Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast

"I like having sympathy for the devil. And all of them are devilish!" says Emerald Fennell about her characters in the new film Saltburn . Writer/director/actress Emerald Fennell dazzled us with 2020's Promising Young Woman , for which she took home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Now she's back with Saltburn , a shocking romantic tragedy (or triumph according to her!). On this episode of...

"It really comes down to scene work. Do these characters pop? Is this fun to read? Is it fun to imagine what's going to happen next? When you get to the end of that pilot do you want to find out what's going to happen in the next episode? It's all of that," says Graham Yost, showrunner for Silo on AppleTV+. You may not know the name Graham Yost, but you certainly know his TV shows: Justified, The...

"We can't make Lawrence of Arabia anymore – not that that's not a good movie, but it's kind of a thing of the past," says screenwriter David Scarpa about writing the script for Napoleon . Scarpa says both he and director Ridley Scott wanted to bring a freshness to the historical figure from our history books by, "Showing the more irreverent, dark, more psychologically motivated side of [Napoleon]....

"My cardinal rule – the rule that you cannot break is: don't be boring. Because you can have the perfect script that follows every screenplay formatting rule, but if you're boring, it doesn't matter. First and foremost, you've got to hook the reader," says screenplay and short story writer Chris Hicks. Hicks is the author of a short story called "I Am Not Alone," that recently was the subject of a...

"I don't write sex scenes. I write character scenes and sometimes they're having sex during their character scenes. It's a beat about character," says Tony McNamara. Known for the TV show The Great on Hulu and 2018's The Favourite , screenwriter Tony McNamara's new film is Poor Things , staring Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe with a genius performance from Mark Ruffalo who's already getting Best Suppo...

Eddie Murphy's new holiday comedy Candy Cane Lane pokes fun at the idea of being super competitive during the Christmas decorating season. Kelly Younger sat down with Final Draft's Write On podcast to talk about writing the spec script that became a reality in our latest episode. "My manager who I've had for years always sort of keeping track of my projects, and we put some under when he calls the...

"I'm now at a place where I say to myself, 'What haven't we seen?' And then we take it to a place that's completely, absolutely bonkers," says writer Kirk Ward about his new show The Continental: From The World Of John Wick. "You take the audience down the road of a trope and then turn. That's the joy of collaboration and creativity for me." The Continental is a disco noire three-part miniseries t...

"A lot of the scenes are [shot in] one take. The space that they hold, the amount of air that they let sit there before saying their next line. I mean it's an incredible amount of tension and intimacy," says screenwriter Samy Burch about her new film May December, which streams on Netflix December 1st.   It sounds so simple and commonplace, but it's a lesson in not only great acting but also writi...

Final Draft's Write On podcast sits down with Showrunner Chris Black to talk about his new show, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters . "For it to be successful as a TV series, it couldn't be a show about monsters. It had to be a show about people who happen to live in a world where monsters are real," Black says when describing what it was like to pitch the show to Apple TV. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters pi...

"Be sneaky and read every script that you can get your hands on. If you can work in a studio, read the original draft, read the revisions, see how the script got to the final script. That's what I was doing. I would use the opportunities of working in that system to learn," says screenwriter Julian Breece on Final Draft's Write On Podcast. Julian, along with Dustin Lance Black, wrote  Rustin , the...

Director Alexander Payne's new film The Holdovers , is set in the 1970s and tells the story of a grumpy ancient history instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school who's forced to remain on campus during the Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually, he forms an unlikely bond with one of the students, an oddball troublemaker (Dominic Sessa), and...

One year after saving the town of Angel Falls from a psychotic killer on Christmas Eve, Winnie Carruthers (Jane Widdop) can't let the fear and guilt of the event go. Struggling to make sense if her life, she wishes she'd never been born – only to find herself in a nightmare parallel universe. The film is a mash up of the Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life and Scream . On this episode, I speak...

Season 3 of The Morning Show is now streaming on Apple TV+. With some of the most engaging actors working in television (Jennifer Anniston, Reese Witherspoon, Billy Crudup and Nicole Beharie), showrunner Charlotte Stoudt talks with us about some of the most shocking and groundbreaking scenes that are meant to blow your mind this season. This dramaturge-turned-showrunner, Stoudt's love of working w...

