The value of a great logline
From Daily Variety last week:
Fox has tapped Nimrod Antal (“Vacancy”) to direct “Predators” for Robert Rodriguez, who will produce through his Troublemaker Studios.
The project’s scheduled for a July 7, 2010 release. It represents the fifth iteration of the franchise after the original “Predator,” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, in 1987, “Predator 2” (1990); “Alien vs. Predator” (2004); and “Alien vs. Predator: Requiem” (2007).
Lawrence Gordon, who produced K-9, also produced the original Predator. He told me an interesting story about that movie. It was based on a spec script by two brothers, Jim Thomas & John Thomas. Evidently the script went around town and every studio passed. But Larry used to have his assistants accumulate a list of all the scripts that had been out on the previous weekend read, keying in on each screenplay’s logline, even on projects that had been passed on.
And that’s precisely what happened with Predator: He read the logline — “A team of commandos, on a mission in a Central American jungle, find themselves hunted by an extra-terrestrial warrior” — and said, “That’s a movie.”
So he met with the Thomas brothers, secured the script, and voila — here we are 22 years and 4 movies later, and the franchise is being tapped again.
All because of a great logline.
As it happens, this week’s lecture I’m writing for the advanced screenwriting class I’m currently teaching is about treatments, pitches, and loglines. What comprises an effective logline? It should answer three questions:
* Who’s the Protagonist?
* What’s the Protagonist’s goal?
* Who’s keeping the Protagonist from their goal?
In other words:
Protagonist. Goal. Nemesis.
Here’s the logline for K-9: “A freewheeling cop aims to take down a long-time criminal adversary, but gets stuck with a new partner — a police dog.”
Loglines: Love ’em or hate ‘em?