WHY ORIGINAL IDEAS ARE PRICELESS
Getting their idea stolen is one of the biggest fears of every writer.
Original ideas are scarce in an audiovisual landscape overcrowded by countless adaptations, franchises, sequels or remakes. However, this is an ideal context for the original scripts to have the potential to stand out from the rest and have become one of the most precious assets in the industry.
The original scripts can be a very profitable business for studios, especially in some genres like horror. Jordan Peele’s Get Out managed to accumulate more than $255,413,717 at the international box office with a budget of just $4,500,000. Not only did it become one of the biggest economic successes of recent years, but as a final recognition, it won Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards.
Companies are looking for less risks and more guarantees and genre films profitability is very attractive.
Jason Blum, with his company Blumhouse Productions, has achieved international recognition by accumulating numerous hits and turning low-budget horror films into gold mines. Examples such as Paranormal Activity, Insidious, The Purge, Sinister or the mentioned Get Out show us how profitable an original script can be.
But don’t worry, you don’t have to write terror to get your script sold and make it profitable for a company. Your story should be unique, special and have the ability to attract as many and as diverse audiences as possible. Getting the perfect balance between quality, art and commercial is a challenge, possibly the biggest one a screenwriter can face when writing and selling his script… but it’s one of the keys to success.
Bong Joon-ho understood it perfectly and as a result is a film that is making history and breaking records in its path: Parasites. It is one of those films that when you watch it in the cinema you feel you’re watching something unique and completely original and the perfect example to show you which are the elements of an original screenplay.
In the middle of 2020, it is difficult to create a story that is 100% original, something that no one has seen, read or heard before and that is why many writers must make an extra effort to try to surprise viewers. One possibility to solve this is to try to follow the path of success marked by great writers like Quentin Tarantino or Rian Johnson embrace the references known around the world and give them a twist to get an impact with a different and original story.
Knives Out is one of the most successful, live-action films with an original script in years. Rian Johnson’s film is a manual Whodunit that nurtures, honors and even parodies the references of the police and detective genre in the purest Agatha Christie’s style. It joins a select list of original non-horror films acclaimed by critics and audiences that have made a considerable impact at the box office and popular imaginary: Interstellar, Baby Driver, La La Land or Dunkirk.
These films, among many others, are examples that confirm that the original films, the medium and low budget projects aimed at an adult audience have a very considerable market to exploit.
Original ideas are unique… And you have to protect them!
From Filmarket Hub we are on a continuous search for original ideas. We want to support emerging talent from around the world and get new voices heard. Our online market is a space where creatives and producers have direct contact and, above all, ideas are safe and secure. Producers have access to the One Page with basic information (title, gender, country, budget, target audience, synopsis, references) but in case any producer requests more information to access a script or sales dossier, it is you who consents and the application is registered.
However, one of the most important steps that any screenwriter must take before starting to move a script is to own the intellectual property of his work, either by official intellectual property registries or by professional organizations that provide this service. In 2019, we agreed on a partnership with Safe Creative to make it easier for all our users to register their scripts online and at a reduced price.
The process of exposing a script has to be seen as natural and necessary throughout your sales process. It is important to deal with trusted intermediaries and on secure channels, as well as to record information exchanges. And above all, protect your script in the relevant local and online property records as we explained in detail here.
If you think you have something really special on your hands, our UK Online Pitchbox is your chance to prove it. For the fifth consecutive year, this online initiative aims to discover high quality unproduced projects and match them with leading companies in the industry. Executives from Baby Cow Productions, Bankside, BBC, FilmNation, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal, See-Saw Films, Sky Originals and Vertigo Films are already confirmed to attend.
