All Media Access 2025 (Part One)

You have come up with a great idea for a movie...but is it really a movie idea? One of the things that I often notice in screenwriting groups are people who post their logline for their movie screenplay that reads more suited to an episode of a TV show like Law & Order or some sitcom. It’s too small for a movie, but just right for a TV episode. But they have written a movie screenplay - their idea doesn’t fit the market they have written for...limiting their chances for a sale or landing an assignment, Different mediums and markets require different kinds of ideas, and different kinds of stories... so I thought that we probably should look at that in the New Year.

Back in March of 2003 Script Magazine (print) published my article “All Media Access” about finding the perfect fit for your story idea...and since then everything has changed with streamers and the death of the DTV market, so I thought it might be a good time to write a new article looking at matching ideas to markets.

When should you start thinking about marketing your script? After you finish the script? During the rewrite period? When you first come up with the idea? The biggest mistake a writer can make is to write their script and then think about the market or the medium. You want to match your idea to the market, which might sound a little like putting the cart before the horse, but in screenwriting every decision that you make is a business decision - whether you know it or not. The first step in selling your script is to write a script that people want to buy...that means that marketing your screenplay isn’t going to be an afterthought. That doesn’t mean you’re going to sell out, just that you are going to write something that you are passionate about that also has a chance of selling.

I always say to write the movies you pay to see. That way, you are writing for an audience...that includes yourself. It’s not just you alone in the cinema.

And to make sure that I am not writing a TV episode idea as a movie, or a movie idea as a TV episode or any of the other mediums that we can write for. We need to know that there is a market for the story idea that we have come up with before we write our script, but also which market that is. Movie? Streaming Movie? Network TV? TV movie? Cable movie? Streaming series? F.A.S.T. Streaming movie? Or maybe this is a Novel idea? Or maybe a Fiction Podcast? We have so many possibilities these days! 

But what type of script we write depends on what kind of idea we have selected from out list of great ideas. There are often movie screenplays that become limited series on streamers like Netflix, but those ideas need to be tweaked to fit that medium. A story that can best be told in two hours suddenly become ten one-hour episodes requires adaptation of the idea itself to the medium or it becomes two hours of story and eight hours of padding. We don’t want that!

Related: I Give You Props!

I know that you have seen those streaming series that are 8 or 10 episodes long, but only have enough story for 3 or 4 episodes...and those might be the result of a movie idea that’s a little too long, being forced into a medium where it’s way too short. The show is mostly padding and meaningless subplots. The writer should have just done the rewrites to bring it down to 110 pages! They should have realized they had the wrong idea for the medium at the idea stage!

So let’s look at the difference in the type of story for each of these different ways to tell a story. All of this is a generalization, and you might be able to easily point to an exception...but there really is more to turning that 230-page feature into a limited series for Netflix. If you have ever watched a 6 or 8 or 10-episode series on Netflix or Disney+ or whatever and thought there were episodes that were just padding or had subplots that never connected to the main story? That’s someone trying to get 6 or 8 or 10 episodes out of a 2 or 3 or 4 episode idea. Writers are often asking how they can take their 50 or 60-page movie script and pad it out to 2 hours. Um, no padding!

THEATRICAL MOVIE IDEA

A movie idea is going to be something that will appeal to a Global Audience, and the idea itself will be so amazing that 20 million people will pay to see it. Leave their house. Maybe hire a babysitter. Maybe pay for parking. Maybe go out to dinner first and buy a ticket to sit in a dark room with a bunch of strangers to see this story. That means it’s going to be a pretty amazing story idea. Though some of you are thinking that you will just wait for Netflix, but now that Netflix has bought some cinemas and is doing a theatrical release for some of their films, it’s obvious that theatrical is an important part of the equation.

No matter where you are watching this story idea, it will have a strong central conflict (rather than a bunch of small conflicts) and that will be an escalating conflict - something that will grow and become worse and worse as the story plays out so that you have enough conflict to last 110 pages. Many story ideas don’t have strong enough conflicts to go the distance. Or the conflict “flatlines” and never gets worse as the story continues. Those are short film ideas that you are padding out! This is why I have my 100 Idea Theory - you come up with a lot of great ideas and pick the best of them, rather than the first idea that you come up with (which might not work as a movie) or the idea you like the best (which also might not work). Make sure you start with a great movie idea no matter where people will be watching it!

There are three basic types of Movies these days:

1) Big Event Films: These are stories that appeal to everyone around the world - from big Marvel movies to big epic science fiction movies like Dune to big event musicals like Wicked to big Animated movies like Moana 2 or Wild Robot to anything else that is epic in nature and needs to be seen on the biggest screen possible. Gladiator II! 

Some of you might have noticed that many of those are based on an existing property, but some of these films are original screenplays...and in the 2003 version of this article, The Matrix and a bunch of other hot spec scripts were the examples. If you aren’t based on a hugely popular existing property, you need an amazing idea that will appeal to a global audience and that people will want to see more than once. There was that old tagline, “If you only see one movie this year, see...” and that’s this type of story idea we are looking for.

2) “Meat And Potatoes” Genre Films: Though these stories still need an original and interesting idea, they don’t need to be those epic ideas that everyone on the planet wants to see, they need to be exactly what their target audience wants to see. Action, Rom-Com, Horror, Comedy, Thriller. 2024 was a great year for Horror movies; from mainstream films like Heretic and First Omen, to arthouse films like The Substance and Cuckoo, to films appealing to hardcore “gorehounds” like Terrifier 3. 

In Action, we had films like The Beekeeper and Monkey Man. In Romantic Comedy we had Anyone But You and Fly Me to the Moon. These ideas are focused on the genre - and deliver a series or great genre scenes. Because they are made on smaller budgets than the big event films, your idea needs to be something that is focused. Smaller ideas need to be made on smaller budgets than the blockbusters...so keep that in mind.

