Re: My Experience with Email Queries
Nice! So you may end up right back in it via novels
Originally posted by hscope
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You will be sorry you asked after this!
No, that didn't cause me to quit. It happened pretty much at the start of my career attempt and if anything I found it encouraging that I attracted such interest with only my second script. (The first attracted a producer who talked - he talked a lot - about attaching Hugh Jackman!)
Not long after the Circle experience, a UK producer 'fell in love' with the same screenplay (the 2nd) and together we rewrote and rewrote until the story changed completely and, in hindsight, became terribly bland (perfect for a HW studio movie, right?). Anyway, now happy, the producer told me I would receive a contract from his US partner. I heard from the guy a day later, but only because I was accidentally cc'd on an email between them discussing the terms of the contract and it became crystal clear they intended to rip me off. Naturally, I politely asked what the f##k was going on and never heard from them again.
I had an entertainment lawyer, so it would not have gone much further, but these guys were smooth. I spoke to them regularly, they were always available and they spent a lot of time on notes and ideas.
While this was going on, I turned down a low-ball option from another producer for the same script. The upshot of all this was that I thought I had a pretty good script, which led to a big mistake. Not long afterwards I had a cash offer (no points or further payments) for the script from another (this time reputable) British producer for roughly US$30,000. I thought I could do better, so I turned it down. The script took me three weeks to write, I would have got a feature credit and I turned down $30K. What a dope!
That was around 2005/6 and I continued trying to break in and wrote another seven scripts and had lots more adventures and close calls, but by a couple of years ago I finally accepted that the chances of making it were widening, not reducing, so I moved on. The Hugh Jackman script, TimeStorm, was adapted from an old novel manuscript which I updated every few years, so I gave it a page one rewrite and low-and-behold found a publisher! By this time, Jackman had aged from the young Lieutenant hero to the old Captain).
I still send out my old scripts and write short screenplays with a friend - we are looking for funding for a new short film - and I have a couple of TV show treatments I'm hawking to local networks, but novels are my primary interest for the moment. But, as the novel is now being read by three producers, never say never...
No, that didn't cause me to quit. It happened pretty much at the start of my career attempt and if anything I found it encouraging that I attracted such interest with only my second script. (The first attracted a producer who talked - he talked a lot - about attaching Hugh Jackman!)
Not long after the Circle experience, a UK producer 'fell in love' with the same screenplay (the 2nd) and together we rewrote and rewrote until the story changed completely and, in hindsight, became terribly bland (perfect for a HW studio movie, right?). Anyway, now happy, the producer told me I would receive a contract from his US partner. I heard from the guy a day later, but only because I was accidentally cc'd on an email between them discussing the terms of the contract and it became crystal clear they intended to rip me off. Naturally, I politely asked what the f##k was going on and never heard from them again.
I had an entertainment lawyer, so it would not have gone much further, but these guys were smooth. I spoke to them regularly, they were always available and they spent a lot of time on notes and ideas.
While this was going on, I turned down a low-ball option from another producer for the same script. The upshot of all this was that I thought I had a pretty good script, which led to a big mistake. Not long afterwards I had a cash offer (no points or further payments) for the script from another (this time reputable) British producer for roughly US$30,000. I thought I could do better, so I turned it down. The script took me three weeks to write, I would have got a feature credit and I turned down $30K. What a dope!
That was around 2005/6 and I continued trying to break in and wrote another seven scripts and had lots more adventures and close calls, but by a couple of years ago I finally accepted that the chances of making it were widening, not reducing, so I moved on. The Hugh Jackman script, TimeStorm, was adapted from an old novel manuscript which I updated every few years, so I gave it a page one rewrite and low-and-behold found a publisher! By this time, Jackman had aged from the young Lieutenant hero to the old Captain).
I still send out my old scripts and write short screenplays with a friend - we are looking for funding for a new short film - and I have a couple of TV show treatments I'm hawking to local networks, but novels are my primary interest for the moment. But, as the novel is now being read by three producers, never say never...
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