ROM COM WRITERS IN THE HORROR WORLD…

Anonymous writes… “I'm curious about coverage reports. Say someone foolishly submits a romantic comedy to Wes Craven's prodco. Obviously not a good match, but if the writing and structure are good will it still get recommended?”

I can’t speak for Wes Craven’s company, because I’ve never worked there, but I’ve worked at small production companies before headed by famous actors or directors who usually aren’t involved with the lower level script submissions. Here’s how those companies usually work…

Major and minor agencies and production companies send scripts to the production office. In general, the office has their interns or in-house readers filter through the submissions no matter who they came from. If the reader likes a submission, it moves up to their development guy. If he likes it, it keeps moving up until it hits the president of the company. If he likes it, it moves to the celebrity actor or director for final consideration. If the celebrity likes it, he takes it to the main studio he’s affiliated with and the studio then goes through their own process of deciding whether it’s a worthy project to put into production.

If a company is specifically looking for horror scripts, and a rom com comes in, they’ll still have their intern or reader read it; usually because they have a relationship with the agent or manager who submitted it and they trust their taste in screenplays, or because they’re beginning a relationship with an agency or management company and want to see if they’ll trust their taste in screenplays in the future. Readers, in addition to many other opinions, are usually asked to give their opinion on both the idea of the script in terms of the goal of the company and the writer’s execution of the idea of the script. If it’s brilliantly written, even though it’s in the wrong genre, the reader will say so and it will most likely continue to move up through the ladder of naysayers. But odds are it will never make it to the president of the production company because it’s not a genre that the company is interested in investing in, nor is it a genre that the studio has said they’re interested in funding and distributing, and they don’t want to waste the president’s time having him read something he won't be moving forward. From my experience, what happens then is that the writer’s name will be placed in a file of writers to consider for future projects. If the company ever decides to do a project in that writer’s genre, and yes that writer will be forever categorized as a writer in whatever genre of script that they submitted until they prove themselves otherwise, the writer will be called in to meet with the president or development execs to discuss their take on whatever project the office is working on in their proven genre.

The answer to your question is yes, and no... YES, you, as a writer, can be recommended. And that’s a good thing. Although it probably won’t pay off immediately, it may pay off in the future. You never know who that reader or that development exec will become in the next few years or even months. They may move to another company that is actually interested in rom coms and they might even bring up your name in a meeting where people are throwing out names of writers to call in to be considered for their new rom com book adaptation. Or they may even recommend that the new company read your script and consider it for production… And NO. If a company is looking for a horror script, and they are under the umbrella of a studio who is funding their existence based on the expectation that they’ll be bringing horror projects to the table, then it doesn’t matter at all that your “writing and structure” are good because your product is not what they're currently interested in marketing. You’d be better off targeting companies that are specifically looking for rom coms to develop. Your agent or manager should already be on top of that. If you don’t have an agent or manager, then you should be on top of that yourself.

Is it possible that some horror directors have enough pull with whatever studio they’re connected with to be able to bring a rom com to the table? Of course it’s possible. Anything’s possible. But in practical business terms, it’s not that likely. If anyone out there works for a horror director who has developed a rom com I’d love to hear how that project went. Please feel free to join the discussion.