Saturday Hot Links

Time for the 237th installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.

Film Guide: What Movie Should You Watch This Weekend.

2016 Summer Movie Preview: 27 Indie Films and Festival Favorites to See This Season.

Can Indie Distributors Compete With Superheroes for Summer Audiences?

From Clooney to Spielberg, 5 Big Questions About Summer Box Office.

Holy Social Security! Older Stars Are Cashing in on Superhero Movies.

2016 Movie Titles: Rise of the Colons — From ‘Captain America’ to ‘Rogue One’.

Box Office: The Verdict for ‘Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice’.

Marvel v DC: Dawn of Rivalry: A Look at Five Decades of Competition.

From Pizza Boxes to Motorcycles: Marvel Reveals $200 Million in ‘Civil War’ Brand Partnerships.

Marvel Studios’ Origin Secrets Revealed by Mysterious Founder: History Was “Rewritten”.

Is the Superhero Craze Destroying the Movies?

Disney Global Box Office Sizzles: 3 Movies Pass $700 Million Since December.

Why Disney Owns the Global Box Office and Isn’t Stopping.

In an Era of Streaming, Cinema Is Under Attack.

How a Donald Trump Presidential Win Could Chill the Global Film Industry.

Why Hollywood Is Slow to Anoint Multicultural Movie Stars.

7 People Trying to Change Hollywood — and How They Might Actually Succeed.

Failing the “DuVernay Test”: 6 signs your on-screen black character is a tired stereotype.

LGBT Characters in 2015 Movies: The Good, Bad and Very Ugly.

Why Are We Ignoring Female-Centric Horror Films?

How Sweden hit its 50:50 gender target for film production in record time.

Female Cinematographers Band Together to Form New Collective.

How Hollywood Judges Its Childless Female Characters.

Why Cannes Is Giving Amazon (and Not Netflix) So Much Love.

The 25 Most Anticipated Films Of The 2016 Cannes Film Festival.

5 Ways the Cannes Market Will Impact Indie Film.

Will $3.8 Billion DreamWorks Animation Deal Kickstart More Hollywood Consolidation?

Animators Fret Over Frugal NBCUniversal’s DreamWorks Takeover.

What’s Next for Jeffrey Katzenberg After Comcast’s Purchase of DreamWorks Animation.

Paramount Pictures Inks Deal with Locksmith Animation.

Universal Sets Release Date for Third Film in Monsters Universe.

Hollywood Studios Compete to Release Falconry-Themed Films.

Skydance Media Buys Game Developer The Workshop And Launches Interactive Division.

Surging Hollywood Shoots Forces Hunt for New Toronto Soundstages.

Hollywood Drives Europe to All-Time $8.2 Billion Box Office High.

Julia Roberts Made $3 Million for 4 Days on ‘Mother’s Day’.

Brad Weston Stepping Down As New Regency President/CEO.

Fox International Productions to Expand Slate of South Korean Projects.

How Hollywood Plays Immigration Game to Get Shortcuts for Stars.

Why Would a Distributor Buy a Movie Without Seeing It?

Hollywood, Readjusted: Why the all-time box-office charts cannot be trusted.

Too Old For This Sh*t: A Somewhat Brief History Of Shane Black Buddy Movies.

A Brief Look at Will Ferrell’s Brief Involvement With a Ronald Reagan Dementia Movie.

Discovered by Spielberg: How a Lucky Encounter With the Director Launched These 6 Stars.

“Uber Ex,” a Rom-Com Spec Script.

Why Good Guys Fight: Seven reasons why heroes battle heroes in the movies.

Kodak and Kickstarter Launch Program for Indie Filmmakers to Shoot on Film.

Kaufman Astoria Studios, NYU Partner on Film School Initiative.

James Schamus Partners with Black List to Discover Horror Screenwriter.

A Filmmaker’s Saga: Harvey Weinstein’s Outrageous Battle to Sabotage My Movie About Him.

Engineering Prometheus: From Jon Spaihts to Damon Lindelof.

A Teacher Thought It Was a Good Idea to Show The Human Centipede 2 in Class.

‘Ghostbusters’ Is the Most Disliked Movie Trailer in YouTube History.

‘This is Spinal Tap’ is the only movie on IMDb to be rated on a scale of 11.

A Look Back At The Cabin in the Woods: Overturning Horror Plot Devices.

I Want To Believe: The Power of Narrative.

On Robots as a Metaphor for Marginalization: The Stories We’re Not Telling.

The 30 best closing lines in films.

Directors Guild of America Chooses 80 Best-Directed Films, Ever.

Sex and Sexier: The Hays Code wasn’t that bad.

Spoilers: What’s Acceptable, and What Definitely Isn’t OK.

Pilot Buzz: Female-Led Comedies, Time Travel & Known Brands Heating Up at Broadcast Nets.

Network-By-Network Scorecard: What’s Working and What’s Not.

Upfronts 2016: Hot Ad Market Bodes Well for Network Sales.

Why This Year’s TV Upfront May Be Unlike Any Other in Recent Memory.

