Genre: Horror/Comedy
Premise: In a world where the Grim Reaper has a popular TV show with live random fatalities, a struggling rock artist agrees to become his assistant to protect her marked-for-death band members.
About: For those new to the site, last year I did a pitch contest called Blood & Ink. Anyone who wanted to could pitch me movie ideas. I then accepted the best 100 of those ideas. The writers then wrote those scripts. And, ever since, I’ve been reviewing them, looking for the best one. Already, one script, Wildman, written by Jacob Rainer, got him a manager and possibly more. Stay tuned. One of the criteria for getting into the Blood & Ink contest was that, if I did not personally approve of the idea, it could still get voted in by the public. If you got 15 votes, you got in. This is one of those upvoted scripts.
Writer: Mikael Grahn/TigerMoomin
Details: 114 pages

I made it pretty clear at the time that I didn’t think this concept could work. But you guys voted it in. So, let’s see how you did.

We hop right into the story here. There’s no dilly-dallying. There is a live TV show where the Grim Reaper – like, the real one – kills people. And people watch it. It’s a complicated production run by a couple of guys named Brian and Colin. They have to get cameras in place for all of these kills, as well as make sure everything’s set up ahead of time.

After we watch a plane engine fall off a plane and land on someone, we then see (via a drone camera) a group of teens watching this very show in a house while eating popcorn. But it turns out production made sure that, when this popcorn was made, that a glass broke in the factory and all the pieces fell into the popcorn. So all four of the teens die by their throats ripping up due to the glass they just ate.

We then meet rock and roll lead vocalist Roxanne, who, along with her band Megalotherium are late to their gig. They’re zooming through traffic, and barely get there in time. But then Roxanne notices a mini camera in their green room and figures it’s for the Grim Reaper show. It turns out this whole place is rigged to go up in flames and they’re all supposed to die for the show!

Roxanne makes her case to the Grim Reaper why he shouldn’t do this and the Reaper likes Roxanne so he makes her a deal. He’ll spare her bandmates if she finds him a new person to kill every week for the show.

Roxanne doesn’t put up much resistance so now her life consists of looking for bad people she can mark for killing. The job is fairly easy cause there are a lot of bad people out there. First, a sleazy guy who hits on women in a bar. Second, the magazine writer who gave their last gig a bad review. Then an ICE agent. Then a guy online who says he’s going to suicide bomb a mall.

Can Roxanne keep this up forever, though? Or will she run out of targets, forcing the Grim Reaper, along with the show, to finally take down the rest of her band, Megalotherium?

Tiger?

You might want to turn your head here. This is going to get ugly. There’s no way to sugarcoat this.

I remember early on in my screenwriting days hearing that some people you sent your script to wouldn’t even finish it. I was mortified by that. I’d say for a good year I thought of these people as the worst people in the universe.

These days, I have a slightly different point of view. I’m one of the few people in Hollywood who, when I say I’ve read a script, I’ve actually read the entire script. Because I’m reading them for consultations or script reviews. And that’s given me a great perspective. Because I’ve gotten to see what actually happens after most people give up on a script. I get to see if the writer turns it around.

And I can tell you that after reading 10,000 scripts, that 99.99999% time they do not turn it around. If you run into 7-8 red flags by page 15, the chances that that script is going to somehow get its shit together are basically 0.

I gave this script until page 50. Which I’m guessing is more generous than most people will give it.

And I’m disappointed. Not so much with Tiger. But with the people who upvoted this concept because you wanted to be friendly. You sent Mikael on a suicide mission. This script had no chance of being good. The concept was insanely flawed and people still said, “Yeah, go spend six months writing this.”

For starters, we’re dropped into the most ridiculous world ever and asked to just accept it. We live in a world now where the Grim Reaper has a TV show where he just kills people in bloody horrible ways and the whole world watches.

I suppose you can argue that The Running Man and The Hunger Games did something similar. But those are set in the future, where you can buy into the idea that the future got so fucked up these things could happen. This show is set in the present. And there’s no explanation as to how it came to be.

But it’s more than that. We’re already being asked to accept that society has somehow reached a point where watching innocent people get brutally murdered on live television is mainstream entertainment. That alone is a gigantic conceit. But then, on top of it, we’re asked to accept that the Grim Reaper is real and hosts the show. That’s another gigantic conceit. Instead of taking one crazy idea and surrounding it with a believable world, you’ve stacked crazy on top of crazy. And every time you do that, you make it harder for the audience to buy into the movie.

