Saturday Hot Links

Time for the 271st installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.

Great writing resource: Black List 2017 Educational Calendar.

Writers Guild Snubs and Surprises: Fresh Hope for ‘Deadpool’ and ‘Loving,’ But No ‘Silence’.

How Hollywood Beat the Odds and Broke Box Office Records in 2016.

Box Office: ‘Captain America: Civil War’ Leads 2016 With $1.15B.

Hollywood’s Winners and Losers 2016: Why Movie Stars Flailed Next to Strong Women, African Americans, and Animated Heroes.

10 Predictions for the Entertainment and Media Business in 2017.

Barry Diller: Movie Studios Are Not a Great Business Proposition.

Wattpad: How A Toronto-Based Storytelling App Is Becoming A Hollywood Idea Factory.

True-Life Tales Punctuate Awards-Race Screenplays ‘Sully,’ ‘Jackie’ and ‘Bleed for This’.

Oscar Trend: Titles of Best Picture Winners Keep Getting Shorter.

66 Movies Directed by Women to Look Forward to in 2017.

Slamdance Film Festival Unveils Competition Lineup.

The First Draft of ‘Rogue One’ Had An Opening Crawl.

Disney Could Reportedly Receive $50 Million Insurance Payout for Carrie Fisher’s Death.

‘Star Wars’ Braintrust Sets Meeting to Plot Leia’s Life After Carrie Fisher’s Death.

From Tape Drives to Memory Orbs, the Data Formats of Star Wars Suck.

Disney Becomes First Studio to Top $3 Billion at Domestic Box Office.

How Disney’s Animated ‘Zootopia’ Became the Galvanizing Movie of 2016.

Celebrating Zootopia’s Screenwriters Phil Johnston and Jared Bush.

Cars 3 first look: Meet Pixar’s new millennials.

“A Monster Calls” and the Stifling Lessons of Children’s Movies.

Hollywood: If You Can’t Build It, Don’t Bother.

Galloway on Film: The 10 Greatest Movie Books.

As a Dad, Watching Movies for the First Time.

5 Things We Learned About Filmmaking From Pixar Artists.

A Second Look at ‘La La Land’: Why It’s Not Just Good, But Great.

This Is How Wes Anderson Approaches Worldbuilding.

‘Milk’ Scribe Dustin Lance Black On ‘Lion’s Timely Roar.

Screenwriter Daniel Waters breaks down the 354 movies he saw in 2016.

Kevin Smith: ‘Nobody Writes Your Story But You’.

Finding a Variety of Voices at the Whistler Film Fest.

500 Scripted Shows?! How Netflix, Amazon Are Sending Originals to All-Time Highs.

Home Entertainment 2016 Figures: Streaming Eclipses Disc Sales for the First Time.

How ‘The OA’ Is the Next Evolution in Television Storytelling.

Netflix Beats Porn by 40X for Hotel Room Entertainment.

CES 2017: Streaming TV Enters the Age of Amazon.

Medium Lays Off 50 Employees, Changes Business Model.

Apple App Store Subscription Revenue Hits $2.7 Billion in 2016, Up 74%.

Mobile Games Gross Close to $1 Billion Between Christmas and New Year.

The Biggest Tech Fails of 2016.

Broadway Box Office Spikes to $50 Million in Record-Breaking Week.

Vinyl sales rose 26% in 2016.

9 Subscription-Worthy New Podcasts for 2017.

25 of the Most Exciting Book Releases for 2017.

Terry Huang: 2017 Best Picture Predictions.

Listen: Scriptnotes (Episode 286).

Listen: Screen Talk (Episode 130).

Watch: A Silent Story #2 — Lost in Translation.

Watch: Martin Scorsese // God’s Point of View.

Watch: 1987 WGA video “Words”.

Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week

17 movies produced. 16 movies #1 at the box office. Worldwide B.O. gross over $10 billion. Average B.O. per film: $650M+ by far the highest average per film of any studio in Hollywood history.

It’s not just dollars and cents, it’s also quality storytelling. 26 Academy Awards, 7 Golden Globes, 3 Grammys. Indeed 8 of Pixar’s 17 films are in the IMDB Top 250 Movies of all time.

No disrespect to Disney, but I think the real Magic Kingdom lies 397.8 miles north of Anaheim in a city called Emeryville, California where you’ll find this:

Longtime GITS readers know of my fascination with Pixar having blogged about them dozens of times. Due to having two sons who quite literally have grown up in what someday is likely to be called the Pixar Era, I have seen every one of the company’s movies, most of them several times.

