WbkW63OPsOU/hqdefault.jpg' alt='Buy Gnomeo And Juliet Movie' title='Buy Gnomeo And Juliet Movie' />The 1. Most Expensive Screenplays Ever. And the Stories Behind Them. Hollywood works like a fortified compound. A cabal of writers, producers, directors and actors have all the power, and like to keep things in the family so to speak. They dont like to invite newcomers or outsiders to their decadent parties, which makes it all the more amazing when some newby scales the wall and ends up a megastar. Writers have a particularly hard time breaking into the business, as the rest of the industry generally looks down on their craft and considers them as interchangeable as lightbulbs. See how well critics are rating upcoming movies in theaters at Metacritic. Page 2. Directed by John Stevenson. With Johnny Depp, Emily Blunt, James McAvoy. Garden gnomes, Gnomeo Juliet, recruit renown detective, Sherlock Gnomes, to investigate the. January movie releases in theaters, streaming and coming to home video. Forget that the writer helps conceive an idea and provides the guide for an actor and a director to make a good film. In the mind of Hollywood, a writer is responsible for everything wrong with a movie, and gets no credit for anything good. For those reasons, when a writer actually does break into the biz, its a rare event indeed. Even more miraculous, some writers manage to sell spec scripts that is, original scripts they wrote without any pay or encouragement for huge amounts of money, the sale becomes front page news. The scripts and writers listed here in no particular order got a taste of that glory. Buy Gnomeo And Juliet Movie' title='Buy Gnomeo And Juliet Movie' />You Are Reading The 15 Most Expensive Screenplays Ever And the Stories Behind Them. Some managed to parlay the moment into a thriving and lucrative career, while others drifted into obscurity as a flavor of the moment. Jurassic Park. Author Michael Crichton was no stranger to Hollywood when he announced work on a story about geneticists cloning dinosaurs for a theme park. The author had already produced a string of bestselling novels, several of which had already become acclaimed films Westworldcontinues to have a cult following enough so that it is getting a remake on HBO and the movie of The Andromeda Strain from director Robert Wise opened to strong box office and great reviews. Dinosaurs though, made tinseltown salivate. Jurassic Park ignited a bidding war before the novel had even made it to publication. Several major studios vied for the rights, each with a director already in mind. Columbia favored Richard Donner, the action comedy maestro behind Superman and Lethal Weapon. Warner Bros., sensing a comic book epic, tried to buy the rights for Tim Burton. Fox saw the property as a Gremlins style creature feature, and tapped Joe Dante, while Universal had in mind a friend of Crichtons Steven Spielberg. Author Crichton made an unheard of demand of 1. Universal eventually won out. The result became one of the biggest movies in history, and a franchise that continues to thrive to this very day. Basic Instinct. For better or worse, writer Joe Eszterhas became the screenwriter of the 9. Jagged Edge and the musical Flashdance. The writer also became known for his bad boy behavior. As a hard drinker and philanderer, he loved to spout incendiary comments in interviews while chain smoking the entire time. Ezsterhas had ruffled feathers in 1. Creative Arts Agency head Mike Ovitz as a thug in an open letter to the trades. In the meantime, hed had an idea for an erotic thriller. The writer started drinking, smoking and listening to the Rolling Stones as he banged out a draft in ten days. Esterhas called it Basic Instinct. The script to Basic Instinct began to rapidly circulate around Hollywood, and when Esterhas made the brazen and unprecedented move of selling it via auction, the studio bosses came to bid. Producer Mario Kassar won out, paying a whopping 3 million for the scripta record breaking sum. Eventually, directed by Paul Verhoven and starring Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone, the film divided critics but became a runaway success at the box office. Esterhas would later repeat the feat, nabbing 3 million for another script of his, Showgirls. Perhaps it goes without saying that the latter didnt quite fare as well. The Last Boy Scout. Shane Black already had a successful screenwriting career by 1. The writer had started as a typist when a friend, screenwriter Fred Dekker, enlisted Blacks help on a script. The result landed him a series of jobs as a ghost writer for the Hollywood studios. In 1. 98. 7, he had a string of hits with The Monster Squad, Predatorand Lethal Weapon. The latter became a box office giant, and spawned a mult million dollar franchise. Studio Warner Bros. Black to write a script for what would become Lethal Weapon 2. Black toiled to finish the story, and the eventual screenplay met with praise for the writing and derision by the studio as too dark. Taking some time off, Black then decided to write a spec script, a dark action thriller called The Last Boy Scout. The Last Boy Scout earned raves from Hollywood readers and a bidding war began between the studios. Carolco Pictures, the production company behind Terminator 2 Judgment Day offered Black a reported 2. In a stunning turn, Black turned down the offer Instead, he accepted a 1. Warner Bros., along with assurance that the film would be produced by the same producer of Lethal Weapon, Joel Silver. If Blacks record setting paycheck made headlines, so did the movie the production became one of the most notoriously difficult ever, and the film flopped at the box office. Butch Cassidy the Sundance Kid. William Goldman began his writing career in academia. He studied poetry and literature at Colombia University before getting his Masters degree. When he set out to start a career, he began by writing novels. His first, The Temple of Gold, became a bestseller, and helped him transition to drama as well. After writing several other successful novels and stage plays, he began work on Marathon Man. The novel, a thriller about Nazi war criminals living in South America, became a runaway hit, prompting Goldman to adapt the novel to a screenplay. The subsequent film also became a huge success, granting ailing actor Laurence Olivier a comeback and scoring an Oscar nomination. Goldman continued with steady Hollywood work when he decided to develop something more personal. Having run across the story of western outlaw Butch Cassidy in the 1. Goldman began to write a fictionalized and romanticized account of Cassidys life with his friend the Sundance Kid. After considering writing the story as a novel, Goldman decided to write it as a spec script. Though it first circulated to Hollywood indifference, a quick rewrite garnered wild interest. Movies For Apple Ipod The Animation Show on this page. One of the first major bidding wars between studios took place over Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with Fox eventually triumphing and scoring the rights. Goldman received an unheard of 4. Academy Award. 1. Radio Flyer. David Evans had enjoyed minor Hollywood success by the late 1. Two scripts hed penned, Terminal Entry and Open House had cleared the hurdles to production, and the writer decided to work on something more personal, and more family oriented. Radio Flyer had begun as a personal endeavor for Evans while in film school. The script spun the tale of two young brothers who relocate to California after their parents divorce. The story focused on the perspective of the two children, and contained several fantasy sequences to add an air of magic to the proceedings. Evans counterbalanced the whimsy imagination of childhood with the story of the boys abusive stepfather, and the brothers plot to build a machine and escape. Radio Flyer caused a firestorm in Hollywood, as insiders predicted the film could rank alongside ET The Extra Terrestrial as a quintessential family drama. The bidding battle began, and Columbia eventually won out, paying Evans a shocking 1. If the bidding war made Radio Flyer notorious, the production made it infamous. Evans filmed a week on the movie with Rosanna Arquette in the lead before producer Michael Douglas shut down the movie. Richard Donner, who had lobbied hard to direct the film, then came in and demanded rewrites of the script. A new production began with Donner at the helm, starring Lorraine Bracco, Elijah Wood and Joey Mazzello as the budget began to spiral.