From there, we’re introduced to rules that don’t make sense at all. This show seems to be tracking these deaths via a very elaborate production system that includes drones flying around and hidden cameras set up ahead of time, all so that these deaths can be recorded live. For example, somehow, we have a camera up on a plane to catch its engine falling.

As far as I can tell, this entire production team consists of maybe 10 or 20 people. But they’re somehow setting up and filming multiple elaborate live kills every episode, all over the world. Think about the logistics involved in pulling that off. Wouldn’t this require hundreds, if not thousands, of people working behind the scenes?

Also it seems, at times, that the production team is helping the Grim Reaper kill people. For example, with Roxanne’s band’s gig, some of the production team get there ahead of time to set up a bunch of flammable material in order to burn the whole place down and kill everyone inside the venue.

This despite us seeing the Grim Reaper snap his fingers and make a giant church bell fall to the ground from its perch. So, sometimes the Grim Reaper kills people using his superpowers but other times he needs help from a production crew? I’m so insanely confused by the rules of this story.

From there, we basically get Roxanne looking for really bad people to kill so she can keep her bandmates alive. The problem is, we’ve barely established her relationship with those bandmates. We haven’t seen why she loves them, why she needs them, or why losing them would devastate her. So the entire emotional engine of the movie is built around Roxanne desperately trying to save people we don’t care whether she saves.

I think the official ‘tap out’ moment for me was Roxanne finding some sleazy guy with a pee and poo fetish at a bar, marking him for that week’s death, and then going to his place and setting up cameras so we could see the death on the show and then showing that the sleazy guy, in anticipation of Roxanne coming, fills a tub with poo for their sexual exploits.

This is why I tell you guys – you can’t outsmart a bad concept. You just can’t.

But it’s actually more than that. When you have a weak concept, you eventually run out of story. That’s the problem with bad concepts. They don’t naturally generate scenes. They don’t keep opening new doors. You exhaust the premise quickly and suddenly you’re out on a plank in the middle of the ocean with nowhere to go.

So what do writers do? They start manufacturing increasingly outrageous situations in a desperate attempt to keep the reader reading. Enter the sleazy poo-fetish guy. But outrageousness isn’t story. It’s noise. And by that point, it doesn’t matter anyway, because the reader checked out 20 pages ago.

But look. I learned from my mistakes last time. That’s why I created the “veto” rule for the High Concept Pitch Contest. And I’m okay with going into this new competition with less scripts for that reason. I don’t want anybody spending six months on a script that never had a shot.

I’m actually curious what the people who upvoted this idea saw in it. Can you tell me the movie you were imagining it was going to be? Cause I was 1000% certain there was no way it was going to work. Can you give me a movie like this that did work?

Screenplay link: Untimely

[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: There’s some confusing advice out there when it comes to generating screenplay concepts that says instead of building your movie around one strong high-concept idea, you should combine it with another one. This supposedly “doubles” the power of the concept. So if you have a zombie movie, add time travel. Two hooks are better than one! I don’t agree with this advice. If Curry Barker had followed this logic with Obsession, Bear would’ve also been a hitman who had to kill five people in the neighborhood. Now you’re not strengthening the original idea. You’re competing with it. The best concepts tend to be simple. They take one strong, easily understood premise and squeeze everything they can out of it. Combining a live television show where people are murdered with the literal Grim Reaper didn’t double the power of this concept. It diluted it. And in this case, it sent the movie straight to the grave.

Genre: Horror
Logline: At a couples retreat for failing marriages, a husband and wife face an extreme form of therapy that requires purification through pain. As the therapy grows increasingly brutal, it becomes clear that their hosts have no intention of letting them leave alive.
About: For those new to the site, last year I did a pitching contest called Blood & Ink. Anyone who wanted to could pitch me movie ideas. I then accepted the best 100 of those ideas into a contest. The writers then wrote those scripts. And, ever since, I’ve been reviewing them, looking for the best one. Already, one script, Wildman, written by Jacob Rainer, got him a manager and possibly more. Stay tuned.
Writer: Steven Rauber
Details: 105 pages

I figured I’m never going to finish these Blood & Ink entries unless I review them, so for this week, I’m doing five Blood & Ink script reviews. And possibly five more next week. The goal? To find one good script. And with the streak that Scriptshadow’s on right now, I’M FEELING GOOD ABOUT IT!

