Saturday Hot Links
Time for the 388th installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.
Over 7,000 Writers Fire Their Agents as New Reality Takes Hold
Writers Guild Launches New Effort to Cut Agents From Pitch Process
To TV Writers, Pay Fight With Agents Has Another Villain: Wall Street
Why Hollywood Writers Are Firing the Agents They Love
How Hollywood Writers Are Finding Jobs After Firing Their Agents
Talent Agencies’ Fight With Writers May Impact IPO Plans
Box Office: ‘The Curse of La Llorona’ Tops Terrifyingly Slow Easter With $26.5M
Box Office Preview: ‘Avengers: Endgame’ Preps for Record $850M-$900M Global Bow
Box Office: ‘Avengers: Endgame’ Roars to Record $169M Overseas on First Day
Imax Forecasts Its “Strongest Box Office Year Ever,” Touts ‘Avengers: Endgame’
Academy Board Does Not Pass New Rule Targeting Netflix
AT&T’s Debt Load Slows Its Metamorphosis Into Media Powerhouse
I watched 21 Marvel movies this month — and witnessed a decade of progress for women
Fans Are Already Mourning The Avengers
Lionsgate, the studio behind ‘Hunger Games’ movies, struggles in shifting Hollywood currents
Multiple Fox Films Getting Axed at Disney
Film School Removes ‘Birth of a Nation’ Posters After Student Protests
Amy Poehler’s Coming-of-Rage Story: Comedy’s Subversive Star Is Defining Her Own Feminism
Asian Online Video Revenue to Double to $52B by 2024
NYU’s Black List-Inspired Purple List Reveals 2019 Picks
TV’s New Math: What if $100M Netflix Deals Actually Shortchange Creators?
Ex-Fox News Staffer Sues Network Over Alleged Sexual Mistreatment
Sony Film Unit’s Full-Year Profit Rises to $488 Million
Look What the Streaming TV Revolution Did to Your Cable Box
How to Talk Like You’re on Billions
How Europe’s War on Social Media Could Impact Hollywood: “This Is a Complete Paradigm Shift”
‘Killing Eve’s’ Women-Led Crew Is the Norm for Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer
After “Many Misses,” TV Syndication Market Set for Busiest Fall in Years
Missandei, Grey Worm, and Game of Thrones’ Racial Blind Spot
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Content Chief Ted Sarandos’ Pay Rises in 2018
As Academy Confronts Netflix Question, Streamer Has Many Friends With a Vote
Netflix Fights to Keep Its Most Watched Shows: ‘Friends’ and ‘The Office’
‘Fear, Inc.’ Duo Sets Christian Film Industry Satire ‘Faith Based’
‘Stranger Things’ Trial Split Into Two Phases
Lakers Scripted Drama ‘Showtime,’ From Adam McKay, in the Works at HBO
John Lennon-Owned Album Worth Up to $180K and Other Hot Picks From Upcoming Beatles Auction
Twitter Stock Surges as Earnings, User Base Grow
Snapchat Slump Ends As App Jumps to 190 Million Users
Verizon Loses 53,000 Pay TV Subscribers, Strikes YouTube TV Partnership
AT&T’s DirecTV Now Loses 83,000 Subscribers, WarnerMedia Earnings Rise
Comcast is in talks to sell its 30% stake in Hulu to Disney
Coachella’s 2019 Livestream Audience Jumps 90 Percent in First Weekend
Woodstock 50 Cancellation Fears Loom After Ticket On-Sale Postponed
Facebook Expected to Be Hit With Up to $5B FTC Fine Amid Privacy Concerns
How Fortnite’s success led to months of intense crunch at Epic Games
With a New Owner, Can The National Enquirer Leave Trump and Bezos Behind?
Hollywood Remembers Steve Golin: “An Ally to Storytellers”
Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week: Prep: From Concept to Outline — “It works!”
I’m only offering two Prep workshops this year, so check them out.
