Sunday, December 18, 2005

Lisa has an idea -- more a character than a story at this point -- about a 7th grader. Thing is, I think it really wants to be movie, not a TV show. I'm not sure how you get more than one story out of this character's main issue. But while there are TV shows galore about young teenagers, there is a big gaping demographic hole in the movies. You have movies about pre-teens, and movies about late teens. Middle teens, not so much.

Adults will watch kids movies with their kids. Teens will watch movies about teens. Nobody really wants to see kids between 13 and 16 unless there are flying broomsticks involved, apparently.

Todd Solondz broke this rule, of course, in Welcome to the Dollhouse, but that was an art film about creepy weirdness, and Lisa's idea would be sort of comedy of manners -- sort of in the territory of Mean Girls but younger.

I wonder if making it a Canadian show allows you to break the rule? After all if a big chunk is coming out of Telefilm, that changes the financing picture quite a bit, innit?

Technorati tags: screenwriting; TV; film

10:01 PM

2 Comments:

Sell it to the DeGrassi Junior High people. They made a great series about growing up through the middle teen years and the new series is still pertinent. There is obviously a market or the Olsen twins would have faded away before they hit their teens.

By  Hawise, at 10:01 AM  

We just had meetings last week with Telefilm and la Sodec for a feature screenplay I wrote for that age range (en français).

I can confirm that there is not a lot of scripts geared towards that clientele.

There is also very little money to be distributed this time around. 38 projets and only 5 million dollars available for this round! The odds are just a bit better than the lottery. ;-)

By  Martine, at 11:26 AM  

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