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EntertainmentIndustry.name
A producer may ask you to rewrite your action comedy for Will Smith or skew your romantic comedy to teenagers or baby boomers — depending on whom they represent. You might be asked to scale down the number of cast members and locations and lose some action sequences or special effects to accommodate a low budget direct-to-video opportunity or set the script in a foreign country to capitalize on co-production financing and tax breaks available. Obviously, a writer could spend his or her career writing and re-writing for free, speculatively, turning their project into mud but sometimes the script notes really do improve the script and raise its odds of actually getting bought and produced. And if you’re smart, you’re learning along the way, improving your skills and your relationships.
Professional Writers who’re actually getting paid for jumping through all these hoops often refer to this as “Development Hell.” Sometimes they are accommodating so many different cooks in the kitchen, no one ends up happy.
“Turnaround” is when a project hits a brick wall or is stymied in development or perhaps there’s been a change of the guard at the studio and they’ve decided to go in a different direction (i.e.: stop making those types of films or catering to that demographic). This happened infamously post-9/11 when every terrorist or airplane thriller was shut down immediately.
A script can revert back to the original screenwriter if the option expires. Sometimes the opportunity may arise for the screenwriter to buy it back (or convince another entity to reimburse the studio or production company that currently owns the script for their development expenses for the right to take over the development of the project. Perhaps the old guard that left may take the project with them to their new company. Sometimes these projects just end up in limbo due to a pissing match and no one wanting to end up with egg on their face inheriting a flop or the box office success that got away.
Agencies will often try to “package” a project by doubling, quadrupling, even getting ten times their commission by ensuring that the director and stars and composer and DP and all the elements that are “attached” to the project are their clients (thus, earning them their 10 — 15% commission — each). Deals have been known to have been killed because a director or key actor was from a different agency then the one who packaged the rest of the deal.
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