I came across the Amazon Studio program last year, thought about it, and then like you, dismissed it. I didn’t want to give away any of my scripts that I had worked so hard on creating. Ten thousand dollars didn’t seem like a lot of money to warant giving all your rights away with no guarantee the movie would even get made. I was also somewhat confused by many of the things Amazon Studio proclaimed in their contracts. I’m glad to see they have gotten closer to reality, though there is still a lot that needs to be done.

Your two postings on the Amazon Studio system helped to clear up many things for me. In short, you made it easy to understand, especially with the new changes that were instigated back in April.

Thank you for that,

Wayne C. Rogers

First off, the premise wars are absolutely meaningless simply because the only people voting in premise wars are other Amazon Studios members clicking relatively randomly in the hope that they will get to vote on their own premise. On average there is almost always a 50%/50% win/lose ratio. You might as well flip a coin. All premise wars does is drive site traffic. Finally on this subject, why are scripts submitted and passed on in 2010 still popping up in the premise wars? As an example, this script,

http://studios.amazon.com/projects/934

long since dead, along with the 7,000 other projects from last year’s contest should have been flushed, as the 45 days are up: they shouldn’t really have carried over to begin with.

Amazon was dropping on average at least $150,000 a month on the previous contests, which a majority of that money went to the test film contests. There was some thought that perhaps Amazon would allocate that same amount of money in the new Amazon Studios and simply just buy up an shite-load of scripts, even if it were essentially just for the concepts. At $10,000 a pop, Amazon could option up to 15 projects a month. Still a lot more effective than the entire setup for Amazon Studios first year.

The amazing thing is that the whole ball of wax of Amazon Studios operating costs up to this point is probably around $3 million dollars, including staff salaries and other expenses (readers). That’s about the same amount of money that the “Snow White and the Huntsman” script sold for; for a movie that needs to make $400 million in order to break even.

Unfortunately, this reallocation hasn’t happened. It seems Amazon has gone back to “awarding” two scripts a month a $10,000 option. The two scripts that Amazon has just optioned are incredibly terrible in every aspect, and are two properties that any Hollywood studio would never, ever develop. What is sad is that the two new projects are invariably worse than the other really bad projects also in development. The new projects up for development make no sense in any market. A anachronistic Romeo and Juliet movie that’s over two hours long and a really weird “Davinci Code”-like movie that reads like amateur script 101 will never sell tickets. So the question is, why did Amazon option them? Are they really going to put the Romeo and Juliet movie through the paces with community-based rewrites? Why bother? The concept is DOA.

It seems that three things are still in play.

One: Nobody either still knows or cares Amazon Studios even exists.
Two: The quality of entries are still well below sub par because of this vacuum.
Three: Amazon is still somehow selecting projects that aren’t hip, aren’t groundbreaking, but simply terrible.

The question is how did a 127 page period piece get through any real Hollywood reader and thus in the hands of any development executive at Amazon Studios? Any real reader would have destroyed the script on many aspects, and the script should have died on the vine, but somehow it broke through the lines and is now being “developed.”

There has been some discussion on the “two downloads” that most people have gotten when they submitted the script privately. What’s probably happening is that one download is internal, and one is “external” by a contracted reader. I assume this is done to at least give a real world view on the script, to possibly counter the obvious non-pro, non-Hollywood viewpoint of whomever Amazon has reading the scripts at home base.

But it’s apparent that the Amazon viewpoint always trumps any real feedback on any of these projects. Otherwise, almost none of the projects currently in development would be on the slate.

The big question nobody has been able to answer in going on two years is “What does Amazon Studios really want?”

Go back and look at all of the previous rewrite contests and then look at what Amazon currently has in development and then ask yourself how in the hell could anyone figure out what Amazon is looking for, and then rewrite any of the scripts in development to Amazon’s satisfaction?

Yes, obviously they want to be a real movie studio, as well as provide their own user-generated content. But from everything I’ve seen since Amazon Studios started, their goals have always been obfuscated. Is Amazon Studios ultimate goal is to almost always develop projects by amateurs? It sure seems so. Sure, given enough time, Amazon Studios may very well find the next Kubrick, and given the low operating costs, all it really takes is one hit to make Amazon Studios a success.

