John August.com: “Notes on the state of the industry”

Courtesy of John August’s assistant Matt [God bless you Matt, wherever you are!] we’ve got his notes from the “Studio Development: From Script to Greenlight” event on Thursday night we pimped here earlier this week. By all means, read the entire post on August’s blog, but here are a few highlights:

* The financial model is changing because of 30% drop in DVD sales.

* A writer basically has one shot to get script through the development process.

* Pre-branded material continues to rule the game.

* Marketing is getting more involved in the development process.

I know… depressing. All this underscores the importance — and I know I’m sounding like a broken record — of a strong story concept. A script with a strong story concept is easier to market. Plus it should (in theory) stand a better chance against pre-branded fare ala “Stairmaster: The Movie” because it will stand out to potential viewers.

While the variables in the Hwood’s financial model may change from year to year, four elements remain the same as they always have in terms of a screenplay’s success:

Strong story concept. A distinctive voice. Compelling characters. Well written script. 

We can’t control the business model.

But we can control what we bring to the scripts we create.

h/t to two students from the recent Writers’ Studio workshop Kate Eberle and Julie Sorci for letting me know about the post on John August.com.

UPDATE: I was tempted to do a new post because this CNN article — “Wall St. Pulling Out Of Hollywood” — is important reading. However, we’ve already covered a lot of the movie business in the last several weeks and basically… it just gets depressing, so screw it. Here’s one quote:

With these deals, many studios have enough financing to make movies through 2010 and are cutting costs while waiting out the credit freeze to thaw before seeking further funding.

Nonetheless, the number of films released by major studios are expected to continue to decrease to correct an oversupplied market. Less than 200 films are slated to hit theaters in 2009, down from about 219 major studio releases in 2008 and 236 in 2007, according to industry estimates.

Now back to the creative aspects of screenwriting.

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