Gotta keep getting writers reps. Gotta keep getting writers sales. Let’s turn this industry upside-down, baby!

Now, quick aside here. I know Scripty held his own pitching session this weekend. I would STRONGLY advise you to ignore any encouragement he gave you. Scripty’s favorite movie is Mac & Me. He eats salsa for breakfast. So that should tell you what kind of taste you’re working with.

Okay, let’s get into today’s script!

When we meet Martin and Leigh Langford, they’re in a marriage therapy session, trying to hash out, for the umpteenth time, why Leigh had an affair. They’re so deep in their unhappiness with one another that even their therapist has gotten sick of them.

So, she recommends that if they really want to save their marriage, they attend the most intense couples retreat in the world, an off-the-books program held on its own private island. They’re reticent about it, but they really do want to save their marriage, so they agree to go.

They arrive at the island retreat, called “Continuum,” and soon meet the other couples. Howard and Susan are the oldest, in their 50s. Then there are a couple of fit Aussies, Brock and Tara. And finally, the youngest duo, influencers Zane and Nikki.

Leading the retreat are Kip and Celeste. Right off the bat, they throw a shock collar on Zane and start electrocuting him. Later that night, they drug everyone, dump them in the middle of the forest, and force them to find their way back.

From there, the couples are subjected to lie detector tests. When Leigh is the only one unfazed by the exercise, refusing to hide anything the way the others do, it sets Kip and Celeste off. Now they’re determined to break Leigh and Martin, eventually throwing them into a holding cell.

Next, the couples are put in cages. And in a separate cage is Dominic, the guy Leigh cheated on Martin with. Each cage is rigged with a device that delivers a Mike Tyson-level punch right to the gut. Martin is given ten “punches” and told he must use all of them, either on Dominic, his wife, or split between the two. Martin uses every one on Dominic. Dominic dies.

At that point, Martin and Leigh are like, “We’re outta here.” But the staff won’t let them leave until they complete the retreat. During the next exercise, Brock is placed inside a giant web of ropes and inadvertently twisted to death by the other participants. Yet the more of these brutal exercises Martin and Leigh survive, the more alive they begin to feel, reigniting their passion for one another.

Finally, they’re faced with one last elaborate challenge, one that very few couples both come out of alive. But, spoiler alert, Martin and Leigh succeed. This enrages the staff, who we learn are all survivors of previous Continuum retreats whose spouses did not make it out of this exercise alive. They pressure Kip and Celeste into taking the final challenge themselves to prove the whole thing isn’t rigged. Will the two evildoers survive? Or will this be the last Continuum retreat ever?

Cleave is a hard script to categorize.

It doesn’t contain that “it” factor that allows it to stand out from the pack. But it’s not another one of these forgettable by-the-book scripts either. It’s stuck somewhere in between, and that’s what’s so frustrating about it.

Whenever I’m struggling with a script, I start with the main characters. Do I like these people? And if not, do I find them interesting? If the answer to both of these questions is “no,” you’ve got your answer right there.

Because if you’re not on board with the characters in a script, then every single scene is tainted by that lack of interest. And when it came to Leigh and Martin, I found them to be just… for lack of a better term… blah. They didn’t move the needle either way. They didn’t display any likable traits. And I didn’t find them or their relationship that interesting, to be honest.

Which is probably frustrating for Steven to hear because, technically, he did the right thing. He introduced the two of them in a marriage counseling session to establish that they had marriage problems. That’s what you want to do in a script. You want to introduce the characters quickly, establish their problem quickly, so you can then thrust them onto their journey where they will attempt to resolve that problem.

Textbook screenwriting there.

And yet, if we don’t like the characters, it doesn’t matter. So, I went back into that first scene and I asked, “Why?” Why don’t I like these characters? The answer was immediately obvious. They’re both miserable.

We meet them in this therapy session. They’re mad. They’re sad. They’re exhausted. They’re at the end of their rope. We are being introduced to zero positive qualities and, therefore, it’s quite easy not to like these two. Or, at most, feel nothing towards them, which is probably closer to what I felt. I didn’t dislike them. I just didn’t feel anything towards them.

For those who are veterans of the site, you will know that there is a similar script to Cleave in my Top 25. It’s called The Process. I loved that script. Out of curiosity, I went back to that script to figure out why I cared so much more about that couple than this one. I got my answer immediately.

