The Business of Screenwriting: The Birth, Life and Death of a Movie (Part 3)

In Part 1, we went from an emotional high to low in setting up a remake of the 1955 comedy The Court Jester, going from a done deal to no deal due to rights issues.

In Part 2, we experienced joy as the project was resurrected at MGM, then landing none other Mike Myers as the star of the movie who at the time was an incredibly hot actor.

I suspect you know where this sad saga is headed. Hell, I gave it away with the title of the series:

Part 1: Birth.

Part 2: Life.

Part 3: Death.

How did the project die? Let’s go back in time, shall we, to relive that obituarial moment in the present tense.

I am in my home office, grinding away on another project. Frankly, I haven’t even been thinking of The Court Jester all that much, simply basking the warm background glow of a go project with an A-list movie star who has publicly declared the movie to be his father’s second favorite film.

I mean, this is one movie that is destined to get produced, right?

Rrrrring.

Hello?

It’s CAA calling.

Uh, so… Jester? It’s dead. Again.
What? Why?
The studio read the new draft… and they didn’t connect with it.

“Didn’t connect with it” is Hollywood-speak for “hated it”.

Evidently Mike and his guy took the story in a whole other direction. They passed on his take. So he walked. Project goes from A-list actor to zero attachments like that.

Why don’t they just go back to our draft?
Scott, you know how it is…

Indeed I do. When a PLAYER walks away from a project, no matter the reason, the heat the project previously had immediately vanishes, replaced by a big black cloud perpetually hanging over it. It’s hard to get any movie made. When a project has negative associations… virtually impossible.

Hence… Death. The Court Jester just one more slain project, the script a PDF corpse piled upon a tower of other felled projects reaching toward the heavens… or perhaps more aptly, down toward Development Hell.

What’s a writer’s takeaway from this story of woe? Two things.

First, you can never expect a go project to actually go. You get a green light, that means absolutely nothing until the first day of principle photography.

Second, this kind of shit happens all the time. If you cannot handle extremes highs and lows arising from a business where the decision-makers desperately want to say No to save their ass from potential failure, but sometimes have to say Yes… to create product… to generate revenue… to pay the bills, do yourself a favor: Become a novelist.

If you love movies and TV with a kind of mad obsession, fine. But be forewarned: Someday you will have a project that is born, lives and dies before a single frame of film gets shot. Many more movie projects don’t get produced than do get made.

As that sage observer of the movie business Bruce Hornsby wrote, “That’s just the way it is.”

The Business of Screenwriting is a weekly series of GITS posts based upon my experiences as a complete Hollywood outsider who sold a spec script for a lot of money, parlayed that into a screenwriting career during which time I’ve made some good choices, some okay decisions, and some really stupid ones. Hopefully you’ll be the wiser for what you learn here.