“Whatever we had in New York is over. I’m sorry I brought it up. Don’t worry about it. We’ll be fine at your wedding. I mean, I can’t speak for him, apparently, but I myself care more about making sure you have an amazing weekend than I care about him having a terrible one.” I force asmile.
“He’s still your writingpartner.”
“I think that’s overtoo.”
“What’s going on with the script, anyway? Have they sent it outyet?”
It’s Tuesday afternoon,which means our agents will be sending our script out to producers any minute now, so I’ll have a good idea about my future verysoon.
When I get a call from Laurie’s office, I expect she’s going to confirm that they’ve sent the script out and let me know whom they’ve sent itto.
When she gives me the news, I literally fall out of mychair.
“So I have some good news…Jeff and I were going to call you and Scott together, but I figured we should keep things separatefirst.”
“Is that the good news? Because you’reright.”
“No, the really good news is that we have a pre-emptive offer on thescript.”
“What?”
“So, we decided to sneak the script to Adam Gold yesterday morning because he’d been asking us about it for weeks. He read it immediately and sent it to our favorite execs, Beth and Chris atUniversal…”
“Oh great, they’regreat.”
“Yeah, but it’s not a big Uni kind of project, so you know, they have a deal with Uni and had to send it to them first, but he asked them for a quickpass.”
“Oh.”
“Which they gave—they read it quickly and passed, but they both said it’s great and they love that you’re dipping your toes in a new genre and think it was a great move and they want to meet with you to throw around some ideas about other hybridmovies.”
“Oh.Cool.”
“And then Adam sent it to a pretty new financing company with big New Yorkinvestors.”
“Uhhuh…”
“Called AVR, it’s the initials of the last names of the founders. Anyway. They’re hungry for genre product and they already have three movies in production, a lot in development, they’re working with A-list people. Scorcese has a project with them. So do theInsidiouspeople. ”
“Uhhuhhhhh…”
“And they flipped for it. We told them who we’re planning on sending the script to today and they have put a really good offer on the table if we don’t send it to anyone else. And when I called the execs at Universal they said that’s a great idea and they want to be in business with AVR so there’s a chance that Uni could still release the movie once AVR finances development andproduction.”
I can’t even believe what I’m hearing—it’s so surreal. This is not how these phone calls with agents about spec scripts usually go. At all.Ever.
She tells me how much they’re offering to pay us and I see stars. And dollarsigns.
“You still withme?”
“Yeah. Yes. So that’s the goodnews?”
“That’s the good news. Here’s the other news. They want to buy the script, but they don’t want to hire you guys to do any rewrites. It has nothing to do with you guys, it’s just that they want to fast-track the project so they already have an A-list horror writer in mind for the next draft and then they want to go to directors immediately after that. You’ll still get the credit, obviously, but you and Scott should talk this over. If it’s important to you to stay on the project, then we can turn down the offer and send the script out to see who elsebites.”
“I accept. Take theoffer.”
“Babe, I know you need the money, but think about it for onesecond.”
“I don’t need to. It’s more important to me to get the check and to have a produced movie credit than to do a rewrite on something that might never getmade.”
