236 - Franchises and Final Draft

John and Craig examine why almost all of the top-grossing movies are part of a franchise – and the chicken-or-egg question at the heart of it. You don’t get Minions without Despicable Me.

We also look at the sale of Final Draft to an accounting software company and speculate wildly about the fate of the company and the state of screenwriting apps.

Plus: follow-up on Zola, sleep paralysis and dead scripts.

In the premium feed at Scriptnotes.net, you’ll find audio from John’s live panel with the WGA nominees, including Matt Charman, Drew Goddard, Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff, John McNamara, Phyllis Nagy, Charles Randolph and Adam McKay, Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy, and Aaron Sorkin.

Links:

Vanity Fair on the original Game of Thrones pilot
@clmazin%E2%80%99s followers growth over the past two months
Deadline on the 2016 WGA Beyond Words panel, which you can listen to now with a premium subscription at scriptnotes.net
Grease Live on Fox
Scriptnotes, 222: Live from Austin 2015, and