Instead of introducing his couple in an angry therapy session, which increases the chances that we dislike them, the writer, Levin Menekse, comes up with a rather clever way into his retreat. The main character couple actually believe their marriage is great. They’re only going because the wife’s upscale law firm is making them go. They want to make sure that the people working at the company have strong marriages.

That takes so much pressure off the writer because now he can just focus on you liking the main characters as opposed to setting up their problems. That script’s opening scene is the married couple going over the legal agreement for the therapy weekend and making fun of how aggressive the contract is. In other words, they’re joking around. Levin is making us like these two.

Now, does that mean you can’t start your broken-marriage movie with a therapy session? Of course not. It just means you have to be aware of how that choice is going to affect the reader and write accordingly. That’s a huge part of screenwriting: anticipating how the reader is going to interpret each choice you make, then shaping those choices so they create the exact response you want.

Once we get to the island and the therapy begins, Steven runs into another problem in that he’s trying to create these villains (the couple who run the therapy) and he leans into how evil they are right away. I mean, there’s no ambiguity here. From day 1, they’re putting shock collars on people.

This made the villains on-the-nose and the more on-the-nose you make characters, the harder that character is to believe. So I didn’t really believe these two were real.

I think where Steven saved the script is that he creates several tests that are quite original. Where scripts like this fall apart are when they conduct obvious tests, which there are a couple of. The characters are put through a lie detector test, for example. But even there, Steven creates a twist. The spouse is rigged with a shock lapel. So, if you lie, your partner gets electrocuted.

But some of these other exercises were pretty inventive. At one point, someone gets tied up in this elaborate web of rope and all the other couples have to work together (communicate – a big part of becoming a better partner) to untangle him. But they can only do so from a distance, each holding a part of the rope, and if they screw up, the rope gets tighter around the tied-up character rather than looser. And if you really screw up, it can get tight enough to kill him.

There were several tests like that that were very original. And I also thought that the villain couple got better as the story went on. The irony is that, because we didn’t really have anybody to root for (as I mentioned above, we didn’t love our heroes) a lot of our emotional focus was on hating this evil couple. So, by the end of the movie, I really wanted to see the evil couple go down. To Steven’s credit, he writes a strong final scene for them (note to Steven: But make it so the couples force Kip to take the test. Kip should not volunteer).

So, how do we fix this problem? I’m fine with establishing Martin and Leigh’s troubled marriage right away. But once they realize they’re in trouble on the island, that should be when you work to make us like them. Audiences enjoy when two people who don’t like each other team up for the sake of getting out of a bad situation. So, lean into that here. They put aside their issues for the time being, come together as a team, which now allows you to focus on their positive traits, which should make them a lot more likable.

For these movies to truly work, we gotta feel like we went through an honest exploration of a marriage between two people we cared about and genuinely wanted to see come out the other side together. And I never got there with these two. We got some inventive tests for them to endure along the way. But, unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to save the script.

Script link: Cleave

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Be careful about getting too comfortable in a script like this. Once you establish the pattern of the story and stick with that pattern the whole way through, unless everything else is firing on all cylinders, we’re eventually going to get bored. That’s why I always recommend throwing a whopper of a twist or reveal into a script like this. For example, so much of this story is focused on the destruction of the marriage through Leigh’s affair. So what if we learn, shocker of shockers, that Martin was having his own affair before any of that happened? A reveal like that would turn everything on its head and force us to reassess everything we thought we knew about the marriage. And I’m not saying that’s the perfect reveal. But that’s the kind of shock you need to throw into a story like this. Because, for me, the emotional trajectory stayed too consistent the whole way through. I wanted the script to shake things up more, surprise me, and force me to recalibrate how I felt about these characters.

Pitch your movie idea to Scriptshadow’s #1 Hype Man, Scripty!

Scripty’s been bothering me all week after this Ember Knight sale about wanting to move up in the company and get some more responsibility. “When do I get my pitch month?” He keeps asking.

So, I’m giving him a trial weekend of pitches. I can tell you this. Scripty is nothing like me. He likes weird stuff. He thinks high concept is dumb. So, I wouldn’t pitch any Die Hard in a building ideas to him.

“Tell them I like Charlie Coffington,” he just blurted out at me. I had to tell him that he means “Charlie Kaufman.” He then responded, “Who dat?” and made a ‘call me’ gesture then burst out laughing.

Now he’s eating leftover lasagna that’s been in my fridge since spring.

