It’s extremely rare for a first-draft screenplay to be ready to shoot; in fact, in your authors’ collective careers, which span hundreds of movies, it has happened exactly once, and even then, the writer did revisions to attract casting and to customize the script to budget and location demands. Rather, scripts are written and rewritten, with input from constructive readers, directors, actors, and producers; this process is called development. The purpose of development is to refine the script so that it represents as precisely as possible the plan for shooting; even with a class project, good script development is the most essential element for ensuring a good movie.

Developing Your Script

There are three great reasons to develop your script through several revisions to get it as polished as possible and to take development seriously. First, even though writing is hard, it requires far fewer resources than does shooting or editing. It is much cheaper—actually free!—to revise a page than to reshoot a scene.

Second, a bad script never makes a good movie. Most films that fall short of excellence do so because their scripts were not good enough in the first place and did not go through sufficient independent scrutiny and feedback. Therefore, even if you are working on a project for yourself to direct (and produce and star in and write the songs for), you need to create a process for personal development to make your screenplay excellent. Such a process involves trusted friends and advisers who have experience reading scripts and commenting on them, who can be encouraging and give honest feedback, and who can be relied on to tell you the truth even when it is painful. Good writers are always helped by sensitive readers’ responses, and all writing involves rewriting. (See How Do I... Respond to Script Notes?)

The third reason development needs to be taken seriously is because it involves business matters and intellectual property rights. Unfortunately, many first-time writers agree to work with writing partners, independent producers, and independent companies without a clear understanding of the business aspects of these relationships. In these instances, friendships are frequently damaged and projects, on the verge of getting made, get stopped dead in their tracks because of disputes over rights, ownership, and payment. It is always a good idea to have a written agreement about your project if you are working with anyone else, even if there is no money initially changing hands—and even if it is just for a class project and you memorialize your agreement by exchanging emails. For some of the elements typically found in a writer’s contract, see Business Smarts: A Writer’s Contract, below. Remember: a verbal agreement is worth as much as the paper it is written on!

The Studio Development Cycle

Film studios have a much more formal and rigorous development process than you’ll follow in class—a process that not only offers some perspective on what happens when millions of dollars are at stake, but also expands on why intellectual property rights, which you learned about earlier, are so important. Studios begin with a legal process of getting rights. Often, they will purchase, or option, the intellectual property rights in a given work (screenplays written independently, video games, or any other kind of intellectual property), which means the studio will pay a certain amount of money for the right to develop that project for a given period of time. When that time is up, the studio must either purchase the rights—in which case the studio will own the rights forever—or let the option go, in which case the rights will revert, or go back, to the original owner. This process is formally known as having your project put into turn-around.

Sometimes studios acquire rights to a story based on the writer’s pitch. A pitch is a meeting in which the writer tells the film’s story. The pitch generally has two forms—short and long. A short pitch, which may be given over the phone by the writer’s agent or a producer, is two to three minutes and is enough to determine if there is interest. The long pitch, given in person by the writer, is 15 to 20 minutes and gives the whole story of the film. Although few projects sold as pitches ever get made into finished movies, studios still buy them occasionally, especially from established writers with whom the studio has a preexisting relationship, or if it is based on a recent, major worldwide event.

Another way studios obtain rights to a story is through script submissions, but these kinds of submissions can be tricky, as studios are often faced with lawsuits from people who believe the studios stole their idea. Studios will not even look at unsolicited submissions; you will get your screenplay back in the original sealed envelope that you sent it in, with a formal letter stating the studio’s policy of not accepting unsolicited submissions. To give themselves some protection, studios accept script submissions only from recognized entertainment agents or attorneys, because these legally authorized writers’ representatives understand the industry’s business practices—especially the fact that many projects are similar to many other projects—and will counsel writers not to pursue unfounded plagiarism claims.

Even though studios restrict the ways they receive new material, they still face the daunting process of evaluating the 25,000 projects that are submitted to them each year. Because the volume of submitted screenplays is so large, studios employ teams of executives whose initial task is to determine whether each project is commercial and meets the studio’s needs. These executives are assisted by story analysts, who read the projects and write coverage: a brief summary and commentary on each project. When executives decline a project, they say they are “passing” on it. The vast majority of scripts are rejected, both because of the sheer volume of them and because to say yes to a project entails a considerable commitment of time and finances.

If the executives believe the project should be acquired by the studio, they will pitch the project to upper management. If management concurs and a business arrangement or deal can be made, generally with a writer’s agent or attorney, the studio will put the project into development; all studio business deals with writers are governed by the studios’ contract with the Writers Guild. Each studio has between 100 and 200 projects in active development, and another two to three hundred projects that are inactive, or “on the shelf.”

Studio development involves a close collaboration between the writer and the executives developing the project. Generally, there is an initial meeting during which the writer pitches a vision for writing or revising the project, and several meetings may follow in which the characters and story are discussed in greater detail. The executive may consult with upper studio management in an effort to ensure that the project’s direction will ultimately be to their liking. (See Producer Smarts: How to Work with the Writer, below.)

When the writer turns in a draft of the script, the studio executives read it and decide if they are going to continue with the project and, if so, whether they will continue with the same writer. If the answer to both questions is yes, the executives will prepare studio notes, which provide a road map for the writer to follow in a script revision.

The studio may also decide to replace the writer, an event that happens frequently—especially on most films that eventually get made. In this case, the first writer’s contract is terminated, and the project becomes an open assignment, meaning that the assignment is open for a new writer to work on it.

The studio may also decide to abandon the project entirely. Because studios have many projects in development even though they only make about 20 films per year, more than 80 percent of development projects are eventually abandoned. The average time a project is in development until it is either abandoned or given a green light (formally committed to production) is three years. Some projects move much more quickly, whereas others have been in development for 20 years or more before getting made. For this reason, studio development is often called “development hell” by writers, producers, and executives alike, with a knowing sense of irony about the arbitrary and lengthy nature of the process. On the other hand, it is a process that works best for the studios because it gives them security to know that a very large budget movie will have a script that the senior executives at the studio like.