For the nerdiest of screenwriters out there…
Below you’ll find multiple drafts of a couple of my screenplays, as well as context and timelines to help you make sense of some of the changes.
Want to see the difference between drafts that earned me a manager, got an 8 on the Black List, or earned a movie a greenlight? Look no further.
AFTERMATH
CONTEXT:
This was the script that broke me into Hollywood – twice!
It was my eighth feature screenplay, and I’d been writing for about that many years. The first draft was written wayyyy back in September of 2011 and it went into production in May of 2022. I believe I did a total of 11 drafts throughout that journey, so needless to say… it’s changed a bit over time.
The earliest draft was written 11 years before its production in 2022. It’s a little rough around the edges and not all of its choices represent who I am as a writer or a person in 2025, but you may find it instructive as the draft that got me my first manager.
TIMELINE:
September, 2011: First draft completed
January, 2012: Fourth draft completed. Several professional writers felt it was ready for Hollywood, so I decided to take their advice and go for it.
Read the draft that got me my first manager.
February, 2012: Queried over 100 managers. Eight of them read it, two of them showed interest in signing me.
March, 2012: Flew to Hollywood to meet with Jonathan Hung, who became my first manager. He gave me notes that he felt would make it more appealing to producers and suggested I get to work. Most of these had to do with making the script less dark and angry, removing the PTSD flashbacks that he felt interrupted the story, and making it feel a little more global.
April, 2012: I completed a draft for my manager on the 7th and we were out to producers on the 9th. I think it’s fair to say his notes were solid, because Millar/Gough Ink came on board.
Read the draft that earned my first producer attachment.
July, 2012: Millar/Gough Ink had their own notes, which were mostly focused on making the script even more commercial, since their plan was to take it to major studios. I made some big structural changes, such as removing the midpoint twist where the protagonist’s wife was killed on the bridge — by removing her from the bridge all together. I did a draft for them in May and another in June, and then a final quick polish based on some copyediting notes.
In July, the script went out wide to studios and other buyers.
Read the draft that was sent out wide.
October, 2012: Every place we went to passed, unfortunately, but it earned me a number of meetings, and so I bought a ticket to LA once again and met with places like Dreamworks and New Line.
One week before that trip, I got a call from my manager. He informed me that Adi Shankar had randomly found my script and wanted to option it. He was a great fit for the project, and it made my first round of meetings a whole lot more fun. While I was in LA, we agreed to terms for the option, which would have amounted to a fairly life-changing sum if they’d been able to get the movie made.
We had some real momentum for a little while, but unfortunately, as is the case far more often than not, it didn’t come together that time. That’s the business we’re in. A year and a half later, the option lapsed.
Flash forward to…
June, 2021: After giving up on my screenwriting dream for five or six years, I jumped back into it in August of 2020. I wrote my script ÆTHER and had another called THE CONTINUUM in my back pocket. I used these in an attempt to break back into Hollywood.
Neither script did a thing for me. I was pretty surprised, because I was convinced that both of them were better than AFTERMATH. They both earned 7s on The Black List (THE CONTINUUM later took the silver medal in the PAGE Screenwriting Awards), but that wasn’t enough to be meaningful.
Frustrated, I put AFTERMATH on the Black List as well, if for no other reason than to prove it was broken. I spent about 8 hours tweaking a few lines and updated the tech and pop culture references so it wouldn’t feel dated, and then I shipped it off to that website. It earned itself an 8. If you know the Black List, you know that that’s the magic number.
August, 2021: After promoting that Black List 8 on Twitter and anywhere else I could, AFTERMATH fell into the hands of Jeff Belkin, a manager at Zero Gravity.
Jeff knew that Timothy C. Sullivan had just signed on as a producer at Voltage Pictures, that his mandate was to make action/thrillers, and that he needed material. So before even having a chance to have a signing conversation, he asked if he could send it to him. About a week later, Voltage made an offer.
