Meh.

Finally heard back from the film company about my screenplay... and it's a no-go. Seems it fell between two stools in terms of budget, which isn't that surprising, as it's what I've been hearing from other companies as well. Too many special effects needed for it to be low-budget, too 'charactery'* to be big budget (ie. there's no real room for a star in a major role).

Of course you always wonder if you're being shielded from the real reaction, and start envisioning hysterical laughter, copies of your script being sent out as 'how-not-to's' and so one, but in this case I had a bit of a dialogue going with one of the film company's producers, so I can take this as a fairly accurate assessment. The question is now, do I re-write it accordingly so as to get it at least in a recognizeable budget bracket? It's tricky, as that goes against all my instincts, mainly because rewrites come perilously close to 'actual work', but now I've spent some time away from it, the third act does go completely haywire, so taking another pass at it could certainly do some good... Agent Ginny is going to run it past some in-the-biz-types she knows, and see what they make of it.

Anyway, it's all go for GW at the moment, as it really needs to get finished soon (and we've been saying that since December, but now it really needs to get finished, so that's going to have to take priority. And I certainly want to make some headway on the Viking Heist Movie before any rewrites on the old one, otherwise I can see me spending my entire screenwriting career endlessly rewriting the same piece for no money, which is kind of the opposite of what you're supposed to be doing.

Fortunately there's another couple more film meetings coming up, and a New Zealand-based company are looking for writers for a spooky kid's series about evil spirits, so that sounds fun.

*Well to be fair, no-one's said that specifically.

Trouble with writers is that they'll tell you why they were rejected for stuff and frame the discourse so as to always sound like the rejected hero from an Arthurian romance, whereas in reality, we're all scruffy liars and thieves who think the world owes us a living.