Saturday Hot Links

Time for the 268th installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.

Announced: Critics Choice Awards.

Announced: Golden Globe Award Nominations.

Announced: Screen Actors Guild Nominations.

SAG Nominations 2017: Biggest Snubs and Surprises.

Oscars: 3 Ways the Academy Can (and Should) Spruce Up the Awards.

Another Day, Another Oscar Surprise As ‘Moonlight’ And ‘Loving’ Deemed Adapted Screenplays.

BAFTA Moves to Improve Diversity in British Filmmaking.

Warner Bros Shakeup: Greg Silverman Steps Down, Toby Emmerich Takes Top Production Post.

Warner Bros. Regime Change: What’s Behind Greg Silverman’s Ouster.

Disney Exec Reveals Why There Are No Lightsabers in ‘Rogue One’ Advertising.

All the Bits From the ‘Rogue One’ Trailers That Weren’t in the Movie.

What the ‘Rogue One’ Missing Trailer Footage Tell Us About the Reshoots.

‘Rogue One’ Will Change The Way You Look At The Original ‘Star Wars’.

Fox’s Billion-Dollar Plan to Build a Content and Distribution Powerhouse.

Were 2016 Blockbusters a Step Forward for Female Characters?

22 Hollywood Assistants Dish on Biggest Triumphs, Lowest Moments and Craziest Tales.

Animation Roundtable: Seth Rogen and 6 More on Avoiding Ethnic Stereotypes and How to “Break the Mold” of Princesses.

From ‘Zootopia’ to ‘Moana,’ How This Year’s Animation Race Has Embraced Female Empowerment.

2016: Family Films Phenomenon.

Why Deadpool Was 2016’s Most Important Superhero Movie — For Better or Worse.

Studios, Theaters Reignite Talks for 17-Day Theatrical Window.

Hollywood Outposts Tie Studios to Crucial Foreign Markets.

China Box Office Down for Third Month Running.

‘Arrival’ and the Role of Sci-Fi in a “Post-Truth” World.

Hollywood’s obsession with biopics must be stopped before we get Madonna The Movie.

Black List Annual Party Celebrates 2016 Lineup of Screenplays.

On the Importance of These Year-End Best Script Lists.

Sundance Screenwriters Lab Unveils 15 Writers It Will Support.

Who Will Win 2017 as Hollywood’s Talent Agencies Battle to Get Big.

Nina Jacobson Has Her Revenge on Hollywood’s Old-Boy Network.

How Director Ava DuVernay’s South L.A. Roots Helped Her Shatter the Film Industry’s Glass Ceiling.

‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Screenwriter Mark Boal Settles First Amendment Case With U.S. Government.

‘Lost in London’ Trailer: Woody Harrelson’s Live Film (Yes, You Read That Right) Hits Theaters Next Month.

John Waters to Receive WGA’s Hunter Award.

Oliver Stone to Receive WGAW’s 2017 Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement.

A Padawan’s Guide to Star Wars Porn Adaptations.

Lights Out: We Like It In The Shadows.

A Celebration of the Steadicam Finds Filmmakers Beautifully Unmoored.

Todd McCarthy: The 10 Best Films of 2016.

The Best 2016 Movies For Families.

The 13 Best Horror Movies of 2016.

25 Movies Added to the National Historic Registry.

20 Superhero Movies That Almost Happened.

The 50 Most Beautiful Shots of The Star Wars Franchise.

On the Ranch with the Creators of “Westworld”.

2016: The Year of TV Bubbles.

The 25 Best TV Episodes of 2016.

Tim Goodman: The Best TV of 2016.

Maureen Ryan: The 25 Best Returning Shows of 2016.

The 20 Best Comedy Sketches of 2016.

Global TV Boom Fueled by Cross-Market Content.

Why India Will Be a Key Battleground for Amazon and Netflix.

Netflix’s ‘The OA’ Is an Extraordinary, Binge-Worthy December Surprise.

