It’s a common practice when pitching your script to compare it to a couple of other scripts. “My script is like “X” meets “Z”” The movies should be memorable and profitable examples. But do the movies have to be current? What if I was to use an older movie like “Some Like it Hot” meets “27 Dresses” Is that acceptable?
Screenwriting : Movie Comparisons by Rick Hardin
Movie Comparisons
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I'm no Hollywood insider, so somebody who is correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure "X meets Y" is done so much anymore. I think it's more important to orient the pitch in one RECENT successful movie. "It's got an AMERICAN HUSTLE feel, but set within a Nazi-era British spy network." But, again, I could be wrong. One part I'm pretty sure of: your key point of reference should absolutely be recent. No one is trying to replicate the success of Some Like It Hot at the moment.
Thanks Kerry. I’ve heard and read from several insiders that the movie comparison is still done and needed. You’re right though that it should be caged in something like what you wrote. “X” meets “Y” is IMO lazy writing, (I was trying to keep it simple.) BTW I made up the movie references I’m not trying to redo “Some Like it Hot.”
Right, I didn't believe you were. Just employing the same example. And as long as we're in the clarification phase: I'm not impugning Some Like it Hot either. :)
I think Rick, if you use recent films first, more and younger producers and others listening are liable to respond. If you get blank looks with your first example/s, nothing wrong in skipping to "Some Like It Hot", which if nothing else, would show the depth of your knowledge of classic movies.
It would be embarrassing if I used a classic movie reference and all I got was blank stares.
lol! ... then smile and move-on!
If the movie's a classic, very few people would admit to not liking it. They become classics through many thousands of "likes" ... no?
It doesn't matter if they personally liked it. (It may matter if it's in a GENRE they don't like, but then your logline will kill you anyway.) What matters is if it made money.
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Interesting I totally understand where Alle and Dan are coming from and it makes good sense to me, but there are professional script and pitch consultants out there that say you must have comparisons. As I understand it, the logic is to quickly get them the feel and tone of your story. I guess like so much in the scriptwriting world one persons rules are another persons preferences are yet another's bugaboo.
To be honest. You just write it, and if it somehow resembles another films values or concept, then so be it. There's nothing wrong with doing a similar story as long as you can do it better. The comparison thing... I'm thinking that it would most likely depend on the reader. I wouldn't compare it to anything, just let the reader find out for themselves. So then if they compare it to anything, it wasn't you that put that idea in their head in the first place. Just my opinion. Hope you have great success.
When pitching don't use the term, "In the vein of...". Trust me on this. Step up and demonstrate uniqueness and originality. Once I quit referring and comparing my IP with other IP I began to be taken seriously. Serious enough to have three projects greenlit as part of a multiple slate attached to a studio.
What if your story is most closely related to a truly great and successful book which was then made into a very forgettable movie. I would have to be careful how I worded it, "In the vein of the Jonathan Livingstone Seagull BOOK, but please. Not the movie." That's what I'd have to say. Not that I'm intending to pitch it to anyone else unless the current one falls through.
If it's a war picture stay away from saying its "Wings" meets "All Quiet on the Western Front".
In case he thinks your story is like the previous awful film that was made of the book. You have to show him it's the STORY that's important here - not the film.
Funny, reading the original post again, the film-maker who is keen on my story described it as being "Fantasia meets the Kaikoura coastline" He makes only animated films and while Fantasia IS a film, the Kaikoura Coastline is not at all. It's a very rugged coastline here in New Zealand, famed for its beauty and its incredible marine life. My story is a marine story and it is partly set in the ocean where the Kaikoura coastline is now, though it wasn't there then. The whole country was underwater then. So there's another possible way of pitching. Take ONE movie and something else altogether and compare them in one sentence. Examples might be, say if you had written "Life of Pi" and were pitching it you might describe it as "The Jungle Book meets the Pacific Ocean." The Jungle Book is a film but the Pacific is an ocean. Now I'm wondering if Life of Pi was set in the Pacific or the Bay of Bengal. Can't remember.