Screenwriting : What makes a good script a bad film? by Pete Whiting

If we work from the audience backwards.

What did the marketing tell the audience they were getting? If that is wrong you’ll have a flop.

Was the production team (inc actors) correct. If not you could have a flop.

Was the budget enough to make the film. If production has to drop scenes or cut corners you could have a flop.

Did the script sit in a genre which became poison to the audience between sale and release.

Was it a bad script that someone saw value in?

I don’t think there is a single reason.

There are many reasons why a film might flop and it isn't always because it is a bad movie or script. Sometimes its just the wrong timing, as was the case for Alita: Battle Angel. Great story, great effects. One of the best Manga to film adaptations yet, but it just didn't catch on in the US. Godzilla King of the Monsters. They literally made Godzilla the star (unlike the first film), and while it is a tour de force to behold, it also underperformed.

In respect to a movie being straight up bad... From what I've researched, a lot of it has to do with issues with the script. Sometimes you just get way too many writers involved, all wanting to take it in a different direction. This causes the film to feel muddled and boost costs due to endless reshoots.

One example that comes to my mind is Tim Burn's original script for An American Werewolf in Paris. The actual script is almost NOTHING like the movie. They threw out much of his story and just kept the core elements. For me though, even his script was more science fiction than John Landis magnum opus. Seriously, the hero battled Neo Nazis that created a super soldier serum from werewolf blood. The original script had some cool moments, to be sure, but it didn't feel like anything close to the OG AWL.

I can see why Anthony Waller rewrote much of it to try and bring it closer to AWL, but even then... ugh that film was awful.

If you get the script for "A Few Good Men" you can see the movie unfolding in front of your eyes. A - list actors. Dialogue. Strong story. From script, budget, actors, director, marketing department, everything came into place. The result was great. The movie "Silence of the Lambs" is another example of a successful movie. But 5 years earlier, a similar story (based on the same novel) under the title "Manhunter" did not attract the audience. It was not a bad movie. The script was good, great actors. What happened? Like Craig said there is not a single reason. At the end of the day, the audience is always interested in watching a good movie. How to attract them is the key. How many movies were backed by good scripts but for whatever reason the message behind the script (concept and POV) did not materialize into scenes.

Inept and incompetent people make 'bad' films.

A bad screenplay can make a great film and a great screenplay can make a bad film. When it comes to making movies there is one way to get everything right and fifty ways to screw it up.

A bad screenplay can never be a good movie.

Movies are a collaborative effort. Its like cooking a stew and everyone has one step in the process. one person brings the pot, another puts in the water, another adds beef stock, another adds the carrots.... There are so many hands in the pot that it is easy for a great recipe to be slightly off or go bad altogether. Its up to the writer to create the recipe, the producers to bring the best ingredients, the actors to bring out the flavors of those ingredients, the director to orchestrate the entire process. To make the best stew that they can. (Dang! Now I've made myself hungry.)

I would think that possibly important scenes were cut, or the premise was misinterpreted.

Edmundo. A bad script can make a good movie because a good screenwriter and or director can fix them during development. It happens all the time.

You can have an awesome script or story but if you do not have the production skills to pull it off it or don't use a pro crew to do it for you, makes all of the world difference in the final film. Like Anthony said, It's a collaboration. You see it all of the time just think of a movie that you were excited to see at the theatre only for it to fall flat and suck. A 300 million dollar production only to get a 50 mil return a failure in the business sides eyes. Will that look bad on the writer? I think not. As the writer was already good and writing on that level to begin with. Who knows why it was not received well, mis direction, Production companies dropped the ball, bad editing, not good advertising? Could be anything.

Here's some insight from Ed Solomon, writer of "Men in Black." Fired 4x or 5x.

https://twitter.com/ed_solomon/status/1142284262651105280

Sometimes a good script barely ressembles the final product with all the development cooks in the kitchen.

