Saturday Hot Links
Time for the 219th installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.
The Academy Members Project Has Now Identified 5500 Oscar Voters!
How Many Votes Does It Take to Get an Oscar Nomination.
‘Star Wars’ Lifts Disney to $2 Billion at 2015 U.S. Box Office.
Box Office: ‘Star Wars’ Crosses $1 Billion Globally at Record Pace.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens: One key takeaway from the film’s $1 billion haul.
‘Star Wars’ Box Office: “People Are Seeing It Three and Four Times”.
Why ‘Star Wars’ Hasn’t Boosted Disney, Movie Theaters Stock.
‘Star Wars’: Why the Climactic Moment of ‘The Force Awakens’ Works.
Inevitable ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Backlash as Critics, Fans Turn on New Film.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens Ending Details And More Revealed In Official Screenplay.
Hour-Long Post-Mortem Documentary on the Making of The Phantom Menace.
Box Office Has Record Year as Few Share the Wealth.
2015 Box Office Totals a Record $11 Billion.
11 Reasons for Record-Breaking $11 Billion Box Office in 2015.
In Hollywood, a Year of Mining the Past for Box-Office Gold.
2015: The Hits, The Flops & The Year In Box Office.
Universal Holds Off Disney and ‘Star Wars’ for Market Share Crown.
Box Office Mojo: January 2016 Looks to Get Off to a Sizzling Start.
How Hollywood Should Tackle Its Two Biggest Threats in 2016.
Independence Day: Resurgence Leads Another Year of Remake Sequels.
In ‘The Big Short,’ Adam McKay Uses Absurdity as His Guide.
Steven Spielberg Puts His Own Big Bucks Into the New Amblin Partners.
Quentin Tarantino’s Original ‘Kill Bill’ Plan Could Have Included 5 Films.
Quentin Tarantino Is Getting Sued Over ‘Django Unchained’.
Christopher Nolan to Direct Action Thriller ‘Dunkirk’ for Warner Bros.
How Much Money Did It Cost To Save Matt Damon in The Movies.
Here’s the Original Budget Breakdown for Kevin Smith’s ‘Clerks’.
‘Halloween’ Franchise Up for Grabs as Dimension Lets Michael Myers Slip Away.
Crowdfunded ‘Star Trek’ Movie Draws Lawsuit from Paramount, CBS.
Can Alamo Drafthouse and Annapurna’s Megan Ellison Save the Video Store.
AMC, Regal, Cinemark Theaters Under Antitrust Investigation.
South Korea Sets Movie Attendance Record for Fifth Consecutive Year.
China Box Office Grows Astonishing 48.7 Percent in 2015, Hits $6.78 Billion.
Why Russia May Impose Further Restrictions on Hollywood in 2016.
The 50 best Pixar Easter eggs.
Top 10 Pirated Movies of 2015 See Alarming Increase in Downloads.
Movies the Oscars Will Overlook, but Shouldn’t.
With indie films such as ‘Brooklyn’ and ‘Room,’ the creativity often begins with the financing.
The Indie Film Community Picks the Best Movies and TV Shows of 2015.
Indie Distributor Scorecard 2015: Who Won and Who Lost.
The 20 Highest Grossing Indies of 2015.
The 13 Most Underrated Movies of 2015.
The Best Movie Scenes of 2015.
Awards Guide: Inside the 14 Most Nominated TV Shows (So Far).
2015 Ratings Wrap: Ranking This Year’s Network Winners and Losers.
Infographic: Why Some TV Shows Succeed While Others Crash and Burn.
Even ‘Hamilton’ Can’t Put A Smiley Face On Broadway’s Bruised Box Office.
Network visualization: Mapping Shakespeare’s Tragedies.
Top 50 sci-fi spaceships: 2015 edition.
2015: The Year Nerd Culture Gave Pop Culture Never-Ending Stories.
7 Biggest Tech Trainwrecks in 2015: From Tidal to Twitter to Taylor Swift.
Scientists Reveal The Science Fiction Stories That Inspired Them.
From ‘Star Wars’ to ‘Secret Wars’: What Comics Sold Best In 2015.
Spotify Hit With $150 Million Class Action Over Unpaid Royalties.
