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Over the past couple of years, the entertainment industry has started to become heavily dependent on sequels, adaptations and remakes. Out of the top ten box office hits of 2024, only one wasn’t a sequel — instead, it was “Wicked,” which was still an adaptation. The fight for IP, or intellectual property, is stronger than ever.
As more studios and executives rely on this formula for success, screenwriters are doing their best to try and make their voices heard, all with different stories they’d like to tell.
“You’re encouraged to be yourself, you’re just not necessarily paid for it,” says one screenwriter.
“You need those cash cow films in order to have your indie darlings,” says another.
I spoke with different screenwriters across Los Angeles, some settled into the industry and some still students. From topics ranging from disability to queerness, here’s what they had to say about the stories that matter to them and their frustration towards the current landscape of entertainment.
“I’ve never been very interested in telling a story ‘objectively’, whatever that is. I feel like I’m more interested in whatever the heart of the truth is rather than the proven truth. I’m not as interested in the real world as I am in the fictional version of it.”
A dive into the entertainment industry’s IP obsession and the voices lost in the shuffle.
This is Corina “Coco” Maritescu. Her most recent endeavor has been writing and producing the critically acclaimed HBO show “The Penguin.” Prior to this she wrote and edited on shows such as “Shameless,” “Joe vs. Carole,” and “Sorry For Your Loss.”
Born and raised in Romania, Bucharest, Maritescu originally aspired to be a journalist but couldn’t find much luck with it, especially due to graduating during the 2008 recession.
“I think because I came up in post-communist Romania, and you were encouraged to find a pragmatic career. I thought that there was no such thing as being a writer for a career. So journalism was as close as I could get to that,” Maritescu reflects.
She decided to go back to school to study her true creative calling: film and television. After getting her master’s degree in screenwriting, Maritescu worked her way up through writer’s rooms to get where she is now.
“I mostly gravitate to stories about people who are like outsiders in some ways. If I really had my way, I would only write stories about queer immigrants,” Maritescu laments. “The trick is to find the balance between what pays the bills and what feels creatively energizing. And I’ve learned that sometimes you have to lean more heavily in one direction than the other. You’re encouraged to be yourself; you’re just not necessarily paid for it.”
Maritescu also shares that her older peers and coworkers complain about the lack of original ideas but do nothing to help the problem. When Maritescu pitches original ideas, her bosses will respond with ‘Maybe there’s some IP you can attach that to.’
“I think now we’re in a time when you have to figure out how to Trojan-horse your original idea into a pre-existing piece of intellectual property, which some people do with more success than others,” she says. “But I will also say, I think there is still a way to get an original idea made: if you’re a straight, cis white man.”
Oddly enough, four out of the five screenplays nominated for Best Original Screenplay this year were written by white men. And Maritescu isn’t the only one that notices how race comes into play in this industry.
“The first time I wrote a screenplay was in middle school, and I would write to try to deal with more complicated emotions I had about what was going on in the world around me. Sometimes that meant writing about political issues that were bigger than my scope of understanding, like the murder of Trayvon Martin, and other times that meant dissecting and narrativizing personal struggles or obstacles I had faced and crafting narratives.”
This is Jordan Freeman, a Black, nonbinary USC senior who was raised in Atlanta Georgia. Majoring in Film & TV Production, they’re a jack of all trades: they write, they direct, they produce, and they founded the Black Art Collective at USC, a student group focused on creating Black art.
“I’d say right now, a lot of my writing is focused on my identity and what someone with my identity might have experienced at different points in history,” shares Freeman. “I think, especially in regard to queerness and blackness, that it’s important to illuminate the fact that queer and black people have always been a part of history, especially in American history, and that we’ve existed at different points and times and contexts.”
In terms of genre, Freeman particularly enjoys thrillers and horrors, and notes how fortunate they are that those genres “are produced at a lower price point and have more of a financial upside.” Like other film students, Freeman is worried about their place in the industry, not just as someone who likes writing original content but as someone with a diverse identity. Recently, studios such as Disney and Amazon have changed their DEI initiatives.
“A lot of the studios and production companies are facing financial challenges, and they see DEI as a quick cost to cut and perhaps something they weren’t particularly committed to in the first place,” theorizes Freeman. “That worries me to a certain level. But because my belief is that they never had a genuine ideological commitment to it, I guess it doesn’t impact the industry that much if they, you know, drop the facade.”
Freeman is not alone in noticing pushback on stories related to DEI.
“I wanted to tell stories that would change people’s lives and that would make the world a better place. I was going through a lot, taking care of my sister who is a person with disabilities, and becoming her guardian when I was 20. And so my life was very hard.”
Jeanie Bergen has over 10 years of experience writing for television, including working for networks such as Hulu, FX, and Netflix. Raised by her grandmother in Wisconsin, she studied journalism at first (like Maritescu) but her stories would tend to lean on the comedic side, much to the disapproval of her news director.
“It just wasn’t the right fit for me. But I’ve always known that I wanted to tell stories,” says Bergen. “I think stories, no matter if it’s in a journalistic form, have the power to change people’s perspective and change their lives, and especially with comedy.”
She switched to screenwriting, and as a student, was met with opposition.