Gigli was famously undermined when a producer wanted to include J-Lo because she was dating Ben Affleck, though we have no guarantee it would have been a good film otherwise. But I think a truly good script needs to be turned to mincemeat before it becomes a bad movie, because solid writing in the hands of even an incompetent director will at least be a passable film.

Dan Guardino If you fix a bad script, then it's not a bad script anymore.

A bad script cannot be a good film, unless you fix it.

They can take a bad screenplay and use it to make a good movie during filming as well. They can also take a great screenplay and turn it into a crappy movie.

Perhaps (a controversial thought) the script was a great script. A great read, nice formatting (for people that think that matters), things happening on the correct page number. But it was a blue print for a crap film. The creator was writing a script not a film.

Kay, if these rewrites fixed all these scripts, this thread could not exist.

I'm going to agree with Hitch on this one. Although I'm sure he would be the first to admit that filmmaking is a highly collaborative process and that the whole always surpasses the sum of its parts, considering he arguably had the best cinematographer ever. Still, he infamously stated “To make a great film you need three things – the script, the script and the script.” In my mind, he was simply affirming that just like when constructing a house, everything ultimately depends on the foundation. If that's strong, the construction will be a success, if it's not, any attempt to build on it will always fail in the end.

I've heard it said another way as well - you can have a great film with poor acting and directing, if the script is strong enough to tell the story, but you can never have a great film if the script is weak - even with strong actors and spectacular effects. That's because films are visual stories.

So I tend to think a bad film made from a great script is an oxymoron. That means the problem must lie in the altering of said great script. Such altering happens routinely and for a number of reasons - but mostly out of fear that a film will not yield a high enough return on investment. Enter the rewrite team. If that's actually what you're concerned about Pete, I wouldn't worry about it, since you'll likely not get written credit anyway (the A list "rescue" writers will). You can also opt to use a pseudonym, if you must. But ultimately everyone working in this industry understands that bad things happen to good scripts - so it's unlikely to wreck your reputation.

Now if that scenario understandably bothers you, and If you've written something that you're truly passion about, that could be the perfect incentive to make the film yourself. Where there is a will there is always a way.

Jean - Hitch was really sort of a one-man-band when it came to making movies. He could be pretty authoritarian at times but he really admired active creative talent and recognized that he could enhance himself by surrounding himself with truly dedicated & talented players.

Hitch had a wife (Alma Reville) that was an amazing writer. The unsung brains of the operation. “The three things” she had a hand in.

For the life of me, I can't understand how many times I see people opine that scripts that get made are so often the "Cream at the top". A great many scripts are complete garbage, and I can only surmise are made because of relationships, not talent. I'm not being jealous or petty, just honest and observant. There is a very obvious reason many movies fail: they are built on poor scripts.

Hi Tim, are you suggesting that people are willing to burn millions because they are friends?

I think, obviously, they want to make money, but in the end there is something to be said for writing checks to people you know. Human nature, I suppose, but it is a fact that many scripts are written with very poor ideas.

Tim. Connections will help you get your scripts read but nobody is going to make a movie if they think the story is not good. Story is king.

Hi Dan! If that is the case, there are a great many crappy kings in the market!

A Good script doesn't mean a good film, if the persons involved ain't good at their jobs, especially key players, there're great chances the movie ends up crap. You can have the best tools in the world but if you don't know how to use them properly, you'll fail. Plus a script being green lit doesn't mean it's a good one, it just could be a cash grab. Don't forget the movie industry is a business.

Yes, agreed. I’m well aware of Alma Reville’s influence on him, and his idiosyncrasies not withstanding, he still clearly understood the value of actors and of course the brilliance of cinematographers. Robert Burks’ opening shot in REAR WINDOW is a master class in visual exposition, and that’s not even the film Burks won the Oscar for. So clearly Hitchcock understood the strength of the component parts of film, and yet he still made that comment. That’s my point.

Timothy. There are a lot of crappy stories on the market but I don't get what you are saying.

Hi Dan! I'm saying a lot of those crappy scripts get made into movies that are in turn bad. Are you saying that all scripts made into movies are good?

