“I think what's unique about this biopic and about Bob [Marley’s] story is that it really wasn't about his ego, it wasn't about him trying to be the biggest star in the world. It was about him connecting with God. I mean, he would smoke weed to kind of lower his ego and raise his consciousness so that he could read scripture, right? He would take these basic concepts: love thy neighbor, all people are equal, and try and channel that and inhabit that,” says Frank E. Flowers, co-writer of Bob...

“I always go back to theme. Why are you writing this story? What is that final couple of minutes of the movie and what do you want the audience to feel? I kind of always build backward from that in some ways. In a movie, how do I make the 118 minutes preceding those two minutes build to those last two minutes? To me that’s a really good film. And anything that's not helping build to those last two minutes, throw it out!,” says John Orloff, writer/creator of Masters of the Air, the new...

"You want to write stuff you want to see, that's the key. Just write something new something fresh, something interesting," says director and co-writer William Eubank of Land of Bad, the new intense, action-packed movie about a Delta Force team that gets ambushed in enemy territory.  Final Draft sat down with Eubank to talk about his writing process, directing Liam Hemsworth, Russell Crowe and Luke Hemsworth in this unhinged survival story full of exciting set pieces and big action...

“I grew up as a huge fan of Westerns but the reality of the landscape at the time was that it was incredibly diverse. And we've rarely seen that diversity on screen. I feel incredibly fortunate and humbled by the opportunity to show what life was really like in Indian territory in 1875. That it was a melting pot of cultures and races. It speaks to the beauty of Reconstruction,” says Chad Feehan, showrunner for Lawmen: Bass Reeves on Paramount+. The show is part of the highly successful Taylor...

“Personally, I think writing is bleeding. It's blood magic. It's very hard to do,” says writer/director Jade Halley Bartlett of the new Southern gothic romance, Miller’s Girl. Bartlett started her career as an actress, but it was an unexpected journey that led her to Los Angeles and magically landed her in the world of studio screenwriting. After spending a year at Marvel Studios, writing a draft of Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness – only to be replaced on the job – Jade’s first...

“I think that approaching the grand things through the smallest entryways possible is the best way to go about taking on these massive issues… So yes, this movie is about race and racism and art and who's allowed to make certain kinds of art - these are really big, unwieldy issues. But the reason that I think people can relate to them –and it doesn't feel so top heavy or clumsy – is because you see it through a character that was deeply personal to me,” says Cord Jefferson, writer/director of...

“The lesson we keep learning is that the thing that breaks you [into Hollywood] is your weirdest idea. The thing that only you can write… All of our friends who have done that – it's been a fulcrum in their career,” says Phil Lord, co-writer of Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse. On today’s episode, I chat with Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Dave Callaham about taking the Spider-Man franchise into the modern era, making it fresh, heartfelt and multicultural. While Lord and Miller both won...

“When we were starting [to write screenplays], we were told, ‘Write your story, write your story, write your story.’  But our story is not that interesting. So, I would say, don't write your story necessarily, write the story that you fall in love with and find the human connection between you and the characters that you are depicting,” says Dumb Money co-writer Rebecca Angelo. On today’s episode, I talk with writing partners Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo about their recent film...

Final Draft's Write On Podcast sits down with Blackberry writers Matt Johnson and Matthew Miller to talk about how they wrote this epic story of the rise and fall of the world's first portable email machine.  Johnson and Miller loosely adapted the script from Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff's book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry. The film Blackberry is a bio-pic dramedy that follows the fictional story of the Blackberry...

“I just really encourage people to truly go to those darker places because the way forward in dealing with dark material is not to do some partial version of it. Go there so that it sparks a truth to people watching it because people want to be moved. People want to see their experiences reflected in a new way back at them. If you're drawn to it and it's meaningful to you, chances are it's going to be meaningful to others. Stick with it and be brave,” says writer/director Sean Durkin about...

The film Air was released in theaters back in April – right before the WGA Writer's Strike. It tells the story of how the iconic partnership between Nike shoes and basketball player Michael Jordan came to be way back in 1984. It’s one of those partnerships that really wasn’t supposed to happen, but when it did, it changed the world of sports marketing forever. Directed by Ben Affleck, the script is written by Alex Convery and made the Blacklist in 2021. But just like the partnership between...

“I like having sympathy for the devil. And all of them are devilish!” says Emerald Fennell about her characters in the new film Saltburn. Writer/director/actress Emerald Fennell dazzled us with 2020’s Promising Young Woman, for which she took home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Now she’s back with Saltburn, a shocking romantic tragedy (or triumph according to her!). On this episode of the podcast, I speak to Emerald in depth about crafting the screenplay for Saltburn and finding...

“It really comes down to scene work. Do these characters pop? Is this fun to read? Is it fun to imagine what’s going to happen next? When you get to the end of that pilot do you want to find out what’s going to happen in the next episode? It’s all of that,” says Graham Yost, showrunner for Silo on AppleTV+. You may not know the name Graham Yost, but you certainly know his TV shows: Justified, The Americans, Slow Horses, Sneaky Pete, From the Earth to the Moon, and Band of Brothers just to...

