Screenwriting Tips RSS

article, book, comic book, intellectual property, option, source material -

How To Option IP For Your Screenplay

How To Option IP For Your Screenplay

Optioning underlying intellectual property can be a great way to add market appeal to your screenplay, but it can feel intimidating to newer screenwriters. It doesn’t have to be. Granted, if your target is a recent New York Times bestseller, it might not be easy. But short of that, plenty of books, comic books, articles, and so on can be optioned relatively painlessly. The initial hurdle is legal. Unless you’re an attorney, it can be daunting to read a great article or a great book and then try and figure out how to get the rights. Hiring an entertainment attorney...

Read more

Actors, challengeing roles, DOM HEMINGWAY, Jude Law, Michelle Rodriguez, Orlando Bloom, Pierce Brosnan, RETALIATION, THE MATADOR, WIDOWS -

Hooking Actors Into Your Screenplay With Challenging Roles

Hooking Actors Into Your Screenplay With Challenging Roles

Hooking a great actor into your screenplay with a challenging role might seem like obvious advice. But the key qualifier is the definition of the word “challenging.” Playing a tough guy who seeks revenge for his dead wife would be challenging in real life, but in a movie, that’s a generic part. Below are four examples of actors taking on truly challenging roles, both in general, and in relation to their previously-established screen personas. RETALIATION (2020) – Orlando Bloom In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Bloom admitted, in regards to the most intimate sequence in the script for...

Read more

Adaptations, Artists, Comic Books, Comixology, Dark Horse, Graphic Novel, Image, Intellectual Property, Kickstarter -

Turn Your Screenplay Into A Graphic Novel: A How-To Guide

Turn Your Screenplay Into A Graphic Novel: A How-To Guide

Want to turn your screenplay into a graphic novel? Doing so has become appealing for screenwriters tired of getting the feedback that their original work is not based on pre-existing intellectual property. Turning your screenplay into a graphic novel is a way to create your own intellectual property (IP). But how can an outsider to the comic book industry create their own graphic novel? It turns out, as comics have increasingly moved into the digital space, this process has become democratized, and a bit more accessible. Many comic book companies still accept unsolicited submissions. The caveat, though, is those submissions...

Read more

Orlando Bloom, Patriot's Day, Paul Tamasy, Rod Lurie, Scott Eastwood, The Fighter, The Finest Hour, The Outpost, true stories -

Great True Stories: THE OUTPOST

Great True Stories: THE OUTPOST

Finding great true stories is a way to add value to your screenplays. To illustrate this point, we’re going to follow the winding path taken that eventually led to the 2020 film THE OUTPOST. In 2009, 300 Taliban fighters assaulted the American combat outpost “Keating” in Afghanistan. 8 Americans were killed, and 27 wounded. Staff Sergeant Clinton Romesha and Staff Sergeant Ty Carter were awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions in the battle. The key differentiating factor between this battle and any other was the location – this outpost was almost impossible to defend, it was in a...

Read more

AMADEUS, Best Adapted Screenplay, Milos Forman, Peter Shaffer, rewriting -

Rewriting Success Story: AMADEUS

Rewriting Success Story: AMADEUS

Rewriting a screenplay sucks. It’s painful. You know the story. It was compelling enough for you to write it in the first place. Why doesn’t everyone love it already? As a screenwriter toils through numerous drafts, it can feel like a Sisyphean task. Is all this rewriting really going to make the script better? The answer, nine times out of ten, is yes. To provide some hope, here is perhaps one of the biggest success stories to come out of rewriting: AMADEUS. Per The New York Times, which wrote an in-depth article on this subject in 1984, Peter Shaffer spent...

Read more

Tags