Clients have asked us what happens once your script is sold or optioned. What is the development process like? There are a variety of things that can happen, but in order to give you a clear picture of how Hollywood works, it helps to back up a few steps and begin from the moment the script leaves your hands.
Once you feel you have completed a sufficient number of drafts and received enough trusted feedback, you are ready to market your script. Your first step may be to send it to contests (discussed in our October and November 2004 essays). If you win a contest, you have a good chance of being contacted by agents. At the least, winning or making it to the finalist round of a contest is a validation of merit you can reference in a query letter.
If you want to submit your script to production companies in Hollywood, then having an agent or manager is important. Although many agents and managers won’t consider new writers without a referral, the smaller agencies are usually open to new writers. However, small agencies have small staffs and it can take months for them to get to your script.
Some production companies will allow you to submit a project via an entertainment lawyer. This will often cost you a fee and is not as helpful to you as having an agent or manager who can act as a salesman: pitching your project to the executive and later following up on the submission, often pressing the executive to at least take a meeting with you. A script submitted by a lawyer will just be another submission in a large pile of submissions, with no one to fight for it.
There is another way into a production company and that is via a producer. If you can get an independent producer interested in your script, then this person can submit it and will also provide the sales pitch and follow-up. However, you must make sure you are dealing with a reputable producer: either someone with established credits or someone with years of experience as a movie executive, agent or manager, or in some other film production or development capacity. Anyone can say they are an independent producer, but someone with a bad (or no) reputation is unlikely to be of much help to you.
What if you submit your script to an agent or production company and don’t hear back? First, wait at least six weeks, and then follow up with a letter asking if they received your script. Enclose an SASE or self-addressed stamped postcard, or ask them to e-mail you. (Contact the agent, producer or executive by e-mail only if previous correspondence has been by e-mail.) If you don’t hear anything in another two months, my advice is to give up. If the person or company was serious about considering your work, you would at least have heard back from them telling you that they received the material.
If you do hear back with a form rejection, consider that person or company for future queries (they did respond at least). If you receive a personalized rejection -- phone call, e-mail, or personal note -- send a thank you letter immediately and promise to send the next screenplay you have or are working on -- and then do it.
If an executive rejects your script but compliments your writing, you have made a contact -- don’t neglect it. Contacts are the most important thing you can have in Hollywood. Keep tabs on these people (if they change companies, titles, etc.) If you live in or are visiting Los Angeles, try to set up an informational meeting; not to pitch your ideas necessarily, but to ask for advice and find out what the company is looking for. Some executives will be more open to this than others.
If anyone specifically asks to see other scripts, send them. If you fail to follow up on any positive response, that’s an opportunity you’ve lost, and such opportunities don’t come around often. On the other hand, if an executive or agent rejects your work and is clearly not open to future submissions, you can send a thank you letter if you choose, but then back off. Pressing more material on someone who is not interested will only alienate him or her.
If you are fortunate enough to land an agent or to find a producer interested in shopping your material around, your worries are not over. It may take several weeks if not longer before your script actually makes the rounds. The agent or producer may have notes for you. An agent may want to get a producer attached first, which often means sending it to one producer at a time and then waiting for him or her to respond before moving onto the next. An agent may also want to wait until a busy time to send out your script. (The heavy “spec seasons” are February/March, June, and October.) Or they may want to wait until a slow time. However, sending out your script over Labor Day or the winter holidays is never a good idea. Once your script goes out, it will probably be sent to production companies, not studios. Most production companies have deals with specific studios, so if the company is interested, they will take it in to the studio.
Should your script be rejected, you may land some meetings, which can give you the opportunity to pitch or can lead to assignments. Sometimes production companies who liked your script but failed to get their studio to buy it will suggest you rewrite for free so they can resubmit it. This may sound like a good deal, and if you agree with the notes, it might be worth doing, because at worst you end up with a better script, which you still own. However, agree to rewrite on spec only if you are ready to accept that the studio will probably still reject it, because this is what usually happens.
As you can see, there are several agonizing, grueling, and nerve-testing steps involved in merely submitting your work. However, if you have the patience, stamina and determination to plod on despite the hard climb upward, you could be rewarded with an option or sale. We’ll discuss what happens then next month.
