The big agencies will burn your script and not care!

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  • #46
    Re: The big agencies will burn your script and not care!

    Originally posted by nathanq
    I don't know where you're coming from.

    You do realize that there are agents who rep writers and agents who rep actors, right? The two aren't mutually exclusive and can both be working at the same time
    Have you ever tried to go out with a script at an agency like CAA?

    Do you know where most of the agencies revenue comes from?

    You have no clue what you're talking about.

    Read the title of this thread again.

    And again.

    And again.

    Comment


    • #47
      Re: The big agencies will burn your script and not care!

      My ulcer is acting up. Heading to bed early...

      Everybody have a great night. Let's use our God given brains for once!

      Keep the light on for me...

      Comment


      • #48
        Re: The big agencies will burn your script and not care!

        Would just love to discover this is actually Esola trolling DD.

        Unfortunately, that would be far too much fun to have even the remotest possibility of being the case.
        twitter.com/leespatterson

        Comment


        • #49
          Re: The big agencies will burn your script and not care!

          Originally posted by Joe Eszterhas Jr. View Post
          You want to know what is really creepy?

          When people are presented the facts and just don't open their eyes.

          Attaching talent is NOT the proper way to sell a script if you want to give the script its highest chance at a sale.

          Rima Greer takes about this in her book at length if the listed sales above are not enough for you.

          WAKE UP EVERYBODY!

          Btw - loved your fathers book. Very informative. Bravo!
          @TerranceMulloy

          Comment


          • #50
            Re: The big agencies will burn your script and not care!

            I'm still confused by how an agency makes more money off 10% of $0 for a non-sale by "burning" a script than from 10% of, y'know, a sale.

            Not that any of this is supposed to make sense. It's performance art.
            Patrick Sweeney

            Comment


            • #51
              Re: The big agencies will burn your script and not care!

              Originally posted by Joe Eszterhas Jr. View Post

              Do you know where most of the agencies revenue comes from?
              Television packaging.
              https://twitter.com/#!/moviewriterJeff

              Comment


              • #52
                Re: The big agencies will burn your script and not care!

                Originally posted by mrjonesprods View Post
                Television packaging.
                There's that evil word again. Packaging.

                Comment


                • #53
                  Re: The big agencies will burn your script and not care!

                  Well I for one am grateful to New Guy for showing us all the error of our ways. Thanks, New Guy. Without you, we might have carried on as if nothing happened.
                  Chicks Who Script podcast

                  Comment


                  • #54
                    Re: The big agencies will burn your script and not care!

                    Originally posted by Patrick Sweeney View Post
                    I'm still confused by how an agency makes more money off 10% of $0 for a non-sale by "burning" a script than from 10% of, y'know, a sale.

                    Not that any of this is supposed to make sense. It's performance art.
                    Simple math. You can burn 16 out of 17 scripts and still make more money than if you sold 90 percent of those scripts, naked, with no attachments.

                    Naked sale 500,000-750,000 sale. Commission of $50-75K

                    Attached sale of a 3 million dollar director, 10 million actor, 500-750K writer. Total commission about $1.37 million!

                    How many 50-75Ks go into 1.37 mil?

                    About 17!

                    That's your burn rate.

                    Get it?

                    Simple business.

                    Comment


                    • #55
                      Re: The big agencies will burn your script and not care!

                      Slug of Maloox and off to bed...

                      Good night!

                      Comment


                      • #56
                        Re: The big agencies will burn your script and not care!

                        Originally posted by Joe Eszterhas Jr. View Post
                        *HERE'S MIKE ESOLA'S "I WILL NOT BURN YOUR SCRIPT LIKE CAA" APPROACH TO SALES*

                        Some he sold in the last year or so...

                        1. "What Boys Want" sold to New Line
                        A reversed version of What Women Want set in high school where a girl can hear the thoughts of teenage boys.

                        Screenplay by Emily Meyer and Amy Andelson

                        No director attached. No star attached.

                        2. "Call Me Rusty" sold to National Lampoon
                        In a last ditch attempt to bond with his kids, and subsequently clinch a promotion at work, a workaholic single father decides to tag along on his daughter's Spring Break trip to South Beach. NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION for a new generation.

                        Screenplay by Christopher Baldi

                        No director attached. No star attached.

                        3. "Conviction" sold to Warner Bros.
                        After serving five years in prison after a botched heist, a mastermind bank robber is forced by a tenacious FBI agent to entrap his former protege who has embarked on a multi-million-dollar bank-robbing spree.

                        Screenplay by Jon Herman

                        No director attached. No star attached.

                        4. "Ion" sold to Fox 2000
                        Sci-fi, romantic epic about a man who travels to different earths/dimensions in order to find his reincarnated lover. A la AVATAR.

                        Screenplay by Will Dunn

                        No director attached. Channing Tatum to star.

                        5. "High School Reunion"

                        Screenplay by Alan Friedland and Alan Cohen

                        No director attached. No star attached.

                        6. "Last Stand"
                        "Gone in 60 Seconds" and "High Noon" in tone. A cartel leader that uses a Gumpert Apollo, a race car used by drug smugglers, to break out of a courthouse. As he speeds to the Mexican border, the only thing standing in his way is a border-town sheriff and his inexperienced staff.

                        Screenplay by Andrew Knauer

                        No director attached. No star attached.

