By Jeff Sneider
The unsung gatekeepers of Hollywood are story analysts, many of them Local 700 members. But as the industry undergoes rapid change, as well as a worrisome work slowdown, the role of these vital workers — whose practiced eyes are often among the first in the industry to see scripts, books, graphic novels, and more — is being tested like never before.
With pressures from artificial intelligence, shifting priorities towards intellectual property (IP), and a fast-moving, tech-influenced development process, story analysts find their jobs both evolving and at risk. What hasn’t changed is their crucial ability to flag material that has potential to make good entertainment, and to sum up that appeal (or lack of it) in their coverage comments.
“Everyone thinks they’re the gatekeepers of the industry, but story analysts are the first audience to see a script,” said Helen Truong, a film school grad who did multiple internships and wrote freelance coverage for several agencies before meeting someone from the story department at Sony, where she now works as a story analyst herself.
“The strikes had a huge impact on us. With so few writers sending in scripts, a lot of submissions moved to books, graphic novels, and web cartoons. I was reading as many of those as scripts, if not more, because there’s been such an emphasis on IP [lately],” explained Truong.
Alegre Rodriquez, a veteran story analyst at Universal Pictures, echoed that sentiment.
“It used to be that story analysts read mostly screenplays and specs — that was 80% of the job. But now, because the marketplace has changed in
Rodriquez grew up in Central California before attending Brown University where she studied American Civics. After college, she worked as an intern and as an assistant at Columbia Pictures where she got an up-close look at the development process, and her passion for film only grew.
She then spent six years working as a story analyst, doing freelance coverage for major production companies such as GK Films and FilmDistrict, before taking a brief hiatus to write for a TV show. After the strike, she returned to the field, only to find that it had changed a bit.
“There have been a few mergers that have shrunk story departments and put people out of work, so the business has been contracting,” explained Rodriquez. That means there are fewer opportunities for studios to support original material.
Truong agreed that it’s been a pretty bad time for specs, and the marketplace has become more derivative as a result. “There’s a little bit of fatigue around the big superhero franchises, but one drives the other. So the more derivative it gets, the bigger the appetite becomes for something fresh and original, and then you get ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once,’” said Truong, who would love to see the spec market rebound.
“We have to go back to looking at spec scripts,” Truong insisted, though she was frank in admitting that “so few people are reading specs right now that getting a short [made] is almost better.”
“We’re not in a spec market right now,” said Guild board member Holly Sklar, who was initially hired as a story analyst by Disney but has spent the past 23 years working for Warner Bros.
“Part of the reason is that IP is something execs want to develop from, and books have a built-in audience. They’ve always been a robust part of what comes through the story department,” but clearly there’s more emphasis on books these days.
‘We’ve adopted Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” view.’
Rodriquez says that all of the studios have a book scout in New York, and each compiles an up-to-date list of manuscripts for studio execs to consider. The execs will look at the list, read each logline [a brief description up to several lines long], and identify which manuscripts seem to be good candidates for adaptation. The studio story analysts will cover those.
“’It Ends With Us’ is a perfect example. That was out there as a manuscript and several people made bids for it, but they went with this company, Wayfarer. Then the book popped, so that gamble paid off [for everyone] in so many ways,” she explained.
“There’s a story analyst at CBS Studios whose whole job is to read books and cover them for potential series development, but WB’s story department does not, at the moment, read for Max, which has shifted away from original movies. We read for WB Pictures, New Line, and Warner Bros. Pictures Animation. That said, with a lot of the stuff we read, we may indicate to the execs, ‘This may be better served as a short-term streaming series, or a long-term, ongoing show.’ It doesn’t mean they’ll develop it that way, but we have to be aware of what’s on streaming and the differences between those things.”
As far as AI is concerned, Rodriquez said, “We’re scratching our heads because we don’t know where it’s gonna go.” Rodriguez represents story analysts on Local 700’s Emerging TechnologyCommittee.
Truong admitted she’s “a little worried” about AI, “but I think the threat of it is… not necessarily overblown… but it can’t do what a human analyst does. AI is trained on what’s been done before, but it can’t recognize material as being novel or innovative. It’s always looking for a shortcut. It’s certainly a [concern], especially for readers who aren’t in the union yet. A lot of companies are trying to experiment with AI, so it could make things hard for those [readers who are trying to break in], but I think AI’s capabilities are still limited.”
Sklar said, “Most of these [online] services using AI as story analysts trying to get money from aspiring writers, but they can’t tell you if the writing is any good. They can tell you about the prompts from screenwriting books and if your script reflects the standard cookie-cutter approach, but AI can’t respond the way an audience member can. AI can’t love a writer, or hate a writer, or identify with a protagonist. It can’t care about or root for characters in a movie. It can’t get emotionally involved, but we can and that’s why we’re still better suited for the job. The tech is going to get better, but I don’t see it being a replacement, and I don’t think it can spot originality or judge the distinctiveness of a writer’s voice.”
