Despite the market breathing its last breaths, that doesn't mean your spec script is dead in the water. Regardless of which of these methods you choose, how to sell a screenplay always comes down to writing a great screenplay.Īs we mentioned earlier, there are a number of ways to get your script in the hands of an executive. There goes at least another ten percent, plus whatever your accountant charges. So you have 75% of your fee left.īut now you have to pay Uncle Sam. But as your checks come in the mail you start to see some deductions you didn't know about. You make them quickly and they get you that final $11,127. Your next draft? They only have a few changes. So they hire you to write it into a script. If they feel that after the first thirty grand it's not worth continuing, they'll shelve it forever.īut let's say you have a good relationship with this studio and they like your treatment. If they want to burn it, they can burn it. It’s the studio’s intellectual property (IP) and they can do with it what they will. They don't have to hire you again.Įven if it’s your life story and your baby that you worked on for years, once you sell a screenplay it’s not yours anymore. But, whether or not you write the script or another draft after that is completely up to the studio. That means that the original treatment will get you $32,922. This video gets into the nitty gritty of exposition. First, you'll want to make sure to study exposition in film to increase your chances of selling a script of your own. And that provides a bit of exposition for how we got to selling a screenplay in the modern day. That back-and-forth between the studios drove up prices and inflated screenwriter salaries. This tightened deadline created its own form of drama, as bidding wars began for great scripts. Every Monday, spec scripts hit the market and by Friday they were either bought, or left in the dust. Studios had from Monday to Friday to make a decision. So, a new policy took effect when selling a screenplay. From week to week, the answer to "How much do screenwriters make" kept increasing. That's why screenwriter salaries ballooned. Selling a screenplay had never been easier. There was also such a demand for content, screenwriting agents (and writers) found themselves in rare positions of power. That’ll help us understand the best practices and techniques you need for selling a screenplay.Īfter the 1988 Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike, there was a flood of spec scripts (scripts written on speculation) because professional script writers had 155 days off of work. Before we get into more methods on how to sell a script, we have to take a look at how the market got to where it is. Learning how to sell your screenplay is complicated. Here's writer Corey Mandell on the current state of the screenplay marketplace. Then we get to television and syndication, and the question of “How much do screenwriters make?” snowballs. Look, there’s a clear history of a screenwriter salary hitting that seven-figure mark. So, when you break it all down, how much do screenplays sell for? Those are standout examples and a vast majority of scripts don't actually sell for that much, even in today's dollars. Then, 20 years later, Adam McKay and Will Ferrell split a $4 million check for Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. In 1994, Black was back, this time selling his script for The Long Kiss Goodnight for an unprecedented $4 million lump. Only two months after Black's record sale of Boy Scout, Joe Eszterhas laughed all the way to the bank by selling Basic Instinctfor $4 million, with $1 million of that going to producer Irwin Winkler. He had previously sold his script for Lethal Weapon for $250,000 in 1984. Shane Black got nearly $2 million for his script for The Last Boy Scoutin 1990, setting a high-dollar record in the process.
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