Movies in “turnaround”

I went back through all of my Business of Screenwriting posts and was surprised to see I hadn’t written anything about the practice known as “turnaround,” but with Draft Day opening in theaters across the U.S. today, I figured now is as good a time as any to discuss the subject.

Turnaround refers to a situation wherein a studio, which has acquired a literary project, decides not to move forward with it and gives the producers attached as well as writers an opportunity to set it up elsewhere. If they can find another studio or prod co willing to cover the acquisition costs along with development fees, the latter entity may then secure the rights to that projects. Thus the idea that the project turns around from one company to the next.

Draft Day, a script which finished atop the 2012 Black List, was originally acquired by Paramount, but… well, you can learn some of the details from the interview I’m featuring this week with the project’s screenwriters Rajiv Joseph and Scott Rothman:

Scott M: We were talking about plot twists earlier and speaking of them, you had one in real life. The script for Draft Day was originally set up at Paramount, then they put it into turnaround. Then Lionsgate picked it up, right?

Scott R: Yes.

Rajiv: Yes.

Scott M: It struck me that that little bit of business dealing, that’s almost like the protagonist of your story wheeling and dealing draft picks.

Scott R: There’s been a lot of that. There’s been a lot of overlap between the script and real life, the wheeling’s and dealing’s and how these things get done. There’ve been a lot of phone calls, mainly by the producers, not by us, where they are handling multiple offers on multiple different things to that go into making a movie, from which teams are going to be represented, to which colleges. Once it left Paramount and was picked up by Lionsgate, we had this added ticking clock of the draft actually coming. We needed to get all out ducks all in a row very quickly to be able to film at the draft. I just can’t say enough about what the producers of this movie did to make that happen is nothing short of miraculous.

Scott M: Life imitating art.

Scott R: Yeah, exactly.

Scott M: Reading about where Paramount decided to put the script into turnaround, there was some speculation that they said, “Well, American football just doesn’t travel very well internationally.” I think I remember they said The Blind Side did well in the United States but didn’t do so well. Does that concern you at all? Bigger picture, how much should screenwriters be thinking about the international market, now that it’s basically getting 70 to 75 percent of box office, when we’ve conceiving original story ideas?

Scott R: I’m really conflicted as to what advice to give. If we had thought about that, we never would have written Draft Day. We both instinctively knew not to tell our reps about it for exactly that reason. We just knew we had a head full of steam and loved this idea and, honestly, we obviously never thought it would get to where we are right now, sitting in Cleveland shooting this movie. We just loved the idea. I do think that translated into the script. That said, looking back, 20/20 hindsight, yeah, it did make things harder on everyone to be trying to sell a football movie. I’m sure there would have been a lot more open doors to us if we had written, I don’t know, something that travels better overseas, soccer movie?

Rajiv: I don’t think writers can consider this. We never would have written this movie if we had considered that and that’s not easy to know. I’m a big believer in that, at the end of the day, you really write the stories you most want to tell. Like I said, it’s a labor of love. This could bomb overseas, and that’d be fine. We’ve already got it made. I know that was the biggest threat against it, and we needed a couple miracles to get us here, and I’m so glad we got them. But if this movie had never been made, I’d be just as proud of it.

So Paramount put the project into turnaround, then Lionsgate picked it up, and now the movie is hitting thousands of movie screens this weekend. For further background on this subject, Studio System News posted an article yesterday entitled: What Other Turnaround Films Are Poised To Follow Draft Day Into Theaters. An excerpt:

When a project goes into turnaround, it’s never a happy moment. Development execs, producers, and writers spend years laboring on a project only to see their hard work put on a shelf. There are many reasons to put a script into turnaround: a competing project beats them to theaters; a regime change alters the studios’ agenda; talent attachments fall apart; or the passion simply dies out. While it’s frustrating to see all that work wasted, turnaround can actually bring about a project’s second chance.

Home Alone was three weeks away from production at Warner Bros. when it was put into turnaround over a budget discrepancy of $3 million. Joe Roth, then chairman of 20th Century Fox, along with Roger Birnbaum, decided to back the project, and a worldwide success was born. Since then, Warner Bros. has been reluctant to put anything in turnaround, and understandably so.