Although the offer wasn’t a WGA deal, one thing that made this different was that Voltage does a lot of their own financing, which means they tend to produce the things they option. After many years of chasing this dream with no movies to show for it, that sounded great to me. I signed.
Of course, in order to get it into production, AFTERMATH needed to fit the budget that Voltage had in mind. They had other big ideas, too. To make everything work, it would require substantial rewriting, which is how I negotiated for a Co-Producer credit.
September, 2021: This rewrite was the most difficult of all. I understood the reason for most of the notes, but there were a couple that really challenged me and forced me to rethink my vision of the movie.
That said, I knew if I could pull this draft off, it would greatly improve my chances of not being replaced by another writer. I knew that if the movie got made, it would open new doors and change the trajectory of my career. I also knew that a major part of being a professional writer meant being able to execute notes well. So I resolved to not only figure it out — but to knock it out of the park.
The new draft included 65 new pages, which was way more change than I think Voltage even expected. But that’s what I felt was necessary to make everything work. Two major characters were cut, with many of their story beats folded into a brand new subplot around a prison bus, as well as the brand new character, Doc — a high-risk prisoner kept in a cage at the front of the bus, who had a major impact on the story.
Voltage was super happy with this draft. They were especially excited about Doc, because they felt that role could land a name actor. Even better, they used this draft to attach our first director.
I can’t overstate the confidence boost this gave me. I’d done many, many rewrites on various scripts in the past, but for the most part, I’d only ever executed notes I’d agreed with. This was a case where I’d been required to make changes that I could not wrap my head around — at least at first — and I’d come out the other side of it successful. It was kind of like, “Holy shit, maybe I can actually do this as a career.”
I had a call with the director and he had some additional thoughts, so I did one more draft with those notes.
November: 2021: I turned in the new draft for the director and got a pretty incredible reply from the producer: “No notes!”
That didn’t last long, though, because they realized they had a chance to cast Dylan. That sounded amazing, but it meant the script would need another pass, since AFTERMATH was about a father and his 12-year-old daughter. We changed the relationship to a mid-20s veteran and his 12-year-old sister and I did the character work to support that.
Beyond that, Voltage’s only other ask was to change Doc to a woman, so we’d have a more balanced cast, and add her to a couple more scenes, increasing our odds of landing someone great. That made sense (and we did eventually cast Dichen Lachman, which was wild). It did mean inventing a reason for a woman to be on an all-male prison transport. According to my research, that wasn’t something that happened, so I got to work on it.
January, 2022: I turned in the new draft on New Year’s Day. Within a couple weeks, Dylan had come on board, which meant we basically had a greenlight. It was an incredibly exciting time.
The original director unfortunately had a scheduling conflict, but the producers made a quick pivot and somehow landed Patrick Lussier, which meant we were on our way forward. With Patrick also being an accomplished writer, my work on the movie was done.
Read the final draft of AFTERMATH that I wrote – the draft that got us the greenlight.
May, 2022: There were at least two director’s passes on the script after that. I got to read one and thought Patrick had some ideas that were pretty brilliant. A couple actually made me jealous. There were of course changes that I might not have made, but that’s how it goes with any collaboration. Overall, it was super exciting to see it move forward.
Production began that first week of May. Getting to walk onto set and see all of those talented people working on something that began with my imagination… pretty unreal. Those days definitely counted among some of the most exciting of my life.
The last draft I read had some notable differences from the final cut of the movie, which goes to show how much things can change in production. For instance, you might note that instead of a full bus of prisoners, many of whom had their own impact on the story, it’s now just Doc in a small prison van. All sorts of things can happen during production, from bursts of inspiration to obstacles that force you to think on your feet and find another solution.
Ultimately, around 50% of what I wrote in my last draft is actually on screen in the movie. That’s pretty good for a first movie, and I was also fortunate enough to be granted sole credit. It’s made for a really fun start to my professional career and I’m extremely grateful to those who made it happen.
