Saturday Hot Links

Time for the 234th installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.

Cannes 2016: The Lineup.

Cannes 2016: A Look at the Official Selection, by the Numbers.

It’s an Amazon World at Cannes, with Four Selection Titles.

9 Shockers From the 2016 Cannes Film Festival Lineup: Snubs & Surprises.

MTV Movie Awards 2016: Complete Winners List.

The 22 Most Anticipated Films Of The 2016 Tribeca Film Festival.

Why You Should Care About the Tribeca Film Festival (Analysis).

37 of Summer’s Most Anticipated Movies.

Netflix, We Ain’t Scared of You: Warner Bros. and Sony Show Off Superheroes at CinemaCon.

CinemaCon: Amazon Reassures Exhibitors: All Films to Get Theatrical Release, ‘Aggressive’ Marketing.

CinemaCon: James Cameron Announces Four ‘Avatar’ Sequels.

CinemaCon Lays Foundation for 2016’s Animated Awards Race.

CinemaCon: European Box Office Hits $9.76 Billion in 2015.

6 Takeaways From CinemaCon 2016, or How Sean Parker Blew It.

Global Box-Office Revenue Hit Record $38.3B in 2015.

The Rise of a New Hollywood in China.

Pokemon Movie Rights Bidding War as China’s Legendary Makes Big Play for Japanese Property.

Disney Chatter: Should Bob Iger Stay? What About Steve Burke? Is a Takeover Possible?

Disney’s Alan Horn Uses Low-Key Approach, Keen Creative Vision to Find Hits of the Future .

At Paramount Pictures, the Family Tree Is Still Growing.

‘Batman v Superman’: Where’s the Superhero Suit at Warner Bros.?

Warner Brothers Has Taken Exactly the Wrong Message From the Box Office Disappointment of ‘Batman v Superman’.

What Kevin Feige and Sony Wanted to Establish About the New Spider-Man.

Aliens, Adventure, And A Return To The Spielbergian Era.

The Future of Digital Cinema May Be At Stake in Lawsuit Over Interoperability.

One Major Way Trailers and Fan Culture Have Changed Cinematic Storytelling.

3 Screenwriting Fellowship Opportunies You Don’t Want to Miss Including @theblcklst Screenwriters Lab.

Why Storytelling Will Be the Biggest Business Skill of the Next 5 Years.

How to Beat Writer’s Block.

40 Places to Find a Critique Partner Who Will Help You Improve Your Writing.

17 Essential Film Critics on Film Criticism.

How Melissa McCarthy Became the New Adam Sandler.

The actors and actresses who most consistently appear in terrible movies.

Girl Talk: Five Years After ‘Bridesmaids,’ What Does a Female-Led Comedy Look Like.

Hollywood Is Still Banking on Male Comedy Duos with Few Women in Sight.

Excellent feature on director Karyn Kusama (The Invitation) and her story of surviving Hollywood.

How female directors are staking their claim in horror.

Quentin Tarantino’s List Of His 20 Favorite Spaghetti Westerns.

Michael Mann Books, HarperCollins Close Multimillion-Dollar Multi-Book Worldwide Deal.

How Meryl Streep Battled Dustin Hoffman, Retooled Her Role, and Won Her First Oscar.

JJ Abrams Defends Sean Parker’s $50 Screening Room Model to Theater Exhibitors.

Bono proposes US government fight ISIS using comedy.

How Not to Pitch a Movie: Production Execs Tell All.

15 Words You Need to Eliminate From Your Vocabulary.

Attention, Filmmakers: Your Website Sucks! Two experts breakdown 10 common mistakes.

Porn Site Bans North Carolina Users Over Anti-LGBT Law.

Sony’s Animated Emoji Movie Integrates Spotify, Major Smartphone Apps in Plot.

The Original ‘Star Wars’ Trilogy Returns To Theaters This Summer.

The 22 best political movies ever.

Hollywood Hates to Hear From Older Actresses, Study Says.

10 Great Action Heroines Of Cinema.

The Rise Of The Female Villain.

Why Are Women Filmmakers Finding More Opportunities in Documentaries.

Arthouse Audit: Festival Entries ‘Demolition,’ ‘Louder Than Bombs’ and ‘Mr. Right’ Open Soft.

Film Acquisition Rundown, Week of April 11: Lionsgate to Release ‘Cafe Society,’ Sundance Selects Buys Before Cannes.

The 20 Highest Grossing Indies of 2016.

How Indies Can Survive and Even Thrive In a Blockbuster World.

New York’s Metrograph Theater Has Strong First Month, But What’s Next?

AMC Entertainment CEO Open to Allowing Texting in Some Theaters.

Alamo Drafthouse CEO Responds to AMC’s Plan to Allow Texting in Theaters.

Thist just in: No Texting at AMC.

Teens Are Back at the Multiplex Despite Texting, Snapchat, Netflix.

Full Frame and Aspen Shortsfest Announce 2016 Winners.

Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles Unveils Winners.

Sundance Institute Launches its First Theatre Lab in the Middle East.

The unlikely rise of the Free Film Festivals.

Why the Usually Frantic Pilot Season is Less Frenzied This Year.

Why Did So Many Female Characters Die on TV Last Week.

Commentary: TV shows are going way too far to attract viewers.

Great article on the making of a TV series: “The Americans”.

CBS Sports and Turner Pay $8.8 Billion to Extend NCAA Tournament Deal 8 More Years.

Next Up on ESPN: Drone Racing.

‘Jane the Virgin’ Executive Producer on How Indie Movie Producers Can Find Funding for TV Projects.

A&E IndieFilms Thrives After Decade of Backing Steady Stream of Quality Docs.

Stephen King’s The Mist ordered to series for Spike TV.

