The Rough Draft

Tired of what the usual crop of independent Canadian films brings. Weigh in with your opinion. Hell, feel free to start a forum.

Well it’s about a month since I posted last. There is a reason (which I will get to). Actually there are a couple of reasons (which I may or may not get to).

The main reason is that I’ve been too busy to get here to tell anybody what’s been going on. What that really means is that my agent didn’t care for my last rewrite (no surprises there) and I’ve been busting my balls to get the next pass done of the script closer to the pitch he wants to use. It all sounds horribly uncreative but it’s really the opposite, and as I’d rather sell than not sell. I’m taking as much of his advice as fits the end result.

So while I am stuck in the desert of the second act right now, I’m well guided as to how to get across.

Now to get to the point of the article (took me long enough). Four years ago I wrote a spec Vampire script. After a year of fruitless flogging of the project, it got optioned by a Canadian prodco. During it’s time on the West Coast however I’d been negotiating with a couple of the game development companies in Vancouver. One just never came together (my contact was fired the day of our meeting), and the other was interested enough that we had started the move towards a contract agreement to produce the game. Things were looking very good. There was however one small fly in the ointment. They were in contract negotiations to secure a TV franchise as a game at the same time and they needed to conclude those before they could proceed with mine. We all know how this story ends. They signed a contract that stated that there could be no other games developed by the company similar to theirs while they were in development (because what if their game sucked (it did)). So I found myself back out in the street ready to party but with nowhere to go.

Things no longer looked good.

So there you have the going around. The coming around is this

The option was not renewed on the script putting it squarely back in my hands. I got a post the other week looking for a script much like the one I just got back.

The script that the game concept was beat out for is now sitting in the hands of the production company who sponsored the competing game in the first place. In other words (and perhaps simpler ones). those that shut me out in the past may now be buying the project they were against in the first place.

Confused?

Welcome to the game.