“You know it when you read it”

Three people who between them read most of what comes through the front door of the film business sat down to explain how it actually works: what makes them stop, what gets a script into a bidding war, what goes wrong, and what they think is coming next.

Edited for length and clarity.

What makes something stop you when it lands on your desk?

Adam Kolbrenner: We hear stories all day long — from clients, producers, studio executives. For me it’s weeding through all that and finding the stories you’ve never heard before. Can we tell this in a magnificent way, make it feel different, feel cinematic, feel like it’s going to have an impact? We’re looking for uniqueness of idea. If it’s something we’ve all seen before, that’s not as interesting.

David Boxerbaum: You always know what kind of voice you love, what drives you emotionally, and you stick to your guns. It’s an old saying — you know it when you read it. And it’s really true. These days everybody writes and they go this way. I like writers who go this way. That could be the story idea, the way they develop character, the way they handle structure. It just feels unique, feels like I have to be part of it. That’s been the north star of my whole career, and it’s why I’ve been able to move through the peaks and valleys — I’ve never tried to chase the trends.

David Beaubaire: For me it’s clear, original, relatable entertainment. Our first job is to entertain — we’re not here to make people eat their vegetables. Clear, because there’s so much competing for our attention that I have to understand it well enough to convince my wife it’s worth getting a babysitter, and working out where we’re going to park and how we’re going to eat before the movie. Original, because there are plenty of versions of us on your phone already. And relatable, because people go to the movies to see themselves, or to look at the world a different way.

What’s the difference between a script that’s right for you and a script that’s right for the industry?

David Boxerbaum: They’re two different things. What’s ready for the business is the idea people are vying to buy right now — a genre, a world, a certain area of story. That’s studio-ready.

Agent-ready can be something else entirely. It might be a complete mess structurally, a complete mess in the way the story’s told — but the voice is there, and the characters and the dialogue speak to me in a way something else doesn’t. Studio-ready could be a down-the-middle fastball. That’s fine. But for me to want in, it has to break the norm.

Adam Kolbrenner: I’d add one thing from the management side. Make sure the material is fully baked before you put it out into the universe. Don’t put things out too soon. Do the diligence, do the creative work, go through the notes process, rewrite and rewrite and rewrite together before anybody sees it.

And we have to be so fired up about the idea that they can hear it in our voice when we call. If it takes ten minutes to explain what the script is about, the executive has lost track of what you’re saying. You’ve already lost your audience before they’ve read a word. It’s got to be clear, concise, unique and awesome.

Walk us through a script you knew about immediately.

David Boxerbaum: A writer had given me a couple of things beforehand that didn’t work, but I knew the voice was good. He was about to quit. He said, I’ve got one more script, I don’t think this is the one either, but take a shot.

I read it on a plane to Sundance. The only thing I thought was: how do I get this plane to land fast enough so I can tell somebody I have the greatest script in my hand right now? You’re looking around going, does anybody else here understand what I’m holding?

I had lunch with Adam about a week later, and paying the bill I said, oh, by the way — I’ve got this script called Safe House by a writer named David Guggenheim. You should read it.

Adam Kolbrenner: I went home that night, read it, and called him.

David Boxerbaum: And we were right. We sold it in a crazy bidding war. The coolest part is that barely any of it changed — what you see on the screen is basically what sold that day.

Adam Kolbrenner: It went from spec to production to theaters in under twenty-four months.

For context on who the writer was at the time: Guggenheim was working in New York as a reluctant entertainment journalist for Us Weekly. His full job was covering the ins and outs of The Bachelor every week, and he was miserable. So there was some pressure — a baby coming, and also, I don’t want to watch The Bachelor anymore.

What actually happens when you take a script out?

David Boxerbaum: When you’ve got something you believe multiple studios will bid on, you try to create chaos in the business.

You give it to the producers and talent you think will move the needle at the studios they’re set up at. You get everybody pushing in at once. You work the studios into thinking this will sell faster than it might. And hopefully the material speaks for itself and you’re not making it up — you’re actually telling the truth. Nine times out of ten I’m right about that. There’s always the one that may or may not.

Then multiple studios come in, they keep upping the price, and you get to a point where it’s life-changing money for the client. I’ve been in wars where I got banned from a lot for a year because I didn’t sell to a certain studio. That’s a rite of passage.

Adam Kolbrenner: My job in those moments is to fuel the calls. People ring me asking, is this true? Is this right? Yes. Yes. Yes. That’s all. Yes, it’s true.

David Beaubaire: From the studio side — the easiest way to get an executive to advocate for something is to tell them a competitor is already on it. It’s very easy to walk into your boss’s office and say, if we don’t get this, Universal will.

But the more useful thing is knowing what your studio actually does well. There was a great pitch that came to me early, a female two-hander, and every studio was interested. I was friendly with the writer, and at the time every senior position at our studio was held by a man. I knew there was no way we were winning it, and I told them they shouldn’t sell it to us.

And here’s what I’d say to writers: being at the right place matters more than the top offer. You’ll make more money if the thing actually gets made than you will selling in a bidding war to a studio that won’t make it.

What did that trust look like from the writer’s side?

David Boxerbaum: With Safe House — Guggenheim was about to have a kid and was trying to make ends meet. One producer got a studio to make an offer that same night. A lowball offer, but life-changing money for him. And they put a ticking clock on it: decide now, or it’s off the table.

We told him to pass.

