An excerpt from my script review for Send Help which will be available 04/14/26:
1.) Marketability of the Idea
Give me the same, only different. – Sam Raimi
Misery meets Castaway was in all the comments on the first trailer I saw for this film.
That interested me, because once you think of it, it seems so simple yet ingenious.
This is the kind of stuff we should be brainstorming when thinking of a spec that would be marketable to the industry.
What other things can we combine that would be clever, maybe even making other writers jealous they didn’t come up with it?
Using the “horror strategy” is there something popular, or that we like, which can be combined with a popular drama idea that doesn’t, at first thought, naturally go together?
For instance…
Recently, I’ve been rewatching the Cinemax series Banshee.
Aside from having a lot more sex scenes than I remember, it’s the story of a thief who recently got out of prison and goes looking for the girl he went to prison for.
Along the way, the new sheriff bound for town (Banshee, PA) gets murdered, and the thief assumes his identity.
Good show with an interesting premise, especially considering that all kinds of shit can, and does, go wrong for him.
Now…what if that same idea of a criminal assuming the role of law enforcement gets applied to say, a Resident Evil type town overrun with zombies.
The criminal will definitely have gotten more than he asked for.
Or one of the other shows I’ve been binging…Archer.
It’s essentially an animated, more adult version of Arrested Development but with a spy agency instead of a building company.
What if said spy agency is presented as the stereotype we’d expect, but instead of attacking other nations or governments, stealing things or killing people, it’s tasked with a job similar to Constantine where agents fight various versions of supernatural evil.
And those are just two quick ones off the top of my head based of the shows I’m watching.
(Boss and I are also on season two of The Pitt so maybe there’s an idea in here too, where instead of helping people stay alive, it’s where terminal patients go for assisted suicides.)
Just remember, these can be as fantastic or mundane settings as you wish, but start with some of the films/series you enjoy and go from there.
“Give us the same, only different.”
Want EARLY access to our videos, uploads, and movie/script reviews? Members get them FIRST! Follow this link to our Discussion Forum.
