The next Go Into The Story Read and Analysis Script: “Zootopia”

Read the script for the hit animated movie and analyze it next week.

In 2015, we launched several initiatives at Go Into The Story. One of the best: A script read and analysis series. As a result, there are 50+ scripts GITS readers have analyzed. Moreover volunteers wrote up scene-by-scene breakdowns for each script, not only to serve as a foundation for our week-long discussion, but also to create an online resource for writers. To date, we have 44 scene-by-scene breakdowns.

On Monday, December 5, we will spend a week digging into and analyzing the movie script Zootopia, screenplay by Jared Bush & Phil Johnston, story by Byron Howard & Rich Moore & Jared Bush & Jim Reardon & Josie Trinidad & Phil Johnston and Jennifer Lee.

To date, the movie has grossed $1,023,000,000 in worldwide box office revenues, so it is a huge hit. That’s over a billion reasons why we should read and analyze the story to see what storytelling insights we can gleam from this smash Disney film.

Our daily schedule next week:

Monday: Scene-By-Scene Breakdown
Tuesday: Major Plot Points
Wednesday: Characters
Thursday: Themes
Friday: Dialogue
Saturday: Takeaways

You may download the script for Zootopia here.

With the influx of nearly 30 movie scripts from 2016 recently made available to the public including notable ones as Birth of a Nation, The Girl on the Train, Jackie, Manchester by the Sea, and Sully, I am soliciting volunteers to read one of these scripts and do a scene-by-scene breakdown to be used as the foundation of our ongoing script read and analysis series.

As proof of the importance of reading scripts / watching movies and burrowing into their underlying structure, check out this video clip with screenwriter Kristen ‘Kiwi’ Smith who co-wrote such hits as 10 Things I Hate About You and Legally Blonde.

For those folks who volunteer to write a scene-by-scene breakdown, beyond your name being noted here, my thanks, and your own personal dose of creative juju, you will learn something about story structure and further develop this important skill set.

To download PDFs of the scene-by-scene breakdowns we have aggregated to date, go here.

The latest volunteers:

A Monster Calls / Andrew Turner

Anthropoid / Marija Nielsen

Captain Fantastic / Despina Karintis

Denial / Gina Gomez

Eye in the Sky / Abhinav Tiwari

Hail, Caesar! / Brianne VanTuyle

Kubo and the Two Strings / Nikki Syreeta

Maggie’s Plan / Monique Mata

Manchester by the Sea / Ashley Lara

Miles Ahead / Alecia Hodges

The Secret Life of Pets / Paul Huffman

Victor Frankenstein / Lisa Gomez

Zootopia / Will King

Some other 2016 movie scripts have become available since I posted the original call for volunteers, so if you’d like to participate, please post the script you’d like to read and provide a scene-by-scene breakdown for in the comments section of this post.

Thanks, all! See you tomorrow to begin our week-long analysis of Zootopia!