Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Platinum Studios is taking submissions of comics ideas; once the comic's done they hawk it to the studios:

Platinum takes writers' pitches, pays them an up-front advance against sales of the book for writing the script and then they also get a piece of the sale to the studio.

Interesting way to get your ideas on the screen if they are more visual than verbal. And studio execs will happily read a comic themselves.

UPDATE: Here's the URL specifically for screenwriters.

9:26 AM

4 Comments:

Men in Black was also a pre-existing property that Platinum inherited... they certainly had nothing to do with its creation...

By  John Hudgens, at 11:58 AM  

The thread here between all of Platinum's movies and comics is Scott Mitchell Rosenberg. He had MIB when he ran Malibu, which eventually became Platinum.

30 DAYS OF NIGHT was a "failed" script which is going into production after the comic sold for a cool $1M.

I'll take that kind of failure.

TALENT from BOOM! Studios was a TV pitch.

The crossovers are too numerous to mention...

I do have to agree that Platinum has to establish more cred with the comic audience by regularly releasing their graphic novels / comics. This has yet to happen.

By  Cunningham, at 12:05 PM  

Like Speakeasy?

By  Cunningham, at 5:13 PM  

I do think screenplays posing as comics can be a little harmful to the comic industry if the creators don't respect the comic audience enough. Here's a model that happens constantly (mostly with indy comics and smaller publishers).

A new book is solicited and the concept is discussed and raved about. Then the comic starts to come out, and Hollywood doesn't seem interested in the property, issue 2 comes out and still no interest. Eventually the real-world workload of making the comic becomes too much, and the comic just fades away.

Fans get burt, publishers get burt, and comic shops get burt. In the end, that's a bad thing for us comic book guys.

A constant stream of unfinished comics make it difficult to sell fans and retailers NEW (unproven) comics, since they know they're rolling the dice and have a very real chance of getting a book that won't complete the run. For guys like me that would LOVE to stick with creator owned stuff and not have to do spandex books, it's an uphill battle.

I think the best way to approach converting a screenplay into a comic is to truly choose to make a good comic from the script, and follow through, completely. Finish the story and get the books in the hands of readers. That means an investment of time and money, but finish the story.

The key here is to really focus on making a good comic (rather than a comic-film-pitch (for the sole purpose of selling the property), from there, everyone wins. You've got your film pitch, you've got a solid comic book, and everyone wins.

This is a bit of a generalization, but Hollywood seems to be starved for original fresh ideas and are stuck in a re-make, rehash rut, even though film fans are eager to drop a buck on something new and fresh.

But in comics, original fresh ideas are EVERYWHERE, but the fans ONLY seem to want to support the old stuff that's constantly re-made (spiderman, Batman, etc). It's frustrating to think that I may not be able to actually earn a living CREATING stories and may have to jump on board a superhero franchise to pay the rent.

By  Kody Chamberlain, at 1:59 PM  

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