Listen, I’m going to be honest with you. I don’t think Scripty is ready for this type of responsibility but I’m going to give him a shot. So, if you have any weird movie ideas — wait, he just said, “TV be okay too.” So, if you have any offbeat movie or TV ideas, pitch’em.

I can’t promise anything. There’s a better than 50% chance that Scripty falls asleep in 10 minutes and doesn’t wake up until Sunday afternoon. So, I wish all of you luck.

Tonight, I had dinner with Aaron Kaplan and Scott Stoops (I brought my hype man with me, Scripty). These are Kieran and Brennan’s managers. Kieran and Brennan O’Dea are the writers who wrote and sold The Ballad of the Ember Knight. We just talked about how amazing all of this was. Several times, we discussed how it felt like 1998 again, when unknown writers could routinely sell spec scripts for a large amount of money.

I also learned a lot more about how the script went out and how they knew immediately they had something special because A-list actors were interested. And that really gave them a lot of confidence about how they could approach this.

The large majority of the time, when you send a script out to Hollywood, you’re lucky if you get a handful of half-interested bites. And so what you’re stuck doing is trying to manufacture false buzz. You’re trying to pretend like everybody’s in love with the script to, hopefully, get a buyer to pull the trigger.

This is actually what good agents and managers used to be experts at back in the day. Their tomfoolery could sometimes sell a shitty script to Hollywood. But it’s almost impossible to do that in 2026. Everybody has too much information. You can’t swindle buyers anymore.

Luckily, this was the opposite of that. Everybody who read Ember liked it. That gave Aaron and Scott the confidence that they had something special and it allowed them to be more strategic about how they approached things.

Now here’s what’s interesting — and it’s something I don’t know a ton about. Ironically, the most buzzy scripts are the ones that cause the most problems. And here’s why.

You may get someone calling on Tuesday morning to tell you they want to put in an offer on the script. And then on Tuesday afternoon, you may get someone from a production house who says, theoretically, “JJ Abrams wants to read the script.” But when these big dogs want to read something? They want 2 weeks exclusive. So you have to pull the script off the table everywhere else to give that high-tier director or actor the chance to read the script and decide if they want to do it.

Well, that’s a gamble. Because you may give it to them in the hope they want to do it. But then after two weeks they decide not to. And then you go back to that guy who wanted to put in an offer and maybe the Ember Knight buzz has died down in him and he’s moved on to the next thing.

So, without getting into specifics, Aaron told me that he had to navigate a lot of that. There was one really big either director or actor (I’m not going to say which) that wanted a 2 week exclusive and Aaron had to really weigh, is this person right for this? And ultimately, he and the writers decided that taking the script off the market for those two weeks for that person wasn’t the right move for the script.

And I’m just thinking, if I’m in that position, with someone of that stature wanting exclusive access to my script, I don’t know how I would have said no. But I think with Aaron, he’s been through this so many times before, he has a better feel for how that’s going to turn out. So he’s making a strategic decision there. That’s one of the benefits of having a top tier manager on your side. And especially Aaron, who’s the coolest cucumber I know.

This is why a hot script can take a month or two to sell because everyone wants it, but they don’t all want it under the conditions that work best for you. So you’re playing this game of chess against this super unpredictable player called “You Could Fucking End Up With Nothing” and you have to figure out how to beat him.

In the end, they found this exec at Sony who absolutely loved the script. She believes she can get it made since it has those two juicy slots for an A-list actor and an A-list director (what I’ve always said is the key to this script selling and getting made) and so since she knew that a lot of people wanted this script, that’s why the price was so high. This town talks to each other. So when one of the hottest actors in the world, theoretically, takes serious interest in a script like this, people know that if they’re going to take that screenplay off the market, they’re going to have to pay.

Another thing Aaron, Scott and I talked about was the uniqueness of the page count and we wondered, if this were say, 140 pages instead of 185 pages, would it have still gotten the buzz that it got? And we weren’t sure. But Aaron definitely was under the impression that the huge page count created a sort of mythical quality to the script that almost made it seem impossible that it could be good at that length. And so everyone wanted to read it, almost out of disbelief.

This is a tip I don’t talk about a lot but it’s one I learned early on in my Scriptshadow tenure. Which is, instead of trying to hide your biggest weaknesses, lean into them. Shine a light on them. The script’s big weakness was its page count. But I said to Aaron when I sent it to him, “This could actually be an advantage.” And he played into that. And I do think it was a part of why the script sold. Not directly. But it helped it get the buzz required to get people who mattered interested.