But here’s another question. Would Amazon Studios have any idea what do do if they truly found a really hot project? Would they waste time trying to get “community feedback” and community-based rewrites? Or would they put the hot project immediately in true production? We haven’t seen any indication that Amazon is working on anything at all. There were rumors of a Zombies Vs. Gladiators test movie; something that may very well premiere at Comic Con this year, but there’s been no info since the rewrite contest last year. Yes, other movie studios have a lot of movies in development that never see light of day, but given the dearth of new news on 90% of the projects in development on Amazon Studios, I’d say that only four projects are actually being possibly prepped for real production.

There is absolutely no “community” on Amazon Studios, and there really never has been. Last year’s contest was just that, a contest. Everyone was in competition with each other, so no true community could ever really develop. Putting a project out publicly is utterly useless because the only people that ever come to Amazon Studios are other amateur to semi-pro writers looking to break into the system. How is the guy that wrote “Codex,” a new script added to the development slate, really going to properly evaluate my script when his own script has a minefield of problems?

Furthermore, by submitting publicly you give up more rights, including the right for Amazon to make a comic of your script AND make a test movie of your script during the 45 day period, and beyond if they option it.

I have no problem with Amazon testing the waters per-ce by publicly listing a project to get (the very limited and narrow) feedback from Amazon Studios users once it has been optioned. But I don’t understand the strange attitude of “Well, we sort of liked your script, maybe, but not enough to green light it. However, if you list it publicly, we’ll bump you up to the meaningless “consider” status,and we still won’t give you any feedback.” This makes no sense.

If Amazon truly likes a script, or a project, then they should either like, it or not. Either it works, or it does not work. There really is no middle ground.

Where is Amazon Studios partner Warner Bros. in all of this? It’s obvious that Warner Bros. liked none of the projects on Amazon Studios slate, otherwise Amazon Studios would have purchased at least one of the scripts, which has not happened yet. This is actually really bothersome. Most of the scripts in development has won prizes in last years contest, usually around $20,000. But in all that time, and apparent free rewrites, Amazon still doesn’t think any of the project are worth actually paying the writer $200,000 for to actually purchase the script. Even the mega-powerball winner “12 Princesses” with $1.25 million in prizes ==still is just under option==. Once again, ==still is just under option==… a very expensive option.

What Amazon Studios has created is a sub-development, self-enclosed world.

One of the movies under development has Ed Saxon, the producer of “Silence of the Lambs” attached as producer. However, this project’s writer has yet to actually get paid for the script outside of the $20,000 “best script” prize from last year, and a $10,000 option from this year. It is really strange to have some of the very high level producers working on these projects that have not even been purchased yet from the writers.

If Amazon has enough faith to bring in Ed Saxon, or Bill Gerber to helm a project, then how in the world can they not buy the script from the writer?

Look, this way, although somewhat strange, isn’t much different from the usual development scheme of things, but usually when a top level producer is brought in on a hot project, the script has long since been bought an paid for. What we’re seeing is that Amazon will develop the shit out of any project, but will only ever purchase it if it actually goes into production.

Hopefully this year we’ll see at least one good movie finally start production at Amazon Studios

We likewise submitted privately. While they didn’t option us, they did give us a “consider”. But we think just as there are serious reasons NOT to submit publicly, there are good reasons not to accept being added to the “consider” page, largely because it requires you make the screenplay public.

Here’s why we see that as a problem: http://chipstreet.com/2012/06/01/amazon-studios-new-old-deal-for-screenplay-options/

Re: Premise wars – we got 14 of 26 – just over 53%. What’s that mean? Who knows. I’m with Phyllis. It’s of no use to me to know how my horror logline stacked up against a kids movie or a romcom. As a writer I need to know how to tweak it to appeal to a prodco who makes horror movies and sees lots of horror loglines. Without giving us the metrics of our wins, it’s useless.

I wonder if it is the case that other (outside) production companies could possibly be using AS’s public projects to search for new material. It doesn’t seem likely, but could be a real possibility. I’d love to know if anyone has any further insight on this. Great thought…

I’d like to mention another option — I put my screenplay submissions public but with the limitation that no one could add to the script. Here’s why I did this: Perhaps someone else will read the script and be interested in it after the 45-day option has expired. So far this hasn’t happened. But the scripts stay public for an unspecified time period after the option is over, so who knows?

Also, I have just submitted three TV comedy projects as this is now a new opportunity at Amazon Studios. These could clearly be video shows.

Here’s my bio page on Amazon Studios — http://studios.amazon.com/users/48358

P.S. About those premise battles — while I watched my results obsessively, they are truly meaningless. Pitching a comedy premise against a horror premise? Really? What does the winning result actually mean?