Hollywood’s Top 10 Legal Disputes of 2015.
A Look At The Morning Rituals and Daily Habits of 9 Popular Authors.
New Yorker’s Fifteen Most-Read Magazine Stories of 2015.
New Yorker’s Fifteen Most-Read Blog Posts of 2015.
Scott Beggs bids farewell to Film School Rejects.
Indiewire Veteran Peter Knegt Says Goodbye.
Maureen Johnson: My Year on Space Mountain.
Chuck Wendig: RIP, 2015. Hello, 2016.
3rd and Fairfax (WGA Podcast): Episode 14.
Screen Talk: Looks Back at 2015 and Forward to 2016.
Scriptnotes: Episode 230 (Lawrence Kasdan).
Watch: TMS Survives the Star Wars Marathon [video].
Watch: Finished ‘Making a Murderer’? 10 More Infuriating Documentaries Streaming on Netflix [video].
Watch: The Most Anticipated Movies of 2016 According to Indiewire’s Year-End Critics Poll [video].
Watch: Idris Elba and Cary Fukunaga on the Ten-Year Journey to Make ‘Beasts of No Nation’ [video].
Watch: Massive 21-Minute Featurette Gets You Ready For The Return Of ‘The X-Files’ [video].
Haskell Wexler, Renowned Cinematographer, Dies at 93.
Daryl Hannah Facebook comments on her uncle Haskell Wexler’s death.
Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week
Have you ever started a script and not finished it?
Has it ever taken you 6 months, 1 year, or more to finish a script?
Have you ever gotten so lost when writing a story, you became incredibly frustrated, and gave up?
Chances are you did not do enough story preparation.
Don’t you think it’s time to approach writing like many professionals do and break your story in prep?
Screenwriting Master Class offers a 6-week online Prep: From Concept to Outline writing workshop, a unique approach to develop your story, enabling you to crack it before you type FADE IN.
The beauty of this approach is three-fold:
- You can go into the page-writing part of the process with confidence because you’ve already broken the story.
- Since you won’t be overwhelmed with finding the story when writing pages, you can focus your creativity where it should be — characters, dialogue, themes, mood, pace, etc.
- By devoting six weeks to prep, you will almost assuredly cut the overall amount of time you spend writing your script and increase the odds you will finish your draft.
Here are a few testimonials from writers who have participated in the Prep: From Concept to Outline online workshop:
“‘From Concept to Outline’ is a course I wish I had known about a couple of years ago. I would recommend this whole-heartedly for anyone who is about to embark on their first script or ANY script. This lays the foundation stone to your story.” — Camilla Castree
“This has been an outstanding class. I’ve taken a few from other sources and most don’t live up to their promises (they shall remain nameless). But here, I’ve learned so much and gotten way more than my money’s worth.” — Daniel O’Donahue
“I went into Scott’s Prep class doubting I’d ever finish a script; I came out with the tools, confidence and inspiration to power through a complete first draft in just a few months. Amazing!” — Jessica Sada
In the nearly six years I’ve been teaching through Screenwriting Master Class, I’ve led multiple Prep workshops as it has proved to be one of the most popular classes we offer. Why? Because it works! If you fully engage yourself in the six stages of this process, you will end up with an outline you can use as a springboard for writing your screenplay.
Moreover I hear from writers frequently who have taken the workshop, how they continue to adapt and use it on other stories. I’m not saying it’s the way to break a story, however it has proved to be a viable approach for many writers.
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.
What the workshop consists of:
* Six lectures written by me
* Six writing assignments which take you from a Protagonist Character Treatment all the way to a Narrative Throughline outline
* Six due dates to spur you to make progress on your story
* Online forums with feedback from myself and your fellow writers
* Weekly teleconferences for yet more feedback
In other words, a structure which steers you through the prep-writing process… from concept to outline.
I will be leading the next session starting January 11. For those of you thinking about taking up the Zero Draft Thirty Challenge in March, if you take my Prep workshop, you will have a scene-by-scene outline in hand and ready to go on March 1, there to guide you through your Zero Draft process. In other words, perfect timing!
For more information Prep: From Concept to Outline, go here.
As always, I look forward to the opportunity to work with you!