Archive for the 'Dead Projects' Category

• e  19 What should I do in a general meeting?

  Taking generals: how to turn a get to know you meeting into paid work.

• e  26 Which project should I write?

  I’d recommend writing the one that has the best ending.

• e  49 Shazam! It ain’t happening.

  Before the holidays, I promised a post-mortem on Shazam!, the big-screen adaptation of the DC comic I’ve been working on since early 2007. In case you’re not familiar with the character, here’s what I wrote when I first announced the project:

  Captain Marvel is a superhero roughly as powerful as Superman, minus the heat-vision and [...]

• e  40 Aquaman is a Pescepublican

  Superhero politics should remain abstract.

• e  13 Time jumps and oil drilling

  Two unrelated questions answered. 1. Clarifying young and old versions of characters. 2. How much research to do before writing.

• e  36 How to cut pages

  Just as important, what NOT to do when trying to cut length. Don’t cheat.

• e  3 Nope, not my Barbarella

  A few readers have written in asking about the announcement by Dino De Laurentiis that he intends to make a new Barbarella. Specifically, will he be using my script?

  As far as I can tell, no. The rights to my script are incredibly murky–it was a shared project between Warner Bros. and Fox 2000, [...]

• e  20 How to Revisit Fried Worms

  Ten years ago, I got my first paid screenwriting job, adapting Thomas Rockwell’s How to Eat Fried Worms into a script for Ron Howard and Universal. I went through four paid drafts over more than a year, and loved it.

  Thomas Schlamme signed on to direct it. At the time, he was a mid-level [...]

• e  42 Writing what can’t be shot

  Movies are about what characters do and say, not who they were before the story started.

• e  Comments Off What became of American McGee’s Alice?

  Update query on the video game potentially becoming a movie.

• e  13 The Dead File

  While writing about the non-existent Columbia thriller on my resume, I got to thinking about all the other scripts I’ve written that haven’t been produced. I thought it might be alarming comforting for aspiring screenwriters to see how much work never makes it to the screen.

  This list is only projects for which I’ve written [...]

• e  6 More D.C. stuff available in the Downloads section

  Chris Landa of Salt Lake City, Utah, wrote in to say:

  I just finished reading your scripts of D.C. Do you have a series bible that you could put on your site? I’m trying to find examples of series bibles and would love to find out what happens to the characters of D.C.

  A series “bible” [...]

• e  4 Two scripts for “The Circle” now up

  I’ve added two additional television scripts for download, from my show “The Circle.” The first is the pilot, titled “My Three Sons.” The second is “Gravedigger,” which would would have been the second or third episode.

• e  2 The status of Barbarella

  Paul Wood from Essex, England writes:

  I contribute to a Drew Barrymore fan site (The Drew Barrymore Collective). I was looking for updates on Barbarella because that’s the film I want to see more than any other. Would you be so kind as to give us an update on how the script is coming along? I’d [...]

• e  5 Getting a pitch meeting

  Getting the meeting, but also what to do in the room.

• e  1 More copyrights and changes

  How important is it to register your screenplay?