TV Research Execs Say Netflix Ratings Transparency Is Inevitable.

Netflix Displaces HBO for Best Original Programming.

Netflix U.K. Blasts Past 5 Million Subscribers.

Netflix Stock Pops After Key Analyst Says Studios Can’t ‘Starve’ the Streaming Service.

‘Gilmore Girls’ Producer Sues Warner Bros. Over Netflix Reboot.

Bob Dylan-Inspired Drama Series in Development at Amazon, Lionsgate TV.

SlingTV Unveils New Service Allowing Multiple Streams of Fox, HBO Programming.

E.W. Scripps Buys Satire Site Cracked for $39 Million From Demand Media.

BuzzFeed Misses Revenue Target by $80 Million, Slashes Future Projections.

Louis CK in Debt ‘Millions of Dollars’ Over ‘Horace and Pete’.

‘Hamilton’s’ Success Is Making His Descendants Into Demi-Celebrities.

The Queens of Nonfiction: 56 Women Journalists Everyone Should Read.

Announced: The Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist.

Announced: The Man Booker International Prize 2016 Shortlist.

With Billions Wiped Out, Global Music Industry Is Now Digital.

The Fight for the Future of NPR.

Feature: Screenwriter BenDavid Grabinski who sold spec script “Bravado” to Paramount.

Feature: Jon Favreau.

Meg LeFauve: When There Is No Template: Writing on Pixar’s “Inside Out”.

The Bitter Script Reader: Interview with Justin Marks (Part 1).

The Bitter Script Reader: Interview with Justin Marks (Part 2).

The Bitter Script Reader: Interview with Justin Marks (Part 3).

The Bitter Script Reader: Interview with Justin Marks (Part 4).

Scriptnotes: Episode 245.

Watch: Every Samuel L. Jackson “Motherf*ucker”… ever.

Watch: Alexander Payne : The Science Of Failure.

Watch: Star Wars: A New Chapter For The Serial.

Watch: When David Lynch Met George Lucas About Star Wars.

Watch: The Spielberg Touchscreen.

Watch: A24: Films of a Revolution.

Watch: Hayao Miyazaki — The Essence of Humanity.

Watch: 100 Years/100 Shots.

Watch: Does ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Sync Up With Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side’?

Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week: The next session of my Prep: From Concept to Outline workshop begins Monday, April 18. I love teaching it because I find it exciting to dig into a new batch of stories and because the process we use can have a transformational effect on writers, which is a wonderful thing to behold. For example, here is an email sent to me from Dawn LeFever who worked with me in the Prep workshop in October-November 2014:

Prep: From Concept to Outline: It works!

Hey Scott –

Hope you and your family are well. I know you are about to begin another prep course and I thought I’d give you a little insight you might want to share with your new students.

Since taking the course last year at this time, I not only wrote the script I prepped in class, but have written three more since then, having just completed the first draft of the third one yesterday. I LOVE this process and it feels really organic to me.

Every time I begin a new project, I pull out my notebook with the reading assignments and work through the process just as we did in class. I sort of begin the brainstorming list from day one and just add to it whenever anything comes to me while working through the process. I also use note cards before going to outline because it helps me with pacing.

Then, when I’m writing, I have both my script and my outline on my screen and just write away, checking back at the outline to stay on track. More than a few times, as I’m writing, I think about a line of dialog or an action and then look back at my outline and realize what I have in the outline is much better than what was occurring to me in the moment.

At other times, while writing, I will find ways to weave moments in the script that foreshadow what happens later, because I know what’s coming thanks to the thorough prep process.

In other words, as you say, I do truly break the story in prep, which makes the writing so much easier and (hopefully) deeper and richer. I easily knock out 10 pages a day with this process.

I know there are as many different ways to approach writing as there are writers, but, for me, your process makes everything click and, even more, allows me to get really excited to finally sit down and write.

In the past year, I have had some encouraging responses — I was in the top 15% of the Nicholl Fellowship screenplays and was in the top 50 for the ISA Fast Track Fellowship. I made the quarter finals for the Screencrafting Comedy Competition with two scripts (One of them a rewritten version of Smoker’s Choice).

So… forging ahead and having a blast!

Thanks again for everything and tell the folks IT WORKS!!!

All the best,
Dawn

When Tom Benedek and I launched Screenwriting Master Class over 5 years ago, the very first course I created was Prep: From Concept to Outline. Why? Because no one else was teaching story prep for screenwriting. That struck me as crazy because most professional screenwriters I know and all TV writers break their story in prep.

Since 2010, I have led over 20 online sessions of Prep and worked privately with dozens of writers. The response has been almost universally like the sentiments expressed by Dawn above.

I literally tell writers at the beginning of every Prep workshop: “If you do the work… it works.”

In fact, Christian Contreras whose script “LAbyrinth” made the 2015 Black List is a Screenwriting Master Class alumnus, having taken this same Prep class with me back in 2014. And recently, I heard from Verity Colquhoun, an Australian writer who did a private one-on-one version of my Prep class in 2011, letting me know the script she wrote (“Wonderful Unknown”) just landed a director and is slated to go into production this fall.

It’s not magic. It’s just a proven, professional approach to develop your story, stage by stage, from concept all the way to outline, beat sheet, or treatment, whichever you prefer.

Scott leading a Black List screenwriting workshop, Las Vegas 2014

Consider joining my next session of Prep. But whether you take a class with me or not, it’s imperative you learn some sort of approach to story prep.

Can you imagine routinely writing 10 pages per day? Can you imagine being able to write 3 full-length screenplays in a year? Can you imagine actually enjoying the page-writing process?

As Dawn suggests, all of that can happen if you wrangle your story before you type FADE IN.

To check out the Prep: From Concept to Outline workshop which begins Monday, go here.