Investing in Movies

14The Sinkhole of Development

Summary—The problems of making a classical development model work are discussed in detail, but the importance of investing in development is also emphasized. Suggestions are given where to source material—in particular, the value of material in the public domain, free of copyright protection.

I cannot make the classical film development model work. By the classical development model I mean the process by which a producer options a certain literary property and then commissions one or a series of screenplays, or alternatively simply acquires a screenplay and then works to improve it through one of more rewrites and/or polishes. This is contrasted with late-stage development where a script basically needs a few tweeks, ...