Saturday Hot Links

Time for the 352nd installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.

TIFF Reveals First Slate of 2018 Films, Including ‘Beautiful Boy,’ ‘High Life,’ ‘First Man,’ ‘Widows,’ and Many More.

First TIFF 2018 Titles Announced: Here’s What You Should Be Excited About.

Venice Film Festival Lineup Heavy on Award Hopefuls, Netflix and Star Power.

Venice Film Festival Nearly Shuts Female Filmmakers Out of Competition Lineup — Again.

Venice No-Shows Include Joel Edgerton’s ‘Boy Erased,’ Felix Van Groeningen’s ‘Beautiful Boy’.

Six Takeaways From Comic-Con 2018.

‘Star Wars: Episode IX’ Cast Announced.

James Gunn Fired as Director of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’.

Disney Should Know the Difference Between James Gunn and Roseanne.

Roseanne, Dan Harmon and the End of Hollywood’s Twitter Era.

In Firing James Gunn, Disney Hurts All of Hollywood.

Anxiety in Hollywood Over Firings, Tweets and Crying in the Office.

Is Hollywood’s New Zero-Tolerance Policy a Reaction to the Trump Era?

Nearly Two-Thirds of Industry’s Female Writers Have Been Sexually Harassed On the Job, New Survey Finds.

Jason Ropell Out as Amazon Film Chief.

After Being Jilted by Fox, Comcast on Prowl for Content, Eyes Sky.

MoviePass Shareholders Approve New Stock Plan as Heads Discuss ‘Full Blown War’.

MoviePass Is Planning A Rotten Tomatoes-Like Service And Other “Disruptions” Over The Next 90 Days.

University Research Team Claims To Have Cracked The Box Office Code.

‘Mission: Impossible — Fallout’ Budget Grows After Tom Cruise Injury, Raising Box-Office Stakes.

Ryan Reynolds’ ‘Detective Pikachu’ Moves From Universal to Warner Bros.

DC’s Everlasting Tone Problems.

What’s with all these Robin Hood movies?

Which of the 6 Thai Cave-Rescue Films Will You End Up Seeing?

‘Hamilton’ Performance Reportedly Sparks Studio Movie Rights Bidding War.

The Coen Brothers Have Re-Edited Their Netflix Series ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’ Into a Movie.

The Minimal Appeal of ‘Die Hard’ Knockoffs.

‘Halloween’ Script Took 8 Months, 80 Drafts to Complete.

Bo Burnham’s Age of Anxiety.

‘Wildlife’: First-Time Filmmaker Paul Dano on How Zoe Kazan Helped Him Make His Passion Project.

What Do Ex-Gawker Employees Think of the Gawker Scripts?

How SXSW, Comic-Con Fueled the Rise of Activation Culture.

Meet the People Who Grind Out the Best Movie Trailers in the World.

Top Female Filmmakers on the “Political Weight” of Studio, Genre Filmmaking.

France’s Wild Bunch Restructures, Sets $35 Million for New Content.

Luc Besson’s Woes Pile Up as His Film School Teeters on the Brink of Closing.

Mightier Than the Sword: Shinobu Hashimoto at 100.

Unlocking The Real Evil Within ‘Jaws’

The Harrowing History of Adapting ‘Dune’.

Hear Stanley Kubrick Explain the 2001: A Space Odyssey Ending In a Rare, Unearthed Video.

I Saw a Film Today, Oh Boy: Exploring the Beatles’ Engrossing Cinematic Forays.

‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ TV Reboot in Development From Joss Whedon, Monica Owusu-Breen.

Joss Whedon Explains What Making a Web Series and Making a Blockbuster Have In Common.

TCA 2018: What a ‘Broader’ HBO May Look Like and 12 More Burning Questions for Summer Press Tour.

‘Deadwood’ Movie Is Finally a Go at HBO.

‘Sharp Objects’: How Gillian Flynn’s Novel Kept HBO’s Drama From Becoming Another ‘Generic Dead Girl Story’.

Univision Lays Off 6 Percent of Staff.

‘Insatiable’: Petition to Cancel ‘Fat-Shaming’ Netflix Series Gathers 100,000-Plus Signatures.

Go90 Failure Just Cost Verizon $658 Million.

Meg Whitman Invests in E-Sports Organization Immortals.

‘Fortnite’ Might Be Cannibalizing Bigger Franchises.

Twitter Blocks 143,000 ‘Malicious’ Apps in Latest Purge.

Facebook Stock in Freefall Following Q2 Revenue, User Growth Miss, Lower Forecast.

BitTorrent Confirms It’s Been Acquired by Blockchain Startup Tron.

Female-Led Broadway Startup Shaking Up Theater Ticket Sales.

The Comedy-Destroying, Soul-Affirming Art of Hannah Gadsby.

Listen: Scriptnotes (Episode 360).

Listen: Scripts and Scribes — Mickey Fisher.

Listen: 3rd & Fairfax: The WGAW Podcast (Episode 106).

Read: If only I’d had a mentor — Amy Berg.

Watch: Technologies That Changed the Art of Cinema.

Watch: Every 2018 Comic-Con trailer.

