Failure vs Success

By now, those of you who have followed me for some time know how projects get optioned, then not, then optioned and then never get made or get made every six years or more. You've already seen that in this last year with me and Ghostkeeper 2 which fell apart when Telefilm, Canada's movie funding organization, passed on us.

 
Getting passed on is pretty normal in this business. My last produced movie was The Town Christmas Forgot in 2010 and presently I have 3 "real" optioned screenplays. Here's a little bio on them;

Chase - is a screenplay about a man who begins to follow another vehicle whom he thinks a woman was kidnapped in. It's been optioned for almost 3 years and will be made as a French movie entitled "La Poursette" and I stay in contact with the director who hopes to make it soon.
 

Travel Day - is the movie I began this blog with, back in 2009 (more on Friday). It was to be a road movie based on a true story that happened when an actor friend, a movie driver and a famous actress drove to a distant location in Canada. It's a bit of comedy and drama and was to be made in 2009 but that nevere happened. It was optioned this spring 2014 by two new producers. There was an initial rush but now has slowed down a bit and the producers are making progress.

Miller - is actually a screenplay I was assigned to about an actor who wants to get revenge on his agent in a rather unusual way. I know it sounds like that movie with Kevin Spacey (The Swimming With Sharks?) but it isn't. This was an assignment and it might get made this fall. 

That's were I am today. 

I'm still working on Ghostkeeper, except considering a lower budget that could be made in L.A. with some scenes filmed at the actual hotel in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. 

And just recently I talked to a producer friend who's looking for a Christmas story for Hallmark's vast amount of Christmas movies already. After all, we still need more Christmas stories.

A note here; a lot of people laugh at the Hallmark movies (mostly men) but women are drawn to them and I have had good luck with that, so I don't mind friends taking shots at a Hallmark movie.

A movie is a movie. As long as it gets an audience (my Christmas movie had an audience of around 3.5 million viewers) I've done my job.

Alot of people think that writers get movie after movie but the truth is that an average screenwriter might get a movie made maybe once in a couple of years. Town That Christmas Forgot took 6 years.

Some writers only get one movie made in their whole career. They may have done rewrites on other movies or like me, optioned screenplays but I know a few writers who made only one or two movies. It's a tough business and sometimes I don't understand how I got to have 20 movies made/produced.

 And finally, I've finished a short book entitled "How To Not Get Beat-Up In A Smalltown Bar". How's that for a title.