                        7. "Invasion (Summit)" sold to Summit
                        Alien invasion, in the vein of CLOVERFIELD.

                        Screenplay by Ben Magid

                        No director attached. No star attached.

                        8. "Jackpot"
                        A group of friends in high school win the lottery.

                        Screenplay by Alan Yang

                        No director attached. No star attached.

                        9. "Premature Maturation"
                        BIG, but with an ensemble of middle-schoolers who turn into adults.

                        Screenplay by Sam Pitman and Adam Cole-Kelly

                        No director attached. No star attached.

                        10. "The Last Witch Hunter"
                        In the vein of BLADE and HIGHLANDER, where the last human of his kind responsible for hunting witches must prevent the human race from being overrun.

                        Screenplay by Cory Goodman

                        No director attached. No Star attached.

                        And the list goes on and on.

                        Do you see a pattern?

                        No director attached. No star attached (except in a few instances)
                        FYI - half of these were pitches.
                        https://twitter.com/#!/moviewriterJeff

                        Comment


                        • #57
                          Re: The big agencies will burn your script and not care!

                          Originally posted by Joe Eszterhas Jr. View Post
                          Simple math. You can burn 16 out of 17 scripts and still make more money than if you sold 90 percent of those scripts, naked, with no attachments.

                          Naked sale 500,000-750,000 sale. Commission of $50-75K

                          Attached sale of a 3 million dollar director, 10 million actor, 500-750K writer. Total commission about $1.37 million!

                          How many 50-75Ks go into 1.37 mil?

                          About 17!

                          That's your burn rate.

                          Get it?

                          Simple business.
                          So your big point is that agents make more money when they can sell a script for more money by adding attachments? That's ... not exactly news.
                          Patrick Sweeney

                          Comment


                          • #58
                            Re: The big agencies will burn your script and not care!

                            Can't believe I'm engaging, but...

                            Writers do a hell of a lot better financially than this thread would suggest.

                            First off, most of our money isn't from spec sales. It's from assignments.

                            And we get paid every time we write a draft, whether or not the movie is made. Actors and directors don't make anything unless the movie is shot.

                            And most movies have multiple writers.

                            So for every one actor who gets paid on a movie, there are probably five or so writers who made significant money for drafts on that movie, and there are another five or ten who made money on projects that didn't go.

                            That's the math that agents and managers look at.

                            Comment


                            • #59
                              Re: Of skill, nepotism and spec sales.

                              Originally posted by seth View Post
                              I know Dogtown. Have had numerous beers with him. He is not Will Dunn. He's also not a bad person - just a complex person with a distinctive personality.

                              I have not read ION. It may be crap. But so are a lot of scripts, at the spec stage, that go on to become legendary and amazing projects.

                              I do not know Will Dunn. However, he appears to have made enough friends over a long enough amount of time that people in power trust him enough to work with him. This is not about the screenplay. This is about the screenwriter.

                              There's a lot of speculation in this thread about who knows who, who knows what, and who did what. Speculate all you want - but keep in mind, what you hypothesize and what you know should never be confused.

                              I sincerely hope that some day, a whole bunch of bitter amateurs sit around parsing my big spec sale on the internet. I hope they debate about whether or not I'm related to someone, call my script crap, and observe that talent matters for naught and that it's all about who you know/ who you sleep with/ who you're related to. And I hope they do it with vigor and vim.

                              That way, you see, they'll quit focusing on writing the best goddamn scripts they can and it'll be easier for the rest of us.

                              If that ever happens, everyone will observe that I came out of nowhere. What they *won't* know about is the eight scripts I wrote prior to that one. They won't know about the two options that *weren't* in THR. They won't know about the time spent paintballing with WMEE, the time spent drinking with ICM and the time spent dancing from meeting to meeting and manager to manager. They won't know about every opportunity that *didn't* pan out. They won't know about a dozen years of near-misses.

                              They'll only be able to speculate.

                              I have a really cool dayjob. And today, I got to wire up a Hollywood legend who owns the rights to a property I've loved since I was twelve. And I asked him - "when is X coming out?"

                              "When is X going into production?" he said. "When is X going to find a decent script?"

                              "You know what's wrong with Hollywood?" he continued. "There aren't nearly enough decent writers in this town."

                              This project? In and out of development for ten years. I know of four different writers and two different directors attached to it. What's keeping it from happening?

                              They aren't happy with the script.

                              That's enough to keep me writing for a while. And I won't be worrying about how this guy or that guy or the other guy managed to succeed - I'll simply wish him the best and try to beat him.

                              The rest of y'all can do what you please.
                              Damn fine attitude.

                              Comment


                              • #60
                                Re: The big agencies will burn your script and not care!

                                Originally posted by JeffLowell View Post
                                Can't believe I'm engaging, but...

                                Writers do a hell of a lot better financially than this thread would suggest.

                                First off, most of our money isn't from spec sales. It's from assignments.

                                And we get paid every time we write a draft, whether or not the movie is made. Actors and directors don't make anything unless the movie is shot.

                                And most movies have multiple writers.

                                So for every one actor who gets paid on a movie, there are probably five or so writers who made significant money for drafts on that movie, and there are another five or ten who made money on projects that didn't go.

                                That's the math that agents and managers look at.
                                Please look at the title of this post.

                                "The big agencies will burn your script and not care!"

                                It says nothing about assignment work.

                                Good night... Off to bed, for real now!

                                Comment

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