Timothy That is not what I am saying. A lot of crappy scripts do get made into movies that turn out bad. However, the producers who made them didn’t think the scripts were bad when they decided to use them. That is one of the reasons 90% of the movies made lose money.

Hi Pete,

Are there any specific "bad films" that you are referring to? It's hard to offer a qualified opinion on what makes a "bad film bad" without having any specific examples.

Me personally....I only watch films that appeal to me and can't even remember the last time I was disappointed with the quality of a film.

Best fortunes in your creative endeavors, Pete.

As in most matters, it's about balance. So no one is "right" or "wrong" per say, but Timothy has a completely valid point. I say this as someone who has worked in multimedia, with a partner in creative crime (and life) who has worked for one of the top 3 networks as an award-winning Producer for well over a decade. (Something I don't like to bring into conversations, but in this case it's merited.)

When people in charge of budgeting and hiring a creative crew for a __________ (commercial, promo, special segment, short &/or feature film) are tasked with making a decision that could put their own neck on the chopping block, you better believe that they are more likely to go with someone they have worked with before, with a proven success record, even if said crew is not necessarily the most suitable for the task. Humans are creatures of habit and most try to avoid unnecessary risk. This is precisely why the so called "A List Rescue Writers" exist and are called in.

My previous point, and one that I think behooves us all as writers to herald, is simply that such a decision is not the best one - IF/WHEN a script written by a new writer is actually really good, and the only impetus for a decision maker to call in the "A team" is out of fear that elements of the script are not going to be understood. There was a recent S32 blog or post written by such a decision-maker about this very thing. To his credit, he acknowledged that such second-guessing and choosing the known over the unknown (writer) is often the precise cause of initially good scripts turning into bad movies. (If I remember the title of the blog I'll come back and post it.)

I don't know the percentage of movies that are bad or even unprofitable (nailing down profitability can be a purposefully vague endeavor), but it would seem we could reverse-engineer the process by which scripts are made into movies to check if it actually works. I've read extensively that readers and prodcos know right away when they see brilliance,and that the best quality writing gets picked up. Well, either the readers or clueless, or the evaluations are bad, because there should be a very strong corollary between what is chosen, and what makes a success at the box office. And yet, we see bomb after bomb and bad movie after bad movie. If I was managing people that did that badly in my former occupations, I would have to change my vetting processes. seriously change my processes. what makes

typing on the phone is breaking up my lines...

Dan G: No disrespect to you, but that "90% of films lose money" myth should really end being repeated- at least by knowledgeable people.

A well-respected industry analyst with access to real data - Stephen Follows - de-bunked that myth a few years ago with a comprehensive analysis of "Big-Budget Hollywood Studio films" and with 3,000 lower-budget films from the Nash report. He even did a more-comprehensive analysis of every film with budget information available over the last 30 years.

His finding were: 50% of Hollywood Studio films were profitable, and 40% of all other films were profitable. Real industry insiders - Hollywood studio execs, and low-budget indie producers - concurred with his findings.

Bill. I am just going on what I read somewhere. I have two pre-production that are low budget film projects in the $1M to $2M range so I do hope Steven Follows is right. I can afford to take some loss but I would like to see a profit if possible. I think they are going to be good and I believe my co-writer/co-producer is a good actress and is staring in them so I do have my fingers crossed.

Dan G: yeah...I love Steven Follows. And those reports should add a little encouragement to your pursuits, and I wish you the best in whichever sales strategy you follow.

And just once again...I've said it here at least 100 times....I have nothing but respect and admiration for those indie producers who take such great risks - with their money, or with someone else's. It's definitely not for everyone, and best fortunes to you with those projects and with future projects, too, Dan!

(And sorry for the mini-sidetrack, Pete!)

Thanks Bill..

And so much more goes into making a movie bad than just the script. It can have bad directing, bad acting, bad cinematography, etc. I have read scripts I thought were bad and they made good movies and have read lots of scripts that were good and executed badly. The script is the blueprint, you still need to build the house properly.