I enjoy learning about the jump in the adult drama category and agree with you that the metric of international box office may be carrying more weight in green lighting a potential project. Both ‘The King’s Speech’ and ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ had built in appeal in Europe (and Australia). It would be interesting to know how the international box office is distributed between the European and the even larger Asian (including Australia and New Zeeland) markets. As a writer working to get my foot in the door – I have already been cautioned about one of my stories being too American centric and advised to look to staging the settings and characters outside the U.S. The big dramas do tend to follow that formula – ‘Moneyball’ and ‘The Help’ being the exceptions that prove the rule. Most of the big dramas coming out after the 2011Holidays are set outside of North America: ‘Iron Lady’, ‘War Horse’, and ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ just as examples. Any thoughts?

Wes, if you do a Google search of my blog with the words "international marketplace," you will see plenty of posts about how the expanding foreign B.O. is altering the way Hollywood approaches project acquisition and development. Bottom line: It is smart to think of an international audience. This does not necessarily mean you have to set a story outside the United States. In fact, the world generally has a pretty strong fascination with what we do here, our culture and what-not, but for example Inception, if you look at that cast, you see characters from East Asia, the Middle East, the U.K., France and the U.S. I doubt that was happenstance.

Great thing about thrillers is they allow you to combine intelligence with popularity. Source Code, Inception, I should be able to think of more examples but I can't... Big ideas that you can make a splash with as a new writer, but still show that you have a commercial mindset.

Awesome breakdown and analysis. My understanding is that the conventional wisdom is to just write what you are best at for spec scripts, since the odds are so low of a sale. Rather, the spec script becomes more like a sample, and based on the reception of that sample, you can then get future contracted work. Considered in those terms, genre wouldn't seem as important for a spec. Or is that incorrect thinking?

Horror Family - what would that be? Something ala Gremlins?

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