Lethal Weapon 5?
This is kind of a wild rumor, but supposedly screenwriter Shane Black has written a spec script based upon his own Lethal Weapon series:
This time, homicidal Riggs (Mel Gibson) is about to retire, but pulls Murtaugh (Danny Glover) out of retirement to solve one final case, before they both officially head off into the sunset.
I’ve never heard of a screenwriter doing that — writing a spec on a pre-existing movie entity. Black received “written by” credit on the original movie, even though Jeffrey Boam rewrote the script. Black received a “story by” credit on the second movie, while Boam got “screenplay by” credit on both II and III. For III and IV, Black was reduced to “characters by” credit. So perhaps this is his way of not only resurrecting the franchise, but circling back to characters of his own creation and writing what he would’ve written had Warner Bros. allowed him to previously.
UPDATE: Some interesting reader comments. And thanks to PJ, I went ahead and fueled my entertainment news ‘addiction’ by subscribing to Tracking Boards, so I’ll be posting whatever interesting script development news they have.
Re Shane Black: I still remember the reaction when the spec script for The Last Boy Scout came out. Some writers had been pushing the envelope in terms of ‘opening up’ scene description to make it more entertaining, even flirting with breaking the fourth wall (between the writer and the reader); in Boy Scout, Black flat-out shredded the envelope. Here’s probably the most famous bit of SD in that script:
INT. DINGY DRESSING ROOM — NIGHT
Cory and Jimmy are engaged in very hot sex.
This is not a love scene; this is a sex scene.
Sigh. I’m not even going to attempt to write this
quote-unquote “steamy” scene here, for very good
reasons:
A) The things I find steamy are none of your damn
business, Jack, in addition to which —
B) The two actors involved will no doubt have wonderful
highly athletic ideas which manage to elude most
fat-ass writers anyhow, and finally —
C) My mother reads this shit. So there.
(P.S.: I think we lost her back at the jacuzzi blowjob
scene.)
Fun to read? Sure. Advances the story. Nope. Nevertheless, it’s hard to argue the ‘validity’ of this approach, seeing as the script sold for, as I remember, $2M. And this bit of scene description is consistent with the tone of Black’s narrative voice throughout the script. However, as you can imagine, the script’s success spawned legions of Shane Black wannabes and before long, everyone in Hollywood — from script readers to studio execs — got real tired real fast of excessive cute snark in SD.
Which is not to say that when we write scene description, we shouldn’t make it as entertaining as possible. And depending upon the story’s genre, we can play around with the reader a bit. But be careful — because one of the most basic rules of screenwriting is to lure the reader into the story and keep them there. Any time we get too cute in SD, we run the risk of breaking up reader’s immersion in our story — and that’s dangerous.