That’s an enormous amount of trust, because if it had gone south it would have been life-altering the wrong way. He said, okay guys, please don’t eff this up, I am trusting you. I went to bed and couldn’t sleep. I had his whole family on my shoulders.

At seven-thirty in the morning I got an email from a senior executive who would never email that early. It said, call me immediately about Safe House. And I knew we had it.

What happens when it goes wrong?

David Boxerbaum: Sometimes you take something out, you believe in it, you’ve put it together the best possible way, and the town doesn’t agree with you.

When you take something out, that’s not the end of it. It’s the beginning of the story. Okay — it didn’t sell in this round. Let’s figure out another way to get it made. It may not be the financial windfall you hoped for on the first route, but there are other opportunities.

What you want is people around you who are crafty, who are disruptive. The reps who go here’s your one shot, didn’t sell, on the shelf, next — that’s not who you want. You want someone who’ll keep going, okay, that didn’t work, let’s try this.

How many times do you say no before you say yes?

David Boxerbaum: I walk my kids to school most mornings, and a client of mine happens to live on the route. He’s respectful — he can tell when my hat’s down and I don’t want to talk.

But he wanted into the short story space, so he started pitching me on the walk. Every day. No. Next day. No. This went on for weeks. Well over a hundred nos at that point.

Then one morning he said, well, how about this? And I said: that’s the one. If you can write that, I bet I can sell it.

A few weeks later we sold it for a lot of money with The Rock attached, to Disney and Fox.

He never got deterred. God bless him — I was actively trying to deter him so I could walk my kids to school in peace.

Adam Kolbrenner: He doesn’t walk with you anymore.

David Boxerbaum: No. He gets driven in a black car now. He just waves at me.

How has the business changed, and what should writers be writing?

Adam Kolbrenner: I’m going to be consistent here: the original screenplay is what matters most. People are out there thinking, I have a pitch for a TV series. Don’t do that. I have a pitch for a movie, I have a thought about a book. No. Write the original screenplay, or write the original pilot.

The television landscape is harder than ever. The decrease in purchasing and development since the strike is substantial.

Lee Jessup: A forty-two per cent drop in employment on the TV side in 2023.

Adam Kolbrenner: On the development side it’s forty to fifty per cent less, probably more. But original movies, original ideas — that still works. People still go to movie theaters. That’s our business.

David Beaubaire: Be persistent. In my old political days we used to say no is not an acceptable answer. If the front door is locked, go through the window.

But be practical about it. People have to be leaning in — they have to want to be buying what you have. Don’t get upset when a buyer was never going to take it, even if you’d handed them Schindler’s List or Citizen Kane.

The second thing is: bring it into focus. Help people see what you see. That might mean attaching the right producer, making the right suggestion. And then seize the momentum — because every day that goes by is a day they start second-guessing the yes they gave you.

David Boxerbaum: Call me an optimist, but I think it’s an amazing time to be working in this business. Studios might feel like there are fewer buyers. There are actually more buyers, in more formats, in ways we hadn’t seen. There’s downsizing and there’s negativity, sure. But there are things selling every day, and we’re seeing some of the best television we’ve seen in years. This business isn’t going anywhere.

Tell us about the short story market.

David Boxerbaum: That could be a whole other panel.

A few years ago I saw specs starting to dwindle and wondered whether there was white space nobody was exploiting. Movies had been made from short stories before, but the form itself — prose that moves you a different way — hadn’t been taken on the way it could be.

Then I got a call: there’s a short story on Reddit that’s gone viral, everyone’s talking about it. First-person POV, you’re living it as you read. A couple buys a house, and there’s a set of rules on the table. Every season something happens. Whatever you do, don’t intervene. Don’t try to change it. If you do, chaos and horror comes for you and your family.

Of course, they intervene.

We started calling around town — have you seen this viral story? And that discovery instinct kicked in: am I finding something nobody else has? We locked down the writer, took it out, had ten studios bid, and it sold for millions. Plus we got them a novel deal.

So we thought, huh. Two weeks later there was another one on Reddit. We attached Blake Lively, who wasn’t a hot button at the time, and that sold for a million.

Cut to thirty-one stories later, with the Spielbergs, the Michael B. Jordans, the Jessica Chastains, The Rock. Every studio and every agency is now trying to get into the short story space.

I’m not saying our way is the right way or the only way. But we’ve built a kind of story oven, and if something goes through it and comes out baked the other side, we’ve got a shot.

Adam Kolbrenner: Part of this came from Scott, who’d spent years showcasing short films as the basis for movies and franchises. He converted that thinking to the short story. That’s how you have to look at these things — they’re genuinely different mediums from the screenplay.

David Boxerbaum: And we always hold back novel rights, so the writer can still do the book. There are multiple income streams from one story.

What are you hoping to see more of?

David Beaubaire: Original movies. The next Succession, the next Sinners. The audience is there — there’s just more competing for their time and attention.

Here’s the thing. I got into this business because they shot Sixteen Candles in my hometown when I was fifteen. Nobody got into this business saying I want to write SpongeBob 3. No disrespect to anyone doing that — it’s a great job. But everyone is inspired by something original, and some of the biggest franchises came from exactly that. So don’t be intimidated by the fear of IP.

What I hope is that more people write with the end in mind. Anything can be a movie. But why should someone spend fifty million dollars making and marketing it, and why is a theater full of people all over the world going to show up to see it?

When you take something out, that’s not the end of it. It’s the beginning of the story.

David Boxerbaum speaking on stage at State of the Story, Writers Guild Theater, Los Angeles