We also talked about how exciting this is. Not just for Kieran and Brennan. But for all screenwriters. We’ve kind of lost that “dreams can come true” spirit in this town. Shit, when I talked to Kieran and Brennan on Zoom before all this happened, I could hear the frustration they had from just trying to get their script out there and how hard it was and having those doubts about if it’s even possible. And now a couple of months later, they’re interviewing for many of the top writing jobs in Hollywood.

I don’t know specifically if they’re up for Marvel jobs. But if I were Marvel, I would invite them in. These guys understand epic storytelling in a way very few writers in Hollywood do. I think that’s their strength and it’s the kind of strength that can get you involved in a lot of prestige projects.

But anyway, I just wanted to share that with you because I want to remind all of you that the journey CAN lead to success. You have to keep writing. You have to keep generating ideas and screenplays. And nothing’s guaranteed, of course. But never forget this: IT CAN HAPPEN. And we’ve just proved it.

If you’re not familiar with the journey of The Ballad of the Ember Knight screenplay, the now notorious 186 page behemoth, and how it came to me, the short version of the story is that Kieran and Brennan sent it to me for a script consult. I loved it. I put it in my Top 25.  I reviewed it. This put it on Aaron Kaplan’s radar. He read it right away and wanted to sign the brothers. He brought on Scott Stoops, who works for him.

Aaron and Scott then started sending the script around town and it was getting good feedback immediately. People really liked it. Eventually, just last week, Sony pulled the trigger for nearly a million bucks, I think because they didn’t want anyone else to start bidding on this thing and drive the price up.

This is a remarkable accomplishment for Kieran and Brennan. It is SO RARE, even if this were 20 years ago, for newbie writers to sell a script to a major studio for this kind of money. AND WITH NOBODY ATTACHED. I think that’s the most shocking part of this. Is that they didn’t even have an attachment. And they were still able to sell a script for near 7 figures to a major studio. It’s unheard of.

So, major props to Kieran and Brennan for pulling this off. It’s an amazing feat for writers without any credits and who were, just several weeks prior, unrepped (they’re now also repped by CAA).

Now, when I posted my review of the script, I noticed that it was getting mixed reviews from you guys. Some people really liked it. Others thought it was overhyped. So, I want to make it clear what I SAW that made me know the script was special.

One of the things almost every writer in Hollywood is trying to accomplish is to write an anti-hero protagonist who’s still likable. Who we want to root for. Writers constantly struggle to get this balance right. The writer either gets the “anti” part right, but the character ends up being extremely unlikable. Or they get the “likable” part right, but it steals away all of the character’s edge.

These guys created the perfect anti-hero. The ember knight (the hero of the story) is that pinpoint mix of both “anti” and “likable” and, when I saw that, I immediately knew that A-list actors were going to die to play this part. And, no doubt, that’s what Sony saw as well. They were fine with buying a script with no attachments (unheard of in this day) because they knew it would be so easy to get an A-lister to want to play this role. And then once you have that, you have a movie.

Now, truth serum activated, did I think this script would sell? Honestly, I thought it would have a tough time. Because of the page count and because the writers were unproven. That’s usually where studios draw the line.

But it goes to show what I always tell you guys. If you write something that’s really good, it will get noticed. And it will do something for you as a writer. Maybe not a 7 figure sale. But it will give you opportunities to start moving up the ladder. So let this be a reminder for you to keep pushing, to keep writing. Because sooner or later, your skill reaches the required level to deliver the goods. And I want everyone who’s in the High Concept Club Contest to let that light a fire under you. Cause I think one or two of you is going to be experiencing this same thing next year.

Okay, in honor of this news, I want to re-post my newsletter interview with Kieran and Brennan. This was right after they got signed with Aaron Kaplan (and Scott Stoops came on as well). Here it is.

A top Hollywood lit manager says he wants to talk to you guys.  How the heck do you prepare for that call?

Kieran: Um, (laughs), we don’t really. We just go with it.

Brennan: With an open mind.

K: Yeah, with an open mind.  The phone call was like two minutes long and then we set up a Zoom call for later.  And so that’s how it happened.  It came together very quickly.

So that others can prepare for this moment themselves, what did Aaron and Scott talk about on that call?  What did they want to know about you?

K: They wanted to know our story pretty much.

B: How we got into writing.