In my estimation, the filmmakers at Pixar are master storytellers.

But how do they successfully wrangle magic time after time in their films? Are there lessons we can learn from Pixar to inspire and upgrade our own writing?

Those are two key questions I undertook in creating the online course Pixar and the Craft of Storytelling which begins Monday, January 16. My answer: An emphatic yes!

First off, there are the practices Pixar uses in developing, breaking, writing and rewriting a script. In our 1-week class, we go through that process step by step, then see how we can adapt that approach to our own writing.

Then there are several narrative principles evident in Pixar movies, six of them we focus in our online class: Small Story / Substantial Saga, Special Subculture, Strange Sojourners, Separation, Sentimentality, and Surprise. Going through every Pixar movie, we explore how these dynamics work in the context of each narrative and their overall applicability to storytelling.

There are 7 lectures, each of which I wrote, the content buttressed by an exclusive interview I conducted with Mary Coleman, Senior Development Executive at Pixar since the days of Toy Story 2, so we get a real inside look the outfit’s creative process.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: I am expanding this class to teach it at DePaul University and have added two more principles: Sires and Siblings, Stumbles and Switches. If you take my SMC online class, you will be the first people to explore that content with me!

The class also has a Logline Workshop where you can post a story idea and revise per peer feedback. And two teleconferences to accommodate peoples’ schedules where participants get a chance to dig into the course content with me as well as discuss anything related to writing, screenwriting, and movies.

Here are some nice comments from just a few folks who’ve taken the class:

“I was lucky enough to be able to take Scott’s Pixar and the Craft of Storytelling class. It was my first class and a wonderful experience. I learned a ton and now have some important utensils that will help make all my stories better. Scott’s a great teacher and it was a pleasure learning from him!” — Valencia Stokes

“This course is awesome. I refer to these notes and lessons all the time.” — Traci Nell Peterson

“A course on Pixar movies? Apart from legitimately letting out my inner child and renting Up ‘for research purposes, I learnt about the ethos of the Pixar Brain Trust and the essential elements contained in all of their movies. Scott took us on an all-inclusive week long journey into why Pixar are so successful and how to practically apply this to your own script.” — Camilla Castree

“I recommend this course wholeheartedly. Plus you get to watch Pixar films as homework.” — TheQuietAct

“Scott Myers is a brilliant teacher and unites his knowledge and experience, insight and depth of thought in his lectures as well as he is providing help and support to his students. I highly recommend the class.” — Eva Brandstätter

A few words about the format: I’ve been teaching online since 2002, worked with over 1000 writers in that context, and honestly believe it is superior to the onsite class environment in many ways:

• You can do virtually everything on your own time: Download lectures, read forum conversations, add your own comments, upload writing exercises and assignments. In your pajamas. In bed. Drinking coffee. However you want to access online course content, you can do it.
• As opposed to listening to a teacher present lectures verbally, you get to download lectures and read them. Again at your leisure, but even more importantly, instead of feverishly trying to jot down notes from a verbal presentation, here you get everything laid out for you. I take great pride in my lectures, as they not only provide great content, they also have a narrative flow to them. Yes, they tell a little story.
• Feedback and conversations online tend to be much more thoughtful and therefore beneficial than onsite settings. Why? Because instead of off-the-cuff, random comments, participants online tend to spend more time and reflection in composing posts for online.
• Finally I’m constantly amazed at how much of a community emerges in online class environments. Writers from all around the world and somehow we bind together into remarkably vibrant learning communities, time and time again.

So if you’ve never tried an online screenwriting class, come on in! The virtual water’s fine!

For more information on Pixar and the Craft of Storytelling which begins January 16, go here. And if you really want to treat yourself well, consider The Craft Package.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: I am adding two new Craft classes in 2017 — Dialogue-Writing Workshop and Scene-Writing Workshop. They are BOTH included in The Craft Package which means your savings are now nearly 60%! Automatic enrollment in all 10 classes! Immediate access to the Craft curriculum to go through at your own pace.

I am updating lectures to include Finding Dory which has grossed an incredible $1.02 billion in worldwide box office revenues.

So kick of the New Year with some incredible insights into crafting a story with the practices and principles at work in Pixar movies. I look forward to the opportunity to work with you! Or to put it another way…

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!