Story Ideas: Franchises
As it turned out, our collective conversation about “Go Into The Story: The Quest” over the last couple of weeks has, I think, sharpened everyone’s awareness about the importance of working with the strongest story ideas possible.
Let me repeat something I can not verify factually, but I know it in my gut to be true: At least 50% of the value of your screenplay to a Hollywood buyer is the story concept.
And that’s why as you all were busily working up your loglines for “The Quest” — all 4000 of them! — I hammered you with a daily series of posts:
Story Ideas: The two most important words are ‘what if’
Story Ideas: Halliwell’s Film Guide
Story Ideas: Think international
Story Ideas: Test your concept
Story Ideas: Challenge yourself
Story Ideas: Get my [bleeping] attention!
So this week, I propose to round out this subject of generating story ideas with five more posts, thus giving you a myriad number of ways to approach this incredibly important aspect of the screenwriting process.
Today: Franchise.
If there is one word that is almost assured of getting a Hollywood movie studio president of production all aglow, it is probably the word franchise. Just think how happy Alan Horn was at Warner Bros. back in the last decade knowing almost every year for a decade, he knew the studio would release a Harry Potter movie. Those dates on the calendar, stretching out for years on the horizon were locked in and locked down to be hugely profitable release dates.
Right now, you can to one of my favorite websites BoxOfficeMojo and see the release dates of movies up through 2015. Look at some of these titles on that list:
Captain America 2, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, How to Train Your Dragon 2, Transformers 4, The Smurfs 3.
Each one of those is a franchise, a title upon which a studio can develop and produce multiple movies.
So wouldn’t it be wise for us when we are kicking around story ideas to think in terms of a possible franchise?
Now you will notice something in that list of movies above: All of them are pre-branded. Based on a comic book, a remake of a movie, a children’s book, toys, cartoons.
Unless you have an extra couple of million dollars in your pockets to obtain the rights to a popular pre-branded commodity, you have to approach franchise in a different way.
In short, you have to think of a franchise concept.
Let’s look at some movie franchises that were based off original concepts [I think all of these qualify].
You got your cops: Lethal Weapon, Beverly Hills Cop, Bad Boys, Dirty Harry, Rush Hour.
You got your supernatural: Ghostbusters, Poltergeist, Paranormal Activity.
You got your horror: Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Scream, Saw.
You got your family: Free Willy, The Karate Kid, Home Alone, The Santa Clause, Spy Kids.
You got your sports: The Mighty Ducks, Major League, Rocky.
You got your science fiction: Alien, Predator, Star Wars, The Matrix.
You got your action: Death Wish, Rambo, The Fast and the Furious.
You got your sex: Porky’s, American Pie.
And you got your Back to the Future which I don’t know where to put.
This is just scratching the surface of franchises that arose from original concepts.
Observant eyes will notice that at the core of each of these movies is a character or characters. Either their personality, unique capabilities, their distinctive circumstances or a combination of everything, something makes them franchise-worthy. Think of Indiana Jones, Ace Ventura, Austin Powers, Crocodile Dundee.
Is there anything in the world keeping you from conjuring up a franchise concept? A franchise character?
Because as excited as that president of production gets when they acquire a franchise property… it ain’t nothin’ compared to how crazy you will get when you see your $$ stretching out forever!
Tomorrow: Obituaries.
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