“We can’t make Lawrence of Arabia anymore – not that that’s not a good movie, but it’s kind of a thing of the past,” says screenwriter David Scarpa about writing the script for Napoleon. Scarpa says both he and director Ridley Scott wanted to bring a freshness to the historical figure from our history books by, “Showing the more irreverent, dark, more psychologically motivated side of [Napoleon].” In our conversation, we dig into writing the battle scenes at Toulon and Austerlitz and how to...

“My cardinal rule – the rule that you cannot break is: don't be boring. Because you can have the perfect script that follows every screenplay formatting rule, but if you're boring, it doesn't matter. First and foremost, you’ve got to hook the reader,” says screenplay and short story writer Chris Hicks. Hicks is the author of a short story called “I Am Not Alone,” that recently was the subject of a five-party bidding war that came down to Warner Bros. and Netflix, with Netflix proving the...

“I don’t write sex scenes. I write character scenes and sometimes they’re having sex during their character scenes. It’s a beat about character,” says Tony McNamara. Known for the TV show The Great on Hulu and 2018’s The Favourite, screenwriter Tony McNamara’s new film is Poor Things, staring Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe with a genius performance from Mark Ruffalo who’s already getting Best Supporting Actor buzz. Adapted from the book Poor Things by Alasdair Gray, this film is part...

Eddie Murphy’s new holiday comedy Candy Cane Lane pokes fun at the idea of being super competitive during the Christmas decorating season. Kelly Younger sat down with Final Draft’s Write On podcast to talk about writing the spec script that became a reality in our latest episode. “My manager who I've had for years always sort of keeping track of my projects, and we put some under when he calls the three Ps: passion, propel, and paycheck. Write something that's a...

“I'm now at a place where I say to myself, ‘What haven't we seen?’ And then we take it to a place that’s completely, absolutely bonkers,” says writer Kirk Ward about his new show The Continental: From The World Of John Wick. “You take the audience down the road of a trope and then turn. That's the joy of collaboration and creativity for me.” The Continental is a disco noire three-part miniseries that tells the origin story of The Continental Hotel from the famed John Wick universe. In my...

“A lot of the scenes are [shot in] one take. The space that they hold, the amount of air that they let sit there before saying their next line. I mean it’s an incredible amount of tension and intimacy,” says screenwriter Samy Burch about her new film May December, which streams on Netflix December 1st.   It sounds so simple and commonplace, but it's a lesson in not only great acting but also writing great subtext. Directed by Todd Haynes and starring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, May...

Final Draft's Write On podcast sits down with Showrunner Chris Black to talk about his new show, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. “For it to be successful as a TV series, it couldn't be a show about monsters. It had to be a show about people who happen to live in a world where monsters are real," Black says when describing what it was like to pitch the show to Apple TV. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters picks up the "monsterverse" story after the battle between Godzilla and the Titans and follows one...

“Be sneaky and read every script that you can get your hands on. If you can work in a studio, read the original draft, read the revisions, see how the script got to the final script. That's what I was doing. I would use the opportunities of working in that system to learn,” says screenwriter Julian Breece on Final Draft’s Write On Podcast. Julian, along with Dustin Lance Black, wrote Rustin, the new biopic about little-known civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, played exquisitely by actor...

Director Alexander Payne’s new film The Holdovers, is set in the 1970s and tells the story of a grumpy ancient history instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school who’s forced to remain on campus during the Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually, he forms an unlikely bond with one of the students, an oddball troublemaker (Dominic Sessa), and the school’s cafeteria lady (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), whose son was recently killed in Vietnam.  ...

One year after saving the town of Angel Falls from a psychotic killer on Christmas Eve, Winnie Carruthers (Jane Widdop) can’t let the fear and guilt of the event go. Struggling to make sense if her life, she wishes she’d never been born – only to find herself in a nightmare parallel universe. The film is a mash up of the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life and Scream. On this episode, I speak to screenwriter/producer Michael Kennedy about using a classic Christmas movie as inspiration...

Season 3 of The Morning Show is now streaming on Apple TV+. With some of the most engaging actors working in television (Jennifer Anniston, Reese Witherspoon, Billy Crudup and Nicole Beharie), showrunner Charlotte Stoudt talks with us about some of the most shocking and groundbreaking scenes that are meant to blow your mind this season. This dramaturge-turned-showrunner, Stoudt’s love of working with other writers is palpable. “The delight of sharing a story space with other writers is one...

The new film Nyad tells the true story of athlete Diana Nyad (Annette Benning) who, at the age of 60 and with the help of her best friend and coach Bonnie (Jody Foster), commits to achieving her life-long dream: a 110-mile open ocean swim from Cuba to Florida. We talk to screenwriter Julia Cox about what it was like getting to know the real Diana Nyad, structuring the screenplay to create a satisfying sports movie and creating one of the most daunting physical antagonists on the page: the...