Runaway Bride, which made $35 million on its opening weekend, spent nearly a decade getting tossed around by financiers. Eventually it took Paramount, Disney, Lakeshore, and Interscope to get it going. Paramount put Twilight in turnaround (ouch), and iconic films like The Matrix, The English Patient, Star Wars, Pulp Fiction, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Shakespeare in Love were all once-abandoned projects that were rescued and turned into moneymaking — and in some cases Oscar-winning — films.

Remember per William Goldman, Hollywood is a town where “Nobody knows anything.” To wit: Warner Bros. putting Home Alone into turnaround. Paramount put Twilight into turnaround.

And so it goes.

Check out a few of the turnaround projects from the SSN article which are waiting to get produced:

SMALL WORLD
Studio: Fox 2000
Logline: Misadventures of the black-sheep son of a wealthy, blind businessman who, after losing their tickets to Italy, takes his father on a whirlwind tour of New York City, pretending it’s Italy so he doesn’t miss out on a lifelong dream.
Producer: Chuck Gordon (Daybreak Productions)
Source: Based on an original script by Rob Muir and Bob Hilgenberg
Stats: Over eight writers tried to nail the tone of this dramedy and fell short of realizing its full potential.

SSN Insight: With the right director and cast, this idea truly has Oscar potential. As an emotional and heartwarming father/son story, imagine what it could become in the hands of David O. Russell or James Ponsoldt.

MONSTER ZOO
Studio: Paramount
Logline: When an ancient idol is unearthed and transported to a zoo in the U.S., a spirit awakens and begins to transform the caged animals.
Producer: Sam Raimi, The Gotham Group
Writer: Lloyd Taylor
Source: Based on the graphic novel of the same name, written by Doug TenNapel, Image Comics, May 2008.

SSN Insight: TenNapel, one of today’s most prolific and talented graphic novelists, has had many of his works sold into feature film development, yet none have been made. Monster Zoo was one of his most high-profile sales and one of the quickest to go into turnaround. It could have the appeal of Coraline, a film with a touch of darkness that was still fanciful enough to appeal to young kids.

DRAMARAMA
Studio: Warner Bros.
Logline: A high school senior gets bitten by the performing bug, but when the rival school’s reigning star pushes her too far, she forms her own drama club and enters a competition to vie for the winner’s title, abandoning a secure future for the unpredictable life of theater.
Producer: Andrew Lazar, Jennifer Todd, Suzanne Todd
Writer: Andrew Osborne, Adam Abraham, Kristen Buckley, Brian Regan, Evan Greenberg
Source: Pitch by Osborne

SSN Insight: Back in ’99, Warner Bros. purchased Osborne’s pitch for Lazar’s Mad Chance, and granted Osborne a first-look deal on a second pic. Then up-and-coming filmmaker Shawn Ku (White on Rice) was attached to direct and Lindsay Lohan was set to star. How times have changed. The studio went through multiple drafts with different writers — never a great sign — but this premise still has potential. Bring on a seriously funny female scribe like Kay Cannon (Pitch Perfect, 30 Rock) or Maggie Carey (The To Do List), and this could be a darkly funny flick.

Turnaround not only underscores the fact that in Hollywood nobody knows anything, it also speaks to the reality that it takes guts to green light a movie. Even when proven talent and A-list writers are involved, sphincters tighten and it just becomes damn hard to say “yes” to move into production.

And now this weekend, here is Draft Day, a project Paramount put into turnaround and Lionsgate picked up. It’s a terrific script. The movie opens on 2,781 screens. As someone who wholly supports The Spirit of the Spec and wants to see more original stories produced instead of endless remakes, reboots, prequels and sequels, I’m hoping the movie performs well at the box office.

Meanwhile I have come face-to-face with turnaround myself, acquiring the rights to a script I sold a decade ago which I’m now rewriting. Why? Because I believe in the story. And I know there is an audience for it.

Stay tuned.

To read more of the Rajiv Joseph and Scott Rothman interview, go here. More of it to come in just a few hours.

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