Why A Producer Will Make Your Film

The most important thing any writer should know is how to get a producer to fall in love with their script. There is no magic or absolute answer to that question, but there are plenty of practical guidelines to be gleaned from producers. Here at ScriptArsenal, we know a good deal of producers, and have learned a thing or two about what it takes for them to commit to a screenplay. Give them a reason to give a damn. This is the most important guideline. Producing movies is a huge pain in the neck. It takes a long time. By...

One Great Scene: LOGAN

In this series of articles, we’re going to do a deep-dive on one knockout scene from a great movie. Today’s movie is LOGAN. The scene is when Wolverine pays a visit to Professor Xavier, who is suffering from dementia (here’s a link to the scene as a refresher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv3cU4-iwv4). The scene starts with Logan going into a massive tank where Professor Xavier has been locked away. It’s immediately both grounded in reality and mythic in stature. Professor Xavier, an old man with dementia, is so powerful as a mutant, still, that his version of a nursing home is a giant...

Our Favorite Screenwriters: William Monahan (THE DEPARTED)

William Monahan bust onto the scene as a screenwriter in the mid 2000s, writing KINGDOM OF HEAVEN for Ridley Scott and then winning the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Martin Scorsese’s THE DEPARTED. He has since written the Mel Gibson film EDGE OF DARKNESS, The Leonardo DiCaprio film BODY OF LIES, LONDON BOULEVARD with Colin Farrell, and THE GAMBLER with Mark Wahlberg. How did he get there? As with other screenwriters in this series of articles, Monahan would probably contest the notion that he suddenly appeared on the scene in the mid 2000s. In fact, his experience as a...

Write Something They Won’t Make: Ironic Lessons from GAME OF THRONES

Writing in the hopes of your script getting produced can be, counterintuitively, limiting. Setting limits on your imagination before the script has gone into production may seem pragmatic and business-minded, but it can also weaken the final product. This is the ironic lesson to draw from GAME OF THRONES. In an interview with the New York Times before the show came out, George RR Martin explained the genesis of his epic fantasy series – he was a frustrated TV writer. “To some extent, the project was also a reaction to my own Hollywood career. I was out there for 10...

Dead Genres and How To Revive Them: The Zombie Movie

There’s a truism in Hollywood that certain genres are dead. In this 4-part series of blog posts, we’re going to look at these genres Hollywood wisdom says are dead, why their death is the prevalent theory, and what it may take for any writer to revive them with their own script. Third up is the zombie genre, which hit a saturation point in 2013, and has cooled since. In 2013, six zombie films were theatrically released. WORLD WAR Z was a smash hit at 540 million dollars worldwide gross against a 190 million dollar budget. WARM BODIES was a smash...

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The Producer’s Guide to Saying Yes: Why A Producer Will Make Your Film

One Great Scene: LOGAN

Our Favorite Screenwriters: William Monahan (THE DEPARTED)

Write Something They Won’t Make: Ironic Lessons from GAME OF THRONES

Dead Genres and How To Revive Them: The Zombie Movie

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