Why we screenwriters want to work for Netflix more than the BBC.

Inside GQ’s Video Playbook: How Keith Olbermann, 2 Chainz Tripled Viewers.

Facebook Plans to Start Buying Original Video Content.

Now you can broadcast live video directly in Twitter.

Longreads Best of 2016: Our 25 Most Popular Exclusives of the Year.

NaNoWriMo 2016 is Over: 4 Strategies to Plan Ahead for 2017.

The 10 most important books of 2016.

The 10 Best Comic-Book Covers of 2016.

Read Bob Dylan’s Full Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech.

93 Culture Creators on What They Loved in 2016.

The 10 Best Podcasts of 2016

The 10 Best Comedy Podcasts of 2016.

Listen: Chicks Who Script (Episode 94).

Listen: Scriptnotes (Episode 279).

Watch: The Serial: From Dickens To Star Wars.

Watch: Editing In Storytelling.

Watch: The Epidemic of Passable Movies.

Watch: The Moviejerk’s Best of Cinema: 2016 Edition.

Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week

How do I best make use of the resources available at Screenwriting Master Class?

Following up on last week’s SHL post, extolling the benefits of online education, I promised to address this question.

The first thing to note is the extensive curriculum Tom Benedek and I have created means any writer, no matter their level of experience — Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced — can find classes which can meet them where they are on their creative journey and take them deeper into their understanding of the craft.

If you are a Beginning writer, there is a host of one-week classes to facilitate your learning. Screenwriting theory? Take any or all of the eight Core courses which provide a comprehensive approach. Screenwriting practice? Pick and choose between 20+ Craft courses which cover a wide range of subjects from Handling Exposition to Writing Scenes, the First 15 Pages to Character Development Keys. Dip your toe into online learning with a single one-week course and see how the experience resonates with you.

If you are an Intermediate writer, the Core and Craft curriculum is a great way to augment your learning, but the workshops can take you to a whole other level of understanding and productivity: Prep: From Concept to Outline, Pages I: Writing the First Draft, Pages II: Rewriting Your Script. You not only learn approaches to each stage of the script-writing process, you also move forward one of your original stories toward a final draft.

If you are an Advanced writer, we offer private script workshop programs which we can tailor to your specific needs. Have a story you want to break in prep, then pound out a first draft? We can do that. Want a structure within which to rewrite a script? We can do that, too. Need a pro writer to consult with you one time or on a weekly basis on a scripted project? Got you covered. Just contact us and we take it from there.

Then there is The Quest with Scott Myers and The Process with Tom Benedek, each offering a comprehensive approach to the craft of screenwriting. These programs are geared for writers, no matter their level of experience, who want to immerse themselves in the craft, learn theory, then put that theory into practice by writing an original screenplay.

Given the experience Tom and I have both as professional screenwriters and educators, it’s clear to see why writers who have worked with us have achieved success in the business:

Screenwriting Master Class alumni have set up projects at major studios including Paramount, Warner Bros., and Legendary Pictures, TV networks including ABC, AMC, HBO, and USA, and signed with top agencies including CAA, The Gersh Agency, UTA, Verve, and WME, as well as managers including Circle of Confusion, Grandview, Lee Stobby, Madhouse Entertainment, Mosaic, and MXN Entertainment.

Indeed just last week, Pat Connelly who is one of my Quest writers, set up a Will Ferrell comedy at Legendary Pictures.

All of which is to say as you move into 2017 and look to upgrade your understanding of the craft, consider Screenwriting Master Class. If you’ve never taken an online course, try one of our one-week classes to ‘dip your toe’ in those waters. I can almost 100% guarantee you will LOVE Screenwriting Master Class courses.

In next week’s Saturday Hot Links: I will lay out everything you need to know about the Craft curriculum including two exciting new courses and the Craft Package which not only gets you immediate access to all of the Craft content, you are also automatically enrolled in each of the 10 one-week Craft classes, all at a savings of over 50%!

Until then, keep writing!