From option to greenlight, the years of revision, notes, and creative negotiation most writers don’t anticipate

The Gap Between Sale and Screen

LOS ANGELES — The average time between a screenplay sale and the first day of principal photography, for scripts that get made, is approximately three to five years. The average time for scripts that don’t get made, which is most of them, is indefinite, ending either in rights expiration or the quiet death of a project that everyone involved has stopped returning emails about.

The development process between sale and greenlight involves a sequence of steps that writers entering the industry rarely understand in advance: studio notes on the purchased draft, revision, more notes, a possible writer’s room, possible rewriting by additional writers while the original writer remains technically attached or is paid off, director attachment and director’s notes, talent attachment and talent’s notes, the greenlight process which involves the studio’s business affairs, marketing, and distribution teams in addition to creative development, and the financing close which may involve a combination of studio money, international pre-sales, tax incentives, and gap financing from entities whose names do not appear in any public announcement.

The Notes Process

Development notes — the feedback executives give writers between drafts — are the primary mechanism of creative collaboration and the primary source of creative frustration in the development process. Good notes identify problems without prescribing solutions, trust the writer to find fixes, and maintain clarity about what the project is trying to be. Bad notes reflect unresolved disagreements about what the project should be, individual executive preferences unconnected to the project’s needs, and institutional risk-aversion that pushes scripts toward the familiar and away from the distinctive.

Writers who have worked in development for a decade report that the quality of notes is highly variable by executive, studio, and production company culture, and that learning to evaluate and selectively apply notes — implementing the useful ones, protecting what matters against the harmful ones — is a professional skill as important as the writing itself. The Hollywood Reporter’s development coverage reports deal announcements. It does not report the years between them. Those years are where the writing happens.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com