People & News

The Buzz
Should you expect a return investment on your short film, or is exposure the best you can hope for?

People
Horror scribe David J. Schow (The Crow, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning) lets the blood flow with The Hills Run Red.

Anatomy of a Spec Sale
After a decade-long absence from screenwriting Andy Burg shifts genres and finds himself one Hellified spec sale.

Fall TV Preview: Hank
Showrunner Tucker Cawley (Everybody Loves Raymond) sells a show about downsizing in the midst of studios cutbacks.

Fall TV Preview: Eastwick
Maggie Friedman hopes that the third attempt to bring this story to the small screen will be the charm.

Fall TV Preview: Trauma
Dario Scardapane's medical drama hopes to fill the void at NBC left by the departure of powerhouse ER.

Why I Write
After two Oscar nominations for his work on Frost/Nixon and The Queen, Peter Morgan brings yet another true-life tale, The Damned United, to the big screen as he prepares to embark on a new adventure...fiction

Lost Scenes: The Breakfast Club
Writer-director John Hughes revived the teen-angst film with The Breakfast Club. Senior editor Jeff Goldsmith went searching to see what secrets would be uncovered about Hughes' though process from his final draft of the script.

Last Words
A man discovers the power of the world's first lie in The Invention of Lying by Matt Robinson & Ricky Gervais.

Now Playing

Extract
Mike Judge, creator of the cult film Office Space, goes to the flipside in his new film and talks about the many headaches that come with being the boss.
BY PETER CLINES

Sorority Row
Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger talk about the hard work behind getting lucky on Sorority Row.
BY ADAM STOVALL

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
Judi and Ron Barrett's classic picture book provided a strong high concept, but it was up to writers Phil Lord and Chris Miller to shape a film around a town where food falls from the skies.
BY PETER DEBRUGE

Zombieland
Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick show us how the road to Zombieland goes through Safetytown.
BY ADAM STOVALL

Amelia
Being called in to rewrite someone else's original screenplay does not have to be an acrimonious event, as Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan proved. Their friendship of more than 20 years paved the way for a smooth transition on
Amelia.
BY PETER N. CHUMO II

The Road
Joe Penhall deftly navigates the post-apocalyptic landscape to bring Cormac McCarthy's beloved novel to the big screen.
BY DANNY MUNSO

The Burning Plain
Writer-director Guillermo Arriaga takes us on a hunting trip and shows how childhood memories and nature's four elements serve as the inspiration and theme for The Burning Plain.
BY ADAM STOVALL

Bronson
Brawling may have been British criminal Charles Bronson's key to celebrity, but it was the man's desperate need for fame that inspired this unconventional biopic.
BY PETER DEBRUGE

An Education
Award-winning novelist Nick Hornby takes his first stab at screenwriting in a decade, adapting the true story of a young woman's unusual first love.
BY PETER CLINES

Antichrist
Writer-director Lars von Trier explains how German operas, shamanic journeys, and his own battle with depression led him to craft Antichrist.
BY ADAM STOVALL

Shutter Island
Laeta Kalogridis believed in Dennis Lehane's novel so much that she adapted it on spec, which led to a big-budget film directed by none other than Martin Scorsese.
BY DANNY MUNSO

Bright Star
The Oscar-winning screenwriter and director of The Piano breathes new life into the love story of John Keats and Fanny Brawne. But, as she insists, it didn't need much help.
BY PETER CLINES

9
A fledgling writer-director teams up with an experienced pro to expand his award-winning animated short about ragdolls fighting monsters in a post-apocalyptic city.
BY PETER CLINES

The Box
The writer-director of the cult hit Donnie Darko thinks his new adaptation is right on the button.
BY PETER CLINES

Big Fan
Rarely can a writer finish a script in just 10 days, but that's exactly what screenwriter Robert Siegel did in 2001 during his winter vacation. Now, nearly eight years later, his film hits theaters and he spills the beans on what it took to get it made.
BY ADAM STOVALL

Pandorum
Travis Milloy was about to leave Hollywood after years of penning scripts that went nowhere. Then he sat down to write something that excited and scared him.
BY DAVID MICHAEL WHARTON

Surrogates
Screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris explore a world without consequences in Surrogates, a new science-fiction thriller in which people live vicariously through idealized robot versions of themselves…until someone finds a way to kill both the surrogate and its user.
BY DAVID MICHAEL WHARTON

Black Dynamite
Michael Jai White finally gets his chance at being the blaxploitation star he was always meant to be with the help of co-writers Byron Minns and Scott Sanders.
BY PETER DEBRUGE

Columns

Agent's Hot Sheet
BLOCKBUSTER!
Dream of seeing your movie up on the multiplex marquee? You need to know the rules of the road.
BY JIM CIRILE

Our Craft
The Power of Anticipation

Five ways to engage the reader until the last page.
BY KARL IGLESIAS