"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing." -- Walt Disney
A typical storyline in a Western is that a new sheriff or sharpshooter comes to town hired to do one job, and instead, he's asked to do something different. In Quigley Down Under, Marston informs Quigley his sharpshooting skills will be used to eradicate Aboriginal Australians. In Blazing Saddles, Bart is hired as the sheriff to anger the townspeople. I love these two movies!
I have found that a Writer for Hire engagement can start with an understanding that you'll use your creative skills to adapt a book or write a screenplay from a treatment, or rewrite an existing script. The typical Writer for Hire agreement contains standard industry provisions giving full creative control to the producer while requiring the writer to comply with all directions. Under these terms, the producer owns all rights to the material in perpetuity, can make unlimited changes without writer's approval, and has no obligation to actually produce the screenplay.
This type of agreement has led to several notable disputes in the entertainment industry. Art Buchwald's case against Paramount in 1990 became a landmark example when he submitted a treatment that became the basis for Coming to America. Despite contractual similarities to his concept, the studio claimed independent development. The court ultimately ruled in Buchwald's favor, exposing problematic "Hollywood accounting" practices.
Another significant case involved David Elliot and Paul Lovett's dispute with Disney over Pirates of the Caribbean. The writers claimed the script derived from their submission but faced significant hurdles in proving ownership after signing a work-for-hire agreement. Similarly, Wes Craven's estate engaged in a prolonged battle with New Line Cinema over rights to A Nightmare on Elm Street, highlighting the challenges of termination rights under copyright law.
I have performed under five different writers' agreements, and I found one common thread: creativity is not encouraged. Even after submitting a detailed treatment and sitting through Zoom calls, taking notes and asking questions, like "Can I add new material?" and being encouraged to just that -- I ended up having to delete characters, or even worse, the producer deleted whole scenes or beats that took hours and days for me to write. This was even after I asked, "Can I change the storyline and add or delete characters?" These scenes were in my treatment, but sometimes I don't think they read those.
Tip: Always write the first act and get the producer's approval before continuing! Even after approving my treatment, I found producers who wanted their original storylines and instructed me to keep their exact characters and made me delete almost everything that I created. At times, I feel like scratching my head and wondering, "Why was I hired?"
Fortunately, I'm from the software industry and there is no winning by proving that you're right. The worst happened when there were multiple people involved. Attendees in a meeting want to prove their worth, so they'd say, "Could you move the Enter button to the left side of the screen?" Everyone agrees and we make the change. But then the users scream (or the script gets bad coverage) because nothing is where the audience or users are expecting it to be. In the technology world, we end up having to rollback the update and put the Enter button back where it was. It does no good to remind them that THEY wanted the change. If you watch the film, The Majestic, the executives "brainstorm" and rewrite the script, "What if we gave the kid a disease? Then later, "People love dogs...always gross high, so instead of a disease, we give the kid a dog?"
But as screenwriters, we have certain rules that we've been taught; never open a movie with someone waking up - and never end it with someone saying, "It was all a dream." But like in the software industry, we merely make the changes and don't remind the producer that they had encouraged us to change the storyline and create new characters in our original meeting. But like Walt Disney said, "The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing," which highlights his belief in taking action over mere words.
This is one of the reasons why I prefer emails or texts over group Zoom meetings, or phone conferences -- where everyone wants to create a movie "by committee." The platypus's odd combination of features evokes the idea of something "created by committee."
I've seen so many movies that are a collection of great ideas - but they don't follow the required beats, sequences, act breaks that a movie needs and the structure that we're trained to follow. This was one of the problems with Electric State, a recent Netflix offering. Some of the comments were that the film was "incoherent," with critics finding the plot muddled, the action scenes repetitive, and the characters underdeveloped - a platypus.
It might help for you to get coverage for the treatment or previous script BEFORE you start your Writer for Hire job - or merely ask the producer exactly what they want changed. Otherwise you might be writing a platypus screenplay that is incoherent.