K: How we got into writing.  Which we were very brief on. How we came up with the idea. They really started pitching themselves to us, first off, more than anything.  So, it was a very interesting spot for us to be in…

B: (laughs)

K: Our whole career, we were trying to get in and just have people read our script.  And now it’s like, they read the script.  They loved it. And now they’re pitching themselves to us. That was very much what the call was like.  Not the other way around.

B: It wasn’t too onerous on us.

K: Yeah, we never felt like we had to prove ourselves to them.  Whether that was right or wrong, I don’t know.  But it worked out.

How did they pitch themselves to you?

K: It was a bit like, “This is the team we manage. The movies we like. These are the clients we manage and the types of careers we’re trying to sculpt. This is what we’ll be able to offer in terms of sending the script out.”   I mean, Aaron read the script in one night.  He then gave it to Scott, who read it the next night.  And we were like, “Wow, you read our script and you liked it?  We’re sold!” (Both of them laugh).  But yeah, he talked about some of the things they produce.  For example, they represent Jeremy Slater, who wrote Mortal Kombat 2, and talked about how this is what we want to do for all our writers.  Which was exciting to hear.

B: And they gave us an idea of what people would expect from us.  How they would look at us based on this script.  The boxes we would be placed in, which is relevant for how we’d approach sending them future scripts.

K: Yeah, and honestly, they were just really nice.  We got a great feeling from them.

B: Yeah, we got the feeling that we could actually work together.

Was there anything Aaron and Scott asked you that caught you off guard or was it smooth sailing?

K: Not really.  I guess one thing that surprised us was they talked about sending it to certain producers first.  In our mind, we thought it would be actors.  So we thought we’d go out to a Henry Cavill, for example.  So, it’s an example of us learning the process.

How long was the meeting?

B: About an hour.

Oh, wow. Can you take me through the process of trying to get the script noticed before you sent it to me?

K: Yeah, we sent it to friends, just for feedback.

B: One of the big problems we ran into in regards to sending the script to competitions or the Black List is that a lot of them did not accept scripts above a certain length.  So we couldn’t actually send it out to people.

K: Yeah, that was the problem.  We didn’t have anywhere to send it.  We would send out abbreviated versions to people.  Like the first half.  And then we’d send that to the Black List.

B: We started splitting it up into episodes and send the first one out as a pilot.

K: And obviously, it didn’t work that way. And we’re sitting around, trying to figure out our next steps and I thought, “Oh wait. Carson.” Which wasn’t an easy choice. Cause you’re not cheap.

B: (laughs)

C: (laughs)

K: Yeah.  We knew it was a tough sell but we also had a lot of confidence in it.  With that said, we had no idea you would like it so much.

B: Yeah, that was shocking.  To be honest, you were a hail mary.  We’d given up on that script being accepted anywhere.

K: We’d mentally shifted over to a much more marketable script — an action comedy.  The frustration of this script made us really focus on something that would be easy to push out there.

What was your lowest moment as a screenwriter before this breakthrough?

B: Austin.

K: Yeah, Austin.  When we went to the Austin Film Festival.

B: We had another script, The Man Who Came From the River.

K: We were finalists with that.

B: We didn’t win.

K: Right from the start, the people we thought were there to help us said, “We’re not reading scripts.”  “Nobody’s signing anybody right now.”  “Good luck out there.”  Beyond that, we got one or two leads from the competition that didn’t go anywhere.  And that was when it hit us: we’re kinda screwed here.

B: Even if we get a finalist position in one of the most prestigious contests, nothing happens.

K: Yeah, so that was a really low point.  Not that the script was amazing or anything but just sort of the message we were getting and the fact that we had placed so high and that nothing at all came from it was discouraging.

B: And then we started sending various iterations of that finalist script over to the Black List.  But we kept getting the same scores back. There was an early version of the script we sent them before Austin that was garbage.  Yet no matter how much we improved it, we kept getting the same scores back.

How many scripts have you guys written?

B: We’re on our third now.

K: Yeah, we only have two scripts written together.

And then, Kieran, you wrote scripts before that, right?

K: I wrote one and a half scripts before that. I wrote an action script back in 2013. And then I wrote a post-apcolyptic adventure script that I got 90 pages into but ultimately abandoned.

B: We’ve only been doing this for about two years.

I gotta say it, guys.  One of the first pieces of screenwriting advice you learn is: Keep your script under 120 pages.  What the hell happened??