Watch: Guns Don’t Kill People, Knives Kill People.

Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week

Imagine having your very own private script workshop. A structured environment with content and a schedule tailored to meet your specific creative needs. Your own unique online course site. And a one-on-one mentor relationship with a professional screenwriter and educator.

You can do this through Screenwriting Master Class.

The Quest is one such program. It is an intensive 24-week online screenwriting workshop. It consists of three stages:

Core [8 weeks]: Participants learn essential screenwriting principles covering Plot, Concept, Character, Style, Dialogue, Scene, Theme, Time. There are 6 written lectures each week which post daily, then a writing exercise due Sunday to put the theory into practice. I wrote all 48 lectures amounting to over 250 pages of in-depth content and believe it to represent a new, cutting edge way to think about screenwriting.

The approach presented in Core is unique in these respects:

Coherent: Rather than a writer being forced to pick a bit of screenwriting theory from this guru or that, this educational resource or that, the Core content comes from a specific perspective — my own — based on over 25 years experience as a screenwriter and over 10 years as an educator. Every concept presented in Core is tied together by an overall philosophy about screenwriting, writing and creativity.

Comprehensive: The content presented in Core provides writers all the knowledge they need to have to be able to write a professional quality screenplay.

Character-based: Whereas so much of the conversation about screenwriting is focused on structure [and by ‘structure’ most people mean ‘plot’], Core presents an approach that begins and ends with character. In my view, this is not only the best way for a writer to craft unique, compelling, and entertaining multidimensional characters, it’s also the most effective — and frankly logical — way to find your story’s plot.

For 8 weeks in Core, participants in The Quest are immersed in screenwriting theory. At the end of that time, they put their understanding of those essential principles to work writing an original screenplay of their own.

Prep [6 weeks]: Starting with an original concept, participants in The Quest develop it through a series of 6 weekly lectures and writing assignments, each building upon the other until they end up with a thorough outline of their story.

I have been teaching Prep at SMC since we launched in January 2011 and the course has proved to be extremely popular. In fact, check out this deal which went down this week:

Catapult Entertainment Group and Needle’s Eye Productions acquire science fiction thriller spec script “Suicide 21” written by Greg Wayne.

Logline: Assisted suicide is legal for adults over 21. A young man and woman meet at a death clinic and decide to spend their last hours together.

This is a script Greg developed and wrote in my 24 week private master class The Quest. We exchanged emails:

“And thank you for all your help with the script. The Quest gave me more screenwriting tools than I can count, and they’ll stick with me forever.”

The Quest picks up on the theory laid out in Core and runs with it in a workshop environment. The six weeks lay out like this:

The first two weeks are about Exploring the Characters, starting with the Protagonist and a series of key questions to help define some of the narrative’s fundamental elements, then a full week’s worth of brainstorming, three different ways to prompt the writer’s creativity and engage the story.

The next two weeks are about Wrangling the Narrative, the primary Plotline points that provide the spine of the plot, and the movements of the Themeline, the story’s emotional plot.

The final two weeks are about Crafting the Structure, scene by scene, sequence by sequence, subplot by subplot until the participant has a detailed outline.

Armed with their outline, the writer can approach the page-writing part of the process with confidence, primed to type FADE IN and go.

Pages [10 weeks]: Using their outline as a guide, participants pound out script pages through a series of 10 weekly lectures and writing assignments. Averaging about 10–15 pages per week, by the end of The Quest the writer has a complete first draft of their original screenplay.

Here, too, the process is founded on the principles presented in Core and put into use in Prep, all reflecting a character-based approach to screenwriting.

The Quest changed my life. It gave me the structure to be immersed in screenwriting and the flexibility needed to write and accommodate work and family life. Not only did I come out with a quality screenplay, but a practical approach that I can apply to each script I write.

Scott’s instincts as a mentor are spot on. He can tell the difference between when you need encouragement and when you need a good kick in the pants. Under his guidance, you become the kind of writer you want to be, the kind that doesn’t need to wait for inspiration.

You can spend your time reading through screenwriting inspiration, tips or shortcuts, thinking it will help more than actually doing the work, or you can take the leap and do The Quest.

— Taylor Gordon

As noted, The Quest is a private screenwriting workshop and that means:

• Weekly writing exercises and assignments
• Detailed feedback on all exercises, assignments, and script pages
• Regular teleconferences
• A structure to motivate the writer through the entire process
• One-on-one mentoring with me as your guide

Here are three big reasons to consider an SMC private script workshop:

• Writing a screenplay involves making thousands of choices about characters, plot, theme and so forth. Wouldn’t it be helpful to have feedback from a professional to help steer you through the process enabling you to avoid huge story pitfalls that could derail your scripting process?
• Writing a screenplay is a thankless, lonely job. Wouldn’t it be great to have the ongoing support of a professional to enable you to overcome inevitable story problems and emotional downswings?
• Writing a screenplay is a mystery. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to learn proven principles and practices from a professional with years of experience working in the entertainment industry, an approach to writing you can use again and again on your future stories?

If your are serious about learning the craft with a coherent, comprehensive, and character-based approach to both theory and practice, check out The Quest. I look forward to the opportunity to work with you.