- Forum Clout
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Well, the first thing to tip you off he’s either lying or being fed a bunch of malarkey from a grifter is that he claims there’s way more money in screenwriting. If you’re Aaron Sorkin or the Coen Brothers then sure. If you’re a fucking nobody who wrote a couple of books that nobody outside of a community of MAP’s knows about then not so much. The days of massive fees for screenplays are long gone and nobody is getting Shane Black deals anymore.@Twatsmash comment?
Unfortunately for him, Pat is the type of bottom feeder who thinks The Matrix is a little known arthouse flick so he wouldn’t know enough to even convincingly lie about it.
I could go into the tedious minutiae of it all but there were studio agreements put in place after the writers strike so after you deliver at least a treatment, a first draft, a final draft and pay percentages to your agent, your lawyer, the producer and, in this hypothetical case, the book publisher, you’d come out with about 65-70% of the total purchase price. If the studio signed the WGA agreement they must buy the screenplay for between $72k up to around $130k Give or take a few hundred bucks. But that payment comes in installments so if we like the idea but not the actual screenplay and only want a first draft, you’ll only earn around $36-45k and then you’re off the project completely outside of your credit.
Divide that by two with the mystery writing partner who never gets tagged and you’re looking at a likely best case return of $18-23k for a first time sale spec script. If that’s really a lot more than your book sales then I suggest applying at McDonalds and working your way up to manager, Pat. You’ll earn more and you can probably take home the leftovers to fill your trough.