Hey Scott, Quick question.... I know you're a big fan of Pixar. Why doesn't the live action divisions in studios borrow from the model of animation studios and even Superhero live action houses like Marvel, where they have more of a team approach to screenwriting and also a willing to fail to find success model (meaning Pixar and that amazing Zootopia team of Disney will be willing to experiment with different storylines and throw them away if it's not working to get to one that does work--that's why you rarely see a dud coming out from those studios) In live action, the feature screenwriter is treated like an adopted child. Always walking on egg shells...could be cast out at any moment and really not part of the process once the script is turned in.

Good question, Eric. Let me take this up as a blog post. There's a long history of how Hollywood has handled screenwriters, so that's part of the issue. That said, we are seeing the cross-pollination of movie / TV happening nowadays have an influence in both domains. On the feature side, there are now the equivalent of writers rooms a la Paramount with Transformers, Universal with their monster movies, Warners desperately attempting to do a thing with DC Comics, etc. Plus approaching movies like Marvel as 'episodes' in a larger storyline like episodic TV. I'll go into more depth on this in the blog post.

Live action features would have a lot less duds if they followed the Pixar or Zootopia team approach... I see a lot of live action films with very intriguing premises, but once you watch the film, it's half baked or could have used more development. Some of these studios have superstar writers and new rising writers with fresh voices... you'd think they would maybe have some used as sounding boards or give the writers room to throw out storylines the way the animation studios do. The animation will throw out a draft or even scrap animation footage no matter how much time and work has been put into it...seeing it as part of the creative process to weed out any flaws. Live action features seem to lock into a release date and writers are forced to get it done, no matter how flawed that script is. Writers have different strengths and blindspots... you see in some writers room where their combined efforts add up to a much stronger product. Zootopia seemed to have a dozen different people chip in their ideas. And that was one of the better made films this year. I also liked how the Marvel team handled Captain America Civil War (they had a better Spiderman in that showstopping 15 minutes than any of the previous attempts).