David Hughes - Tales From Development Hell: The Greatest Movies Never Made?

ISBN: 9780857687234

E-BOOK ISBN 9780857687319

Published by

Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark St.

London

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First updated and expanded edition: February 2012

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Tales From Development Hell copyright 2003, 2011

David Hughes. All rights reserved.

DEDICATION

To Sandra, Kocham Cie.

PUBLISHERS NOTE

The views and opinions expressed by the interviewees and other third party sources in this book are not necessarily those of the author or publisher, and the author and publisher accept no responsibility for inaccuracies or omissions, and the author and publisher specifically disclaim any liability, loss, or risk, whether personal, financial, or otherwise, that is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, from the contents of this book.

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A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the USA.

My sincere thanks are due to several key players who rescued this book from Development Hell:

Adam Newell, the producer who shepherded it into production and pulled double duty quadruple duty if you include this second edition as editor and continuity person;

Rod Edgar, the script researcher and production assistant whose diligence makes up for my negligence;

Chelsey Fox, the agent who negotiated the deal and made sure the writer didnt get screwed;

Steven de Souza, who provided several terrific characters, and whose vast contribution seems almost sufficient to warrant shared story credit under Writers Guild regulations;

James V. Hart, whose tireless efforts gave me a whole subplot I would not otherwise have conceived of;

Gary Goldman, another great screenwriter much too gracious to take credit where its due;

Tab Murphy, who provided excellent guidance on the rewrite;

Beth Palma Diaz for invaluable research assistance;

Also deserving of a place on the credit list are the following key collaborators:

Grant Hawkins, Ted Henning, Lee and Janet Scott Batchler, Adam Rifkin, Don Murphy, Forrest J. Ackerman, Ralph Bakshi, David Cronenberg, Ron Shusett, Paul Verhoeven, Gary Goldman, Matthew Cirulnick, Steven de Souza, Jim Uhls, H. R. Giger, Jere Cunningham, David Koepp, Terry Moore, Neil Gaiman, William Farmer, David J. Schow, Richard Friedenberg, James V. Hart, Tom Topor, Darren Aronofsky, Wesley Strick Dean Devlin, Kevin J. Anderson and Glen Morgan.

Finally, special thanks to Sandra, Harry and Jenna for giving me peace, love and understanding while I worked on the Second Edition.

Trying to make a movie in Hollywood is like trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it.

Douglas Adams

T his is not the book I set out to write. Originally, I planned a kind of mainstream version of my earlier book, The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made, covering some of the best unproduced scripts in recent Hollywood history. However, like so many movie-related projects before it, a degree of Development Hell crept in, which turned this book into something else entirely. I already knew that the stories behind many unmade movies were more interesting than the movies themselves would ever have been. What I also discovered was that some of the films which suffered most in development did eventually get made albeit with varying results and the stories behind those projects are, to me, just as fascinating. Thus, as far as this is book is concerned, the development process was a positive experience which is more than can be said for the various case studies it documents.

Why do so many Hollywood films go into development, only to wind up in Hell? What is this place to which so many promising-sounding projects and perfectly serviceable scripts seem to be banished, many of them never to be heard from again?

To understand the concept of Development Hell, one must first understand what development is. Producer Jane Hamsher, whose credits include Natural Born Killers and From Hell, has described development as follows: The writer turns in a script. The producers and studio executives read it, give the writer their development notes, and he goes back and rewrites as best he can, trying to make everyone happy. If it comes back and its great, the studio and the producers will try and attach a director and stars (if they havent already), and hopefully the picture will get made.

Thats development, in theory. In practice, its more like this:

1. The writer turns in a script so unutterably perfect they would stick pens in their eyes sooner than change a single syllable of it.
2. The producer or studio executive, too busy/bored/illiterate to read the script for themselves, sends out for script coverage advice on the potential of the script from a professional script reader. If this doesnt instantly lead to the script being junked and the writer being fired and replaced either by a younger, hotter, cheaper model (a tyro), or an older, more experienced and more expensive one (a veteran) the writer will be given notes. Everybody gives writers notes, says screenwriter Richard Friedenberg (Dying Young, A River Runs Through It), [even] the garbage man. And the notes always conflict.
3. If sufficiently encouraged to do so, the producer/executive might then actually read the script. This is perfect, he (or, one time in a thousand, she) might say. Who can we get to rewrite it? Then, in order to justify their own on-screen credit/exorbitant salary/job title/parking space, they will throw their own ideas into the mix or, more commonly, take ideas out. In Hollywood, ideas are anathema, says screenwriter-producer Gary Goldman (Basic Instinct, Total Recall, Minority Report), and the bigger the budget, the more forbidden they are.
4. The writer then scurries away to rewrite their magnum opus, doing their best to incorporate all the different, conflicting notes, and resubmits the script for approval.
   Steps 1 through 4 are now repeated continuously, with the script continually evolving and, in rare cases, improving until finally someone decides its good enough (though probably not quite as good as the first draft) to make into a film...
5. This latest draft of the script is sent out to actors and directors, in the hope that it will attract one with sufficient clout to actually get it made. Interested directors who may be attached to up to a dozen projects at a time, in the hopes that a studio will eventually give one of them a green light will almost certainly want a rewrite, to incorporate twenty-minute tracking shots, elaborate set-pieces, thousands of extras, impossible locations, etc., any of which can add a couple of zeroes to the budget the producer has in mind. Interested actors will almost certainly want a rewrite, to make their scenes larger, their character more heroic, their journey more arduous, their dialogue more, well, you know, gooder even (or especially) if it means stealing the best lines from other characters. In other words, as one veteran screenwriter puts it, tweaking a draft to better suit a star whos expressed interest, only to have said star drop out of the project. Since the desires of the studio, producers, director and actors are usually mutually exclusive, all of them will blame the writer, who will be fired and replaced by a new writer... taking the whole process back to stage 1.