Can you sell stories or movie ideas without writing screenplays for them? Even if this means less money...How about if you have a manager or an agent? After you send them a few screenplays, can you send them short stories or outlines/treatments? Just curious...
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sales-options Can you sell something else?
- Thread starter victortiti89
- Start date
Not really.
There are some Hollywood folks who used to make a living pitching ideas and concepts to studios. The studios would say Yes to a given concept pitch, and gave them money to write a pilot or screenplay - they were not writers so they hired a writer to do that aspect. But they were hugely the exception.
Lets talk about writers. Typically writers go into meetings with pitch ideas and concepts for spec screenplays and teleplays that they have already written. They pitch the story to the execs. If the execs like the pitch they ask for the screenplay. If they like that, they option it. Now your agent or manager should be pitching your story around town too and hopefully saying your screenplay rocks - that should open doors too.
Writers do also pitch fresh concepts and stories to execs that they have not yet written. But there's typically no money involved until the execs see the script and decide to option it. A lucky few - typically the top tier of screenwriters - will get money up-front and a conditional deal based solely on that pitch. If the studio love the script, it will be greenlit. But such deals are typically reserved for the Hollywood screenwriting elite.
A huge issue with Hollywood today is that studios are greenlighting much less original concepts - they want work that brings an already established fanbase (ideally in the millions) to theaters - hence all the books, comics, superhero stuff, sequels etc being greenlit. So it's getting more difficult to sell specs (speculative screenplays), let alone original concepts/stories without a spec.
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No. You need a spec script. Only established writers sell movie pitches. Phil Gary. www.philgaryarts.com