Paul Blyskal, who has been a story analyst for 14 years and currently works for Netflix, agreed that it’s something to be worried about, albeit more in the long term than right now. “There’s been a lot of hype about AI, but it is moving faster than anyone had guessed,” he conceded.
AI isn’t the only concern to come out of Silicon Valley, as Hollywood’s new tech overlords have changed the entire way that the business is valued, and thus, run.
These days, studios are hungry for packages that come with creative attachments already in place.
“Even producers with deals, they’ll have something great, and our execs will say, ‘Come back to us when you have the package,’” said Rodriquez.
“And that affects the work we’re doing. We still do the tried-and-true analysis if a studio is looking for something with a clean slate and no attachments, but if you do have those attachments, and you’ve got a TV director who hasn’t done a feature before, and two actors who aren’t A-list, now you’re thinking about the package a bit more, whereas before, it was just based on the script.
“Instead of saying, ‘We have over 100 years that serve as proof of concept that what we do works,’ we’ve adopted Silicon Valley’s ‘move fast and break things’ philosophy, and we’ve let them break a lot of things,” said Rodriquez.
Blyskal noted that in moving from a theatrical studio to Netflix, he’s responsible for fewer rounds of story notes. The development window for Netflix movies is shorter because they head into production much faster than theatrical features at legacy studios.
At Netflix, he’s also able to consider more niche material. “If you’re working in film, you have to think about global audiences if you want to make a huge amount of money in theaters. But now, things can be much more niche, because if you’re working for a streamer, they can program for anybody — you just need to bring us something with a particular audience in mind.” Blyskal also noted how, oddly enough, the greater the number of targeted audiences, the broader the range of voices and subject matter.
Meanwhile, Truong said that working for Sony is unique in as it’s the only legacy studio without a dedicated streamer, which means it can sell content to the highest bidder.
“We always have an eye towards, ‘Could this go to another streamer?’” she explained.
“I think our boats have gotten harder to steer, the bigger they’ve gotten,” said Rodriquez, referring to the streaming services that studios have felt forced to launch in order to compete with Netflix.
“I remember being at Sony during the hack, and the studio was really struggling after [former studio chief] Amy [Pascal] left. But look at them now — they’re not saddled with a streamer and they get to do distribution deals with Netflix, so they’re more nimble, and they’ve got enough existing properties that things are going to be okay.”
Speaking of existing properties, one thing many industry observers have wondered about is why studios don’t do anything with the mountains of scripts for which they’ve already paid millions of dollars. If a script was good enough to have drawn Tom Cruise’s interest in 2004, but it never got made, why couldn’t that same script draw Ryan Gosling’s attention now?
“Sometimes you have genius execs who do [look] back,” said Blyskal, but it can be difficult with limited time and resources and Hollywood’s age-old obsession with what’s “new.”
Story analysts typically read and write coverage for one script per day, though they may read a second script and then start the next day by writing the coverage. Naturally, there are “the ones that got away” — scripts that, despite strong recommendations, never got made, or wound up being made elsewhere.
“I loved one called ‘The Offing’ that had Helena Bonham Carter attached and was about a very unique friendship between her character and a teenage boy.”
Of the recent scripts that Truong has read and loved, Megan Park’s “My Old Ass” stands out. “It’s been a while since I’ve read a script like that, so I’m happy it’s being released.”
One of the old scripts Rodriquez advocated for was Noga Pnueli’s “High Society,” which was voted to the 2020 Black List. The script follows a progressive woman stuck in a small conservative Texas town where she begins microdosing everyone with marijuana to make them all get along.
“There was a remake of ‘The Thin Man’ that Billy Ray wrote about the case where Nick and Nora Charles first met. Who knows what happened to it? But I loved that one, and a Frank Darabont script called ‘Stitch in Time,’ which was a fish-out-of-water story set in contemporary times.”
Sklar offered advice to young writers, “Write what you love.”
“I don’t believe in following trends,” she said, “so don’t chase the market. It’s never a great idea. We’re just looking for great stories in which we have some emotional investment, and we’re looking for originality. One of the reasons ‘Barbie’ was so successful was that it had a point of view,” said Sklar, who predicts that comedies will soon make a comeback, though she admits it’s among the hardest genres to do well.
She also revealed her pet peeve: when writers describe a character by referring to an actor, like “Think Jeff Goldblum,” or “Imagine Ryan Reynolds, but younger.”
“That’s lazy writing,” she said.
Blyskal’s advice for young writers was simple: “Read more screenplays,” adding “We can tell when the writer hasn’t because the formatting is off.”
Jeff Sneider is a veteran entertainment reporter who writes the newsletter
The InSneider.
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