The new film Nyad  tells the true story of athlete Diana Nyad (Annette Benning) who, at the age of 60 and with the help of her best friend and coach Bonnie (Jody Foster), commits to achieving her life-long dream: a 110-mile open ocean swim from Cuba to Florida. We talk to screenwriter Julia Cox about what it was like getting to know the real Diana Nyad, structuring the screenplay to create a satis...

"Starting to write a project like this, we always begin with a set of very strong personal desires," says Anatomy of a Fall writer/director Justine Triet, adding, "I'm quite reticent of scripts that are too clever or that clearly have the intension of disseminating things where information or the person disseminating information has the upper hand over my ability to navigate the narrative." The ne...

"I'm not happy with a script unless I can look through it and find at least five or six pages where there's no dialogue – where the story tells itself through imagery," says horror screenwriter Dennis Paoli. Feeling strongly that the screenwriter's job is to help the director see their vision for the scenes and characters, he says that instead of writing shot-by-shot, he writes, "Visual by visual....

" The Fly was our biggest reference," first time feature writer/director Anna Zlokovic tells Final Draft's Write On podcast about her inspiration for her horror film Appendage . The spooky thriller is about a young fashion designer who sprouts a mysterious growth on her body that changes her life forever.   We sat down with the exciting newcomer -- who was recently listed on IndieWire's 28 Rising...

Adult Swim's animated sitcom Teenage Euthanasia is back for season 2. Set in a futuristic Florida, the Fantasy family is back at it with comedy and unbearable suffering. The show's cast includes Cheer's alum Bebe Neuwirth.  Final Draft sat down with the show's co-creators Alissa Nutting and Alyson Levy - a rare female animation duo in a male dominated industry - to hear about what it's like to wor...

The new film Golda – starring a bewitching Helen Mirren as Golda Meir, the Iron Lady of Israel, was written and produced by Nicholas Martin . Martin is best known for writing the 2016 film Florence Foster Jenkins. With two amazing biopics about strong, defiant women, we talk about how to find the moment that defines a character and how to focus the story on a short period of time instead of a crad...

The Apple TV+ series Physica l, starring Rose Byrne, is set to launch its third and final season on August 2. Set in the idyllic but fragile beach paradise of sunny 1980s San Diego, Physcial   is a half-hour dark comedy following Sheila Rubin (Rose Byrne) as she navigates her personal demons, most of which come in the form of noxious self-talk and an eating disorder.   I talked with series creator...

When one woman's business trip turns into a quest to find her family, things get super funny in the new comedy  Joy Ride , a raunchy road trip movie with a global spin. The film stars Oscar-nominee Stephanie Hsu, Ashley Park, Sherry Cola and Sabrina Wu.  Screenwriters Teresa Hsiao and Cherry Chevapravatdumrong , who wrote the movie with writer/director Adele Lim, sat down with Final Draft to talk...

The world out there is a brutal place. If you have a hankering for some of the rough justice you remember from old-school lawman Raylan Givens – you're in luck. Justified: City Primeval is about to drop on FX starring the same Raylan (Timothy Olyphant), we all came to know and love in the six seasons of the hit-show Justified . His hair has more sliver streaks, partly due to age but also due to wo...

With an excited fanbase and even more exciting plot twists, the drama/thriller series Cruel Summer is back for Season 2 on Freeform. Final Draft sat down with showrunner Elle Triedman to talk about murders, music from 1999 and the show's impressive ratings. (Season 1 was the most watched series in the Freeform's history!).   This delicious show tackles teenage friendships, betrayals and characters...

The surprise hit and breakout role for Jenna Ortega as the titular character in Netflix's spin off of the Addams Family, Wednesday , was just as exciting to create as it is to watch. "The writer's room started the first week of lockdown, so writing a Wednesday show during a global pandemic felt on brand," says creator Al Gough about writing the pilot before selling the show to Netflix.  Final Draf...

Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World tells the emotional journey of the world famous boxer from his poor upbringings in Texas to his rise to Heavyweight Champion of the World and then onto reinventing himself when it was time to look beyond the gloves. Final Draft's podcast Write On sits down with writer/director George Tillman Jr. ( Sou...