“I had a professor at the time, and I told him I wanted to try to write a comedy about disability, about my personal experience taking care of my sister. He said to me, ‘You cannot write a comedy about disability’,” recounted Bergen. “He didn’t have any interest in knowing what it was that I had to say about disability, and I don’t think he knew that I would handle it with care.”
She wrote the script to fit her professor’s criteria, but after graduation, Bergen revised it to her liking, to which she now uses as samples when getting jobs. This script also won her a spot into Aaron Sorkin’s Master Class on screenwriting and was sold to Spectrum Originals. But she, too, worries about original content becoming few and far between.
“With the breakthrough of ‘Baby Reindeer’ last year, that is a wholly original story, and ‘Fleabag’ as well. But how many more ‘Baby Reindeer’s and ‘Fleabag’s are out there? It makes me feel worried about what we are watching if original stories are not being made.”
On The Industry
Of course, one of the biggest events to impact the way the entertainment industry today is the Writer’s Guild Strike of 2023. To many screenwriters, a big frustration about their jobs was not getting paid enough – some demands from the strike were higher royalties and more staffing in the TV writer’s room. Other writers interviewed also noted the 2023 WGA strike to be a big factor in less original content – studios would rather invest their money in a project that already has an existing audience.
See below for a look at how many originals have made it into the top 50 box office over four decades.
Jeffrey Korchek is currently the Executive Vice President and Head of Business Affairs and Strategy at Sony Pictures Animation. His expertise lies in IP, and his daily work consists of negotiating deals. On the business side, he agrees that studios and big executives would rather take a safe bet with a pre-existing audience than come out with a risk.
“The industry trades on the familiar, if people liked it once they’ll like it again,” Korchek explains. “That’s just a risk analysis because the industry is trying to make educated guesses as they greenlight productions which often involve over $100 Million in production and marketing costs when they won’t know the results until 2 years later.”
To get a more in-depth and personal look at the business side of the industry, I spoke with Tara Joshi, who works in TV Development at Lionsgate. Listen below to hear her takes and explanations for this IP-craze, including the WGA strike as well as COVID.
The future of the entertainment industry remains uncertain, but some writers are finding their own silver linings and views on the business.
“The industry is in a very interesting place, and I think that a lot of people criticize the utilization of IP, however, I think that theatrical films need to be made.”
Ryan Sheehy is a filmmaker who has written three features, his latest titled “How to Disappear,” set to begin filming later this year. In addition, he’s also made a handful of short films, and began his roots in the music video industry. He raises an interesting point in regard to the saturation of IP-heavy films.
“Especially now, the theaters are suffering. If I want my independent film to make it to AMC, they also need to have those bread winning films,” argues Sheehy. “Those Marvel movies, those big blockbusters are going to keep the theater generating revenue and alive. You need those cash cow films in order to have your indie darlings.”
And it’s true, at least in the case of AMC theatres. In 2019, they launched their initiative AMC Artisan Films, aimed at highlighting and showing independent films with a lower to mid budget range. Their intention is to inspire their audiences to seek out artist-driven films, and some original films that have shown at AMC as part of this have been “Companion,” “I’m Still Here,” and “Sinners.”
In a similar vein, many original films have a short theatrical release and go directly to streaming. As a current example, “Black Bag,” a film directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by David Koepp, is set to go to streaming in May despite its mid-March theatrical release.
“I’m really hoping, with the mix of people running out of IP to adapt, and companies hopefully starting to see these sorts of quirkier, unique original ideas, that we’re brought to a better state of the industry. But obviously, so much is uncertain and we just have to keep our fingers crossed.”
Murleve Roberts comes from South Florida and is a senior at USC majoring in Writing for Screen and Television. The stories she wants to write are stories that make people feel seen but also reflect the way in which they see the world. In respect to genre, Roberts always finds herself coming back to romance, especially coming-of-age stories, but can’t escape talks of IP.
“In my classes and somewhat in my internships too, we talk about how everything is pretty much pre-existing IP. Even if it’s not a sequel, it’s usually an adaptation of something. Honestly, a lot of it doesn’t make any sense because it’s kind of reached a point where nobody wants to take a risk,” she says.
To Roberts, the issue is not the audience, but the Hollywood system. Nonetheless, there are still some small accomplishments that fuel Robert’s ambition. One example she shared was the spec-script “Love of Your Life,” written by Julia Cox. This original romance-drama script was making its rounds through the screenwriting space and gained attention from Amazon MGM in a bidding-war, who bought it for $2 million. To put things into perspective, a usual spec-script will sell for around $110,000 – making this incredibly shocking.
“It does still feel as though scripts like “Love of Your Life” are an exception to the rule right now,” she observes. “And I feel like even if an indie movie gets made, people have to work really hard on it to make something really creative outside of the studio system.”
Roberts hopes events like these continue to happen and remains optimistic but doesn’t get her hopes too high.
Like Roberts, Sheehy, Bergen, Freeman and Maritescu, diverse and underrepresented writers are doing their best to push back against the IP obsession and remain hopeful that originality will become a priority rather than an exception as the entertainment industry navigates a post-strike world. In the meantime, they’ll continue to write their scripts and pursue their passions for original storytelling – even if it risks a paycheck and visibility.