“East Cleveland native Abdul Williams cashes in ‘Lottery Ticket’ as movie’s screenwriter”
This last weekend, the movie Lottery Ticket opened with little fanfare. The movie opened much stronger at the box office than predicted, grossing a total of $10M on its opening weekend. For a movie with a production budget of $17M, it looks to be well on its way to profitability. Here’s the story premise per IMDB:
Kevin Carson is a young man living in the projects who has to survive a three-day weekend after his opportunistic neighbors find out he’s holding a winning lottery ticket worth $370 million.
The story behind the story is also interesting. The screenwriter is Abdul Williams and by the looks of it, he’s another member of the The Persistence Hall of Fame. From this Cleveland.com article:
Getting fired on his birthday was the best thing that ever happened to Abdul Williams. In 2003, the East Cleveland native was a Hollywood script reader who also peddled his own original screenplays. Losing his job was the push he needed to get serious about writing, or start parking cars. But neophyte writers don’t just get handed feature-film assignments. Williams re-wrote other people’s scripts. He developed story outlines. He adapted novels into screenplays.
Every project fizzled — until he cashed in with “Lottery Ticket.”
The urban comedy — starring rapper-actor Bow Wow and Ice Cube — opened Friday nationwide. It is Williams’ first feature film.
“I’ve had a lot of close calls before ‘Lottery Ticket’ finally happened,” said Williams, 38. “I still can’t wrap my mind completely around it. I feel blessed.”
The road from script to screen was a rocky one:
For a while, it seemed as if the movie — which Williams started writing in 2006 from an idea by “Lottery Ticket” director and music-video veteran Erik White — would turn into another dud. Rapper Chris Brown was considered for the lead before his arrest. The project was orphaned when the original studio changed corporate owners.
The writers’ strike left the script in limbo again.
Eventually, Alcon Entertainment took over development of the script as a starring vehicle for Bow Wow. The movie was filmed in Atlanta during fall 2009.
Rogers was a cheerleader for the $17 million project.
“Abdul has a great future. Five years from now, I can say I know that guy,” Rogers said. Noting that the studio allowed Williams to stay with the movie from beginning to end, he said, “That’s huge. It’s like a pitcher in baseball who starts a game and finishes a game.”
And then there’s this:
Williams’ mother, Etta Ali of Dana Point, Calif., remembers a boy who preferred reading to playing outside, and banged out a short story on a old portable typewriter when he was 8. He spent his early childhood in Los Angeles, then moved back to Northeast Ohio as a teenager. As a member of Shaker Heights High School’s elite theater group, he discovered he liked acting, but loved writing.
He packed his bags for Hollywood after graduating from Ohio University.
“I knew that with his determination, he would make it happen,” Ali said.
He “loved writing.” That’s where it all starts.
H/T to Scott at Screenwriting from Iowa for the heads-up on this story.
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