Corona | Coming Attractions

These days it doesn't matter if you're trying to break in to Hollywood by writing the next great spec script or a professional trying to land their next paycheck. The picture being painted is bad for both groups of scribes, and it doesn't look like the trend is going to reverse in the near future.

The bleak picture is being given more exposure thanks to a recent article by Richard Verrier in The Los Angeles Times. "Screenwriters Find Work Dwindling" reads Verrier's title for his piece, accompanied by a photograph of a morose-looking David Steinberg, screenwriter of American Pie 2. "If I was going to break into the business now," Steinberg tells the Times, "I don't know if I could do it because there are so few opportunities to sell a script or get an assignment."

Steinberg is lamenting the trend for Hollywood studios to be paying less screenwriters for their projects. According to the Writers Guild of America, there are now less screenwriters getting paid to do jobs in showbiz, with the number of working writers employed in 2009 down 11% in just three years. Possible reasons for this downward spiral of employment options is a slow creative recovery from the 2006 Writers Guild strike, a reluctance for Hollywood to open its purse strings and pay for more specs and assignments since the start of the recession, and dwindling DVD returns going to the studios' bank accounts. What it adds up to is that it is perhaps the worst time ever in the history of mainstream cinema to try and land a screenwriting job.

Writers are finding that studios are now demanding more creative work be done upfront before a screenwriter has a chance to draw a paycheck for the project. In addition to having to develop and pitch a full outline for a movie before seeing a dime, there are more "one-step deals" being done, a method for a studio to pay for only a single draft of a project and not spend more on developing the storyline. That means projects are being put into production without the same level of story development done on movies developed 5 years ago. It also means that the writer hired to do the one-step job may not want to take any creative risks in their story process for fear of losing future jobs. "When a writer is working on a one-step deal, he's going to be risk-averse because if he takes a flier on a wildly creative or inventive way of telling the story, he might wind up getting fired," explained screenwriter Billy Ray. "He won't have another draft or two to make it work, so he's going to write it down the middle." The Times notes that Ray's last four projects were all one-step deals.

Screenwriting is the heart of the creative process for moviemaking. If Hollywood is cheaping out on it, what does that mean for the future of the industry? Do more video game movies, TV adaptations and remakes await? Will new ideas prove to be harder to sell to risk-adverse movie companies? And what message is being sent to the new talent that spends years developing their ideas into three-act screenplays, only to find out that they aren't wanted?

Like the close of any good second act, uncertainty abounds for the protagonist. I wonder if this time there will be a happy ending.

[Thanks to Hollywood wordsmith Peter Clines for the heads up]