Interview: Lindsay Devlin

January has turned out to be a reliable month for Hollywood with regard to one genre in particular: Horror. This year was no different when Twentieth Century Fox released Devil’s Due, a movie that thus far has brought in over four times its production budget in box office revenues.

The movie’s success is one reason I was excited to interview its screenwriter Lindsay Devlin. Another reason is her extensive background working in Hollywood on the story development side of things.

Lindsay and I had a terrific conversation, and I’m pleased to share her many insights into the craft of screenwriting and the movie business, along with her creative process with the film Devil’s Due.

Here are links to the six installments of the entire interview:

Part 1: “I had always wanted to write, but it’s one of those things…I was chicken shit about it. I don’t know if I was just nervous, or I’d been on this other path so long.”

Part 2: “It was a dream I had, about a year and a half ago. I had a nightmare that I was pregnant and that it turned out to be something had possessed the baby. It was a very, just terrifying and visceral dream.”

Part 3: “It was a lot of fun to take especially things that should be joyful, like registering or the baby shower, and turning it into something terrifying. Yeah, it was actually one of the most fun things to do, is take all the joyous things and basically twist them into something a little bit perverse.”

Part 4: “It truly is a surreal experience, especially because it happened so quickly by Hollywood standards. From the moment I had my dream to the day we wrapped production, was barely a year.”

Part 5: “Sometimes the good idea doesn’t come until you really start generating a lot. I’m constantly doing that, whether it’s in a notebook or just in front of my computer. I will just start to brainstorm ideas, themes, worlds.”

Part 6: “Each scene should definitely have a purpose. I tend to write them, knowing that there’s almost a mini three act structure within each scene, that they need to have progression within them.”

Lindsay is repped by UTA and Mosaic.

Twitter: @DevlinLindsay.

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