The next session of my Prep: From Concept to Outline workshop begins Monday, May 27. I love teaching it because it’s exciting to dig into a new batch of stories and the process we use has a transformational effect on writers, a wonderful thing to behold. For example, here is an email from Dawn LeFever who worked with me in the Prep workshop:
Hey Scott –
Hope you and your family are well. I know you are about to begin another prep course and I thought I’d give you a little insight you might want to share with your new students.
Since taking the course last year at this time, I not only wrote the script I prepped in class, but have written three more since then, having just completed the first draft of the third one yesterday. I LOVE this process and it feels really organic to me.
Every time I begin a new project, I pull out my notebook with the reading assignments and work through the process just as we did in class. I sort of begin the brainstorming list from day one and just add to it whenever anything comes to me while working through the process. I also use note cards before going to outline because it helps me with pacing.
Then, when I’m writing, I have both my script and my outline on my screen and just write away, checking back at the outline to stay on track. More than a few times, as I’m writing, I think about a line of dialog or an action and then look back at my outline and realize what I have in the outline is much better than what was occurring to me in the moment.
At other times, while writing, I will find ways to weave moments in the script that foreshadow what happens later, because I know what’s coming thanks to the thorough prep process.
In other words, as you say, I do truly break the story in prep, which makes the writing so much easier and (hopefully) deeper and richer. I easily knock out 10 pages a day with this process.
I know there are as many different ways to approach writing as there are writers, but, for me, your process makes everything click and, even more, allows me to get really excited to finally sit down and write.
In the past year, I have had some encouraging responses — I was in the top 15% of the Nicholl Fellowship screenplays and was in the top 50 for the ISA Fast Track Fellowship. I made the quarter finals for the Screencrafting Comedy Competition with two scripts (One of them a rewritten version of Smoker’s Choice).
So… forging ahead and having a blast!
Thanks again for everything and tell the folks IT WORKS!!!
All the best,
Dawn
When Tom Benedek and I launched Screenwriting Master Class 10 years ago, the very first course I created was Prep: From Concept to Outline. Why? Because no one else was teaching story prep for screenwriting. That struck me as crazy because most professional screenwriters I know and all TV writers break their story in prep.
Since 2010, I have led over 30 online sessions of Prep and worked privately with dozens of writers. The response has been almost universally like the sentiments expressed by Dawn above.
In fact, Christian Contreras whose script “LAbyrinth” made the 2015 Black List is a Screenwriting Master Class alumnus, having taken this same Prep class with me back in 2014. Verity Colquhoun, an Australian writer who did a private one-on-one version of my Prep class in 2011, let me know the script she wrote (“Wonderful Unknown”) landed a director and is slated to go into production. And David Broyles, who participated in the very first Prep workshop I led back in 2010, was named as one of 25 Screenwriters to Watch in 2016 by the Austin Film Festival. When I emailed David to congratulate him, he sent back a note with this comment about Prep: From Concept to Outline: “I loved that workshop!”
I literally tell writers at the beginning of every Prep workshop: “If you do the work… it works.”
It’s not magic. It’s just a proven, professional approach to develop your story, stage by stage, from concept all the way to outline, beat sheet, or treatment, whichever you prefer.
Consider joining my next session of Prep. But whether you take a class with me or not, it’s imperative you learn some sort of approach to story prep.
Can you imagine routinely writing 10 pages per day? Can you imagine being able to write 3 full-length screenplays in a year? Can you imagine actually enjoying the page-writing process?
As Dawn suggests, all of that can happen if you wrangle your story before you type FADE IN.
I WILL ONLY BE TEACHING THIS PREP WORKSHOP TWICE IN 2019!
The first session starts May 27. The second session begins July 8.
Enrollment is limited on a first come, first served basis.
To check out the Prep: From Concept to Outline workshop, go here.
I look forward to the opportunity to work with you!