3) Independent Films: Since we’re in Oscar season, cinemas have been flooded with these films - dramas and “personal stories” and smaller “serious” story ideas that usually interest an older audience. These films are usually either based on an existing property or written-directed-produced by the same person (or both) like The Bikeriders or Queer or Sing Sing or A Complete Unknown or Anora. This type of idea is usually best suited to another medium first - novel or stage play or whatever, or it’s a “do it yourself” project where you find the funding yourself and make the movie yourself instead of selling the screenplay. Needless to say, budget is going to be a serious factor here.

When it comes to the story element that all three of these share - a story is a Person with a Problem...and a movie is about the Person who has the Problem.

Related: My (Scary!) Personal Story

TV MOVIE IDEA

If your story idea isn’t a big enough event to get 20 million people around the world to see, that might be a TV movie - and the type of story that people might invite into their living rooms. The holidays are behind us, along with the endless holiday Romance movies on Hallmark and Lifetime and Great American Family and Ion TV and everywhere else. 

In the 1970s they made hundreds of Movies of the Week in every genre, but now it’s mostly Holiday Romances and those SyFy Channel movies...all of which are “hungry markets” where you have a good chance of breaking in with the right script. The challenge with all of these on the “idea level” is coming up with a different version of that Holiday Romance story. What if Frosty the Snowman came alive and was a hot single guy?

TV movies ideas tend to be smaller and more personal, and the budgets are smaller as well...plus they are written around commercial breaks. So your story is going to have a limited number of locations and a limited number of speaking roles and no big crowd scenes or anything else that’s going to be expensive - but it still needs a big compelling conflict at its center. You are also going to need around 7 “cliffhangers” to prevent people changing channels during the commercials...and a script that is cut into a Teaser and 7 Acts (and sometimes a “Tag”). Does your story idea lend itself to these cliffhangers?

In addition to Holiday Romances and SyFy flicks, there are thrillers and mysteries and other popular genres...and you need the specific types of story ideas that the network makes. Lifetime makes female-lead mysteries, but most of those are based on a popular series of novels. SyFy has made disaster movies and monster movies and “mockbusters” and even the occasional science fiction film. You need to study the films! I have a script that kept getting optioned as a Lifetime Thriller, but the problem was the female lead lived in an apartment, and their target demographic are single family home owners. So pay attention to the details when you watch these films for research!

F.A.S.T MOVIE IDEA

Not a network devoted to Vin Diesel movies, but Free Ad-supported Streaming Television - like Tubi and Pluto and ROKU and FreeVee. These networks mostly play reruns of old TV shows and older movies. Back in the early days of Hulu, it was basically the same as TUBI or Pluto and was mostly old low-budget films and kung fu movies - and I could find all of those old Shaw Brothers Hong Kong Kung Fu flicks there. Now those films can be found on the FAST networks...but as these networks grow, they begin to make their own original movies. TUBI probably makes the most originals, all in for that “Meat and Potatoes” genre-focused audience.

These films are made on a budget (so limit the number of locations and speaking roles and crowd scenes) and keep those commercial breaks and cliffhangers in mind! My last produced film was a Tubi TV Original Movie, and that had to be written with commercial breaks built in - using the teaser and then 7 Acts MOW model, even though the commercials ended up coming at almost arbitrary intervals. Though my flick ended up being a gory horror flick, the note that I kept getting from Tubi was to keep it “fun”. Tubi has a bright red banner across the thumbnail posters for their original films, so watch and study a few if you want to write for this market. You need to keep the stories exciting, keep those cliffhangers coming, because (like Netflix) people can stop watching if they get bored...and the network will know exactly how many minutes people have watched.

Related: SCRIPT SECRETS: 'Barbarian' - Change Up!

STREAMING MOVIE IDEA 

Premium streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ and Amazon Prime and Peacock and whatever they are calling Paramount+ now tend to be like studio films. There are those huge blockbusters designed to attract and retain subscribers and also those less expensive films to balance out the costs. We are going to look at streaming TV Series separately, but they also seem to make super expensive or more affordable TV shows as well...and that might be an entry point for you.

This used to be where people noted that Netflix movies don’t have commercials, but that’s no longer true. All of the premium Pay Streamers now have a lower price subscription with commercials. Since Netflix (and the others) have a commercial version, movies that were written to use those commercial breaks to ramp up the suspense or have a big plot twist are eventually going to work better with commercial breaks. So those cheapskates (like me) who can live with the commercials are going to stay instead of stray, and the folks who paid for commercial-free streaming get a really exciting story that they won’t want to ditch for some other movie.

Even if you watch a movie on Netflix or Disney+, the subscription medium is designed for event stories. The original films need to fit perfectly between two big studio blockbusters...and they need to be the type of stories that attract viewers. They need new viewers to subscribe just to see that movie and existing subscribers to re-up to see that movie. 

Though budget isn’t a factor, yet - premium streamers might be trimming budgets in the future - so try to find ideas that look huge but can be made on a “medium-high” budget if you can. My theory is that a great medium-budget script can hire big name stars and become a big-budget film. Amazon Prime’s Air takes place mostly in the Nike office building, and in only a handful of rooms...so it could have been made on a low budget. But add a bunch of movie stars? It’s an event movie!

There’s more, but like Wicked, our look at matching story ideas to the medium they can best be told is in two parts...but you didn’t have to wait a year to find out how it ends! Part Two is coming soon!

Explore different methods on how to find or generate new ideas with William C. Martell's book Your Idea Machine (Screenwriting Blue Books Book 1)