When Character Deaths (and Revivals) Work — and When They Don’t.

NewFronts Mystery: How Many Shows Actually Get Made.

At CBS News, the Future May Not Be TV.

Discovery Eyes Layoffs Amid Financial Woes.

Ellen DeGeneres Launches Digital Network With 6 Original Shows.

AOL to Go It Alone Producing Most of Its Shows.

Hulu Plans to Launch Live-Channel Streaming.

YouTube Plans to Sell Cable TV Bundle.

Vimeo to Add Subscriptions After Buying Digital Video Start-Up VHX.

Vice CEO Pitches Plan to Launch 20 TV Channels Worldwide This Year.

Buzzfeed Reports 7 Billion Content Clicks Every Month.

Peabody Awards, Facebook Partner on New Award Honoring Digital Content.

Why Digital Video Is the Ultimate Equalizer Among All Media.

The Feed is Dying.

5 Major Ways Freelancers Will Change The Economy By 2040.

Clear-eyed and cutting edge: Has the short story come of age.

10 Must-Read Books for May 2016.

Tony Awards Nominations: Complete List.

NBC Chief Bob Greenblatt Had a Secret Role in Broadway’s ‘Hamilton’ Affairs.

How the ‘Hamilton’ Effect Is Reverberating Across Broadway.

Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney Confirmed for Desert Trip Festival.

Study finds that musicians die 25 years younger than average person.

Here Are 11 Board Game Movies Hollywood Should Make Next.

New York Times Doubles Down on VR With Episodic Series.

How drones will change the world in the next 5 years.

The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru.

Chicks Who Script: Episode 83 (Stephanie Pressman).

The Power of Film (Film Inquiry): Episode 1 (director Jen McGowan).

Watch: How to End a Movie.

Watch: Larry Wilmore’s Full Speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Watch: Why CGI Sucks (Except It Doesn’t).

Watch: Following Kubrick (Tracking Shots).

Watch: Writer’s Block: A Super Cut.

Watch: The Dutch Angle.

Wayne Crawford, Writer and Producer on ‘Valley Girl,’ Dies at 69.

Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week: Let’s face it: Rewriting is a bitch. Or a bastard. Pick your gender specific invective. Doesn’t matter. The process is a pain no matter how you shake your fist and swear at it.

One big issue I’ve found with writers caught up in the maelstrom of rewriting is that there is no one surefire path to success. This stands to reason. Stories are organic and so a certain amount of rewriting them involves wallowing in the wilderness. That’s just the nature of things.

However I have an approach which I honestly believe can move your process forward in a big way. It’s one I use in the Pages II: Rewriting Your Script workshop, a 10-week class that guides you through a rewrite.

In this workshop, you will not only drill down into your story and understand it more clearly, if you do the work, you will get from FADE IN to FADE OUT on your next draft, and move you script toward the point you can bring it to market.

Here is an overview of the approach employed in Pages II: Rewriting Your Script:

* The first four weeks, it’s about assessing your current draft, identifying problems as well as content that works, brainstorming solutions, then working up a revision outline.

* The next four weeks, it’s knocking out your draft in quarters: Week 5 — Act One. Week 6 — The first half of Act Two. Week 7 — The second half of Act Two. Week 8 — Act Three.

* The last two weeks: Polish and Edit.

There are 10 lectures that provide prompts and tips to steer you through the rewrite, weekly due dates to compel you to do the work, and a workshop environment in which you receive constructive critiques from your fellow writers along with detailed feedback from myself, a combination of written feedback and teleconferences.

What’s more, you learn tools you can use to incorporate into your rewrite process from here on out, making your experience less bitchy / bastardy.

Here is a testimonial from Russell Simpson, a writer who has gone through the Pages II experience:

“I asked friends, trawled the internet, read the blogs and still found myself a touch bewildered by all the self-aggrandizement and shady plaudits. Then I read the brilliant Black List Blog. And I looked up the writer. And it’s Scott Myers…

Scott’s course is superb. Scott possesses an enviable combination of honesty, bravery and mercy. As long as you are prepared to work hard, this course WILL improve your craftsmanship. I fed a feature through Scott’s dynamo brain and, out the other end is a piece of which I’m intensely proud. If you’re hesitating, stop. You’ll be thankful.”

I do not subscribe to the belief there is one approach to writing… or rewriting. Every writer is different. Every story is different. But I do know this: The process we use in Pages II has helped many, many writers solve major story issues, discover important story keys, and enable them to take their script to the next level.

If you have a script that is a complete draft, but you know needs work…

Or a partially completed draft where you got stuck and couldn’t find your way out…

Or a story you’ve rewritten multiple times, yet feel it just doesn’t work…

I encourage you to consider joining me in my upcoming Rewriting Your Script workshop which begins Monday, June 13. Note: This is the only time I’ll be offering Pages II in 2016.

For more information, go here.

For a look at my first lecture from Pages II: Rewriting Your Script, go here.

I look forward to the opportunity to work with you!