What happened?
They optioned 4-6 concepts and made pilots based on material from industry players.
That stung quite a bit. I felt the whole setup was more of a publicity generator than genuine avenue for discovery. Might be different this time around, but I'm skeptical.
My daughter ran a screenplay critiquing service on the web. She read scripts for her daytime job so it wasn't a scam. She gave the customers what she said she would, for $50 a pop, but she felt guilty because none of the zillion submitters had a chance of their script getting picked up.
I participated in a handful of other 'contest' like situations, one of which also ticked me off because they changed the process to suit their own preferences.
As in, the stated process was pay $40 (or $90 for 1 page of feedback), 3-5 finalists would be selected, brought in for interviews, and from there up to 3 winners would be chosen. What happened? They got so many submissions that they broke out 5-7 different categories and had lists of 10 finalists within each category, and were going to move to some other kind of judging platform (social media votes?) in order to continue to narrow down to the eventual 3-5, then winners.
That doesn't fit the definition of a scam, but it certainly isn't abiding by the rules. I didn't bother with any charge-back on my card, but felt pretty tempted at the time. "Contests" for art, in my experience, tend to be a waste of time and money unfortunately, because the enticement is so damn strong.
No, I was referring to a similar but different situation. The point was that the odds of getting any script picked up was near zero unless you were in the industry. A friend of my daughter's got one picked up but he's been working in the industry in various capacities for ten years.
Kinda sad given the redundant scripts that actually get produced. How many Batman remakes can it take to get really bored? How many Star Trek reboots? Hangover 15? Buddy cop movie? Zzzzzzz....
Sure there is the whole thing of Netflix (and presumably Prime Video), being able to collect enormous amounts of data, to identify what makes a tv show popular to their customers. But my limited knowledge of business suggests that the majority of attention will always be focused on safe money-makers.