Movies in Development

Producers select story and/or acquire rights to underlying intellectual property (e.g. adaptation, remake, video game, etc.) and work with screenwriter(s) to craft a story outline into a workable script in an effort to garner a “greenlight” for the film from the financing studio and/or production company. An agreement for a major star or director to join the film can boost a project's prospects of securing financing, but those arrangements can reverse if scheduling and other details do not work. Films in this stage can languish for months, years, or fall apart completely. <br/><br/> Known as "development hell"-industry jargon for a film, screenplay, idea, etc. that remains in development for years, often bouncing between different studios and cycling through different scripts, writers, and directors, without actually 2 making it to production.