Oh – and if you’re curious… every draft I did has things I love about it and things that I might have preferred not to change, but that “No Notes” draft I delivered in November of 2021 is probably my favorite of the bunch. It hits that sweet spot of resonating with me on a personal level and also feeling like I did some strong work.
Anyway, if you’re a fellow writer, hopefully this has been interesting and even eye-opening for you. Collaboration is a major part of what we do and there are always going to be changes – many of them – but getting to make movies for a living is well worth all that work!
ÆTHER
CONTEXT:
This was the script I finished in 2021, in my attempt to re-break into Hollywood. I also documented its writing on YouTube in my Re-Entry series.
It has not yet become a movie, but it’s had some bouts of momentum and its audio rights were recently purchased, which means you’ll soon be able to listen to it as a fully-produced “Audio Flick” with sound design, an original score, and a full cast of accomplished actors.
TIMELINE:
September, 2020: Zeroed in on the approximate idea for ÆTHER and began researching and outlining.
December, 2020: Completed a big swing of a first draft — much different than anything I’d written previously.
I sent it out to several professional writers for notes, three of whom joined me on an episode of Re-Entry and gave me those notes on camera. That was an intimidating experience, but a very helpful one, and it made it clear to me that I had to rethink my approach to this story.
Jeff Willis was also kind enough to send over written notes, which he gave me permission to share. Read them here.
February, 2021: Completed the second draft, which wound up being a page-one rewrite. In other words, so much of the story needed to change that I started over with a brand new document. It was worth it, though, as that draft was a huge improvement.
Once again, I got notes from other writers, a few of whom appeared on another episode with me. By and large, the opinion this time was that I had a draft that was close, and that just needed some focus to bring out the theme and character arcs, and to make the ending hit harder.
Watch the second round of notes here.
April, 2021: Completed the third draft and worked with a few incredible actors to bring it to life in a live-reading on YouTube.
May, 2021: Like with AFTERMATH nearly a decade earlier, I sent out a big round of queries for ÆTHER. Unlike with AFTERMATH, I essentially got zero bites.
I also put ÆTHER on The Black List, but its scores were 7s and 6s. After many months of writing it and documenting it on YouTube, it felt like I’d reached a dead end, so as much as I felt that ÆTHER was my best work to date, I put it on the backburner and focused on other projects.
September, 2022: My friends Jake Thornton and Ben Lustig, who had just co-written THE PRINCESS, had decided they wanted to try their hands at producing. They were well aware of ÆTHER, since I’d pitched the basic premise to them in an early episode of Re-Entry.
They asked if I’d be up for working with them. For me, it was a no brainer — they’re great guys and they were also the first two people to show interest in making the thing.
January, 2023: Jake and Ben brought on two other producers, who’d made a number of strong independent movies in the past. Between the four of them, they put together a handful of really specific notes, and I went to work on two new drafts for them.
Most of the changes were just tweaks to make the protagonist more active, bring out her arc even further, and make the movie just a little more accessible to broader audiences.
Read the final draft I did for them.
Early 2024: Ultimately, ÆTHER is the kind of movie that only has so many buyers and after a little over a year, the producers found it tough to get any momentum. We parted ways amicably.
Late 2024: I received an out-of-the-blue email from an entrepreneur and fellow screenwriter, who’d just recently launched a company that makes cinematic, one-shot audio dramas — in other words, “Audio Flicks,” with full sound design, original score, and cast. He’d made one of these already and was looking to make his second. After stumbling across ÆTHER on YouTube, he wanted to see if he could make this his second.
The deal would leave the film rights completely untouched and the screenplay would only need a handful of tweaks to make it work for the medium. Excited by the prospect of seeing one of my favorite pieces of writing produced in some way, I happily signed and got to work.
January, 2025: I did the work to make the screenplay work for the audio format, and also made a few other small changes. I kept much of what I’d done for the original producers, but changed a few things to the original. With a couple years of additional writing experience, I also made a few new changes that I felt made the script even better.
Read the Audio Version of the script here (coming soon).
Spring, 2025: Look out for the audio production of ÆTHER!