I've Got a Great Idea for a Movie...Ideas

Written By Michael J. Patwin Jr.

Great Movie Concepts

Okay, so you’ve got a great idea for a movie . . . join the club. Chances are your idea has already been written, rewritten, rejected, and now is sitting beneath a dusty, six-foot pile of scripts in a studio file beside an intern from USC named Leaf.

Ideas are like egos – everybody’s got one. So how do you turn yours into a million-dollar script? Read on, young prodigy. And remember an old Hollywood saying… “It’s better to have an A concept with C execution than a C concept with A execution.”

Sources of Inspiration

Magazines, newspapers, plays, novels, your grandfather’s life story, your dog’s bad dream, etc… movies come from anywhere and everywhere, including those rare ideas originated from someone’s imagination.

If the story comes from true-life experiences or any work copyrighted in the past century, you must obtain the film rights to the story before you hop on the computer and start pecking away. There are both state and federal laws governing rights to privacy, defamation, and publicity. Unless you just like hanging around lawyers in which case I recommend law school or the lowest level of hell.

The safest and most recommended route for new writers is an original concept; because even if your script sucks, your idea might be good enough for a studio to buy and rewrite.

Next: The Idea Hits Paper