K: We tried!  We do a big outline before each script.  We make sure all the major plot points are there.  We know what’s going to happen in all the key areas of the script.  It actually looked like a normal-sized movie in that initial process.  But since we essentially have two main characters, we had to double everything.  And that beefed up the page count.  And then when we started writing it, it just naturally got longer and longer.

B: The weird thing about this script is we really did try hard to cut it down.  Every time we went into it, we’d try to cut more.  But then, somehow, stuff got added instead, and it just kept getting longer and longer (laughs).

K: It wasn’t the plan.  It just kind of happened.

A big reason I liked this script so much was how it felt like a Hero’s Journey tale.  But I still haven’t asked you this. Was the the Hero’s Journey on your mind when you wrote this?  Or was that just a coincidence?

B: Not specifically.   I’ve always seen it as a Grail Quest. The Grail Quest is Joseph Campbell’s main thesis and inspiration.  By no means were we following Joseph Campbell’s 22 points, or whatever it is.  But it just kind of came out that way naturally.

How long did it take you to write Ember Knight?  Time-wise and how many drafts?

K: The first draft was, what? (looks to Brennan) Six months?  The second draft we were writing every day for several months.  The draft you eventually received was the sixth draft I think.

B: It’s hard to count drafts because you’re always editing.

K: Yeah, and also we were jumping back and forth, rewriting our first script at the time.  And we’d go back and forth between the two.

What was the hardest thing about writing this script?   What issue did you keep coming back to?

K: The page length.

B: (laughs) We used to obsess over it.   We haven’t been thinking about it as much lately.  But that was always what was on my mind early on.  It was honestly eating at me.

K: I mean the story is pretty straightforward.  So the plot wasn’t hard to manage.  Oh, the Hermit.  The Hermit was tricky.  But look, we had previously written a time-travel script and that was way harder.

B: That was so tricky.

I tell writers, don’t mess with time travel unless you want to drive yourself insane.

K: Never ever again.

What’s one thing about the script that maybe doesn’t seem like a big deal but you think is essential?

B: (note: Both Brennan and Kieran had previously informed me that Brennan does all the dialogue in their writing) I’ve got a weird one. There were no conjunctions back then.  No “don’t.”  No “can’t.”  And you don’t realize what that does to language when you remove those.  It completely changes the way you write dialogue.  “Is not” has a completely different feel than “isn’t.”  It was a challenge because in a place where I would’ve mindlessly placed “don’t” in a line, I would now have to put “do not.”  And so many times I realized that it didn’t sound right.  The rhythm of it.  The flow of it.  It’s can be jolting when you don’t use a contraction.

K: I didn’t even know that. (Laughs) For me, I just had so much fun writing this script. I didn’t have any of those problems.

I gave you notes on the script myself.  What was the note I gave you that resonated most and why?

B: The Hermit

K: Yeah, you telling us that the Hermit wasn’t working was great because deep down, we knew we hadn’t figured him out.

B: And he’s definitely the most difficult character.

K: I would tell Brennan exactly what I needed the Hermit to be like in a scene and he would go off for a week, write this amazing poem-like monologue for him that perfectly encapsulated what I asked for, only for me to realize that I was wrong and he needed to be a different way in the scene.  Brennan was not happy in those moments.

B: (laughs) No, I wasn’t.

K: And then also you pointed out to us that not every reader can be dropped into 14th century France and know what’s going on.  We weren’t being clear enough about the setup.  So that was helpful.  We went back in and altered some of the exposition to make sure that you understood what was going on in France at the moment, how Britain was involved, where we were in the timeline.  It’s easy to forget that stuff as writers, because we know our world so well.

Do you know what comes next with you guys and your new managers?  A strategy call?

K: We’re going to pitch them some ideas.  We’re going to strategize for what to focus on when we go out for general meetings.

B: Also, we’re going to get notes from them about the script.  Aaron and Scott are both going to give us some notes.

K: Yeah, I mean we just signed over Memorial Day weekend. So we haven’t had much time together.

And what do you plan to write next?

B: We want to finish our action-comedy next.  That should take a month or so.

K: And then we’re looking at sci-fi. We have a 2-part big sci-fi idea. A dystopian world set 100 years in the future. The trick is we’re trying to imagine what people who read Ember would expect from us next.

That’s awesome, guys. This has been a blast. Keep me updated so I can share your successes with the Scriptshadow community!

B/K: Cool. Will do!