Whether we like it or not, a huge part of being in the industry is being in a business—if you're a screenwriter, you're selling your ideas, and producers hope to turn a profit if they invest in your project. You need to know what audiences want and how much money you can potentially make. So we can learn quite a bit from examining which screenwriters have been the most successful.
We'll acknowledge that a lot of this has to do with volume, and volume is often tied to franchises, as we'll see. That might not be everyone's dream, but these screenwriters still have a lot to say about what works for them.
And while writer-directors like Christopher Nolan, James Cameron, and Andrew Stanton have generated billions through their dual roles, this list focuses on pure screenwriting contributions.
Fran Walsh
The co-writer of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies helped bring Middle-earth to life with her husband, Peter Jackson, and collaborator Philippa Boyens. Walsh's journey from Wellington punk rocker to Academy Award winner is the dream for many of us. Heck, she won three Oscars for The Return of the King alone (Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Song). She sits at about $6.6 billion in terms of box office.
Walsh is famously evasive, choosing not to do a ton of press or be photographed. In 2012, The New York Times interviewed her for The Hobbit, where she discussed her process. One thing she typically does is overwrite, then cut back.
“We tend to write our way into a scene and write our way out,” she said. Jackson “will then revise us. And he always makes it shorter.”
Don't be afraid to bulk up your scenes, as long as you have a merciless editor who will find what to cut.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring New Line Cinema
Chris Morgan
The Fast & Furious franchise architect transformed a simple street racing concept into a global action empire spanning more than two decades. Morgan wrote six consecutive Fast films for a total of $6.78 billion. As much as this series is focused on action sequences and heists, Morgan knows that's not the thing that matters most. Character development is.
"We don’t go on the journey just for the stunts," Morgan said in a Creative Screenwriting interview. "We need to see those characters overcome a personal obstacle. Believe me, I’m the biggest stunt junkie in the world, but as much as I love creative action, those movies don’t mean anything unless they resonate with you on a character level."
If you're feeling stuck in your writing, go back to the characters and the relationships. Let them ground you and give your story direction.
David Koepp
David Koepp is one of my favorite screenwriters. He's behind hits like Death Becomes Her, Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, and Spider-Man. He's mastered every genre from horror to action to comedy. He's also become Steven Soderbergh's go-to guy as of late. He's netted about $7.4 billion in box-office returns.
Fun fact, I recently spoke with Koepp over at Final Draft and got a ton of great screenwriting advice from him. But one thing stuck out to me as we discussed structure.
" Outline," he said. "I think most people who want to have 20 pages of a movie in them, and they could sit down and write it, and it might not be bad. And if you don’t have an outline, that’s exactly where it will die."
Remember, you need to know where your story is going; otherwise, you'll get lost or give up.
The Avengers Credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Steve Kloves
Steve Kloves is most famous for writing seven of the eight Harry Potter films, working closely with J.K. Rowling to bring the wizarding world to life. That has landed him about $7.9 billion at the box office.
Kloves has a unique approach to research—he does it late.
He told Filmmaker Magazine, “I read this quote by Mona Simpson once where someone asked her if she believed in research, and she said, ‘Deeply. But I believe in doing it after the first draft.’ That’s what it was like on Baker Boys … on this one, I wrote the first draft just based on what I knew and could imagine from spending time in hotels and things like that. Then I went off and did the research and discovered that most of the time I was accurate, though sometimes things were stranger than I had thought.”
This will depend on your preference, obviously. I don’t think I could wing it on a first draft, and research is important to my brainstorming process. But if you’ve tried this, let us know how it worked for you.
Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely
The writing duo behind Marvel's biggest hits—including Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame—holds the record for highest-grossing screenwriters. The movies they wrote together have grossed a lifetime combined total of approximately $9.36 billion at the global box office.
Their advice, much like Koepp told me, is to break things down as you write. They said as much at San Diego Comic Con in 2019 (via Screencraft).
"You cannot push the whole thing forward all at once. You’re going to push this sequence forward; this character forward. They’ll get good, but the ones you haven’t done yet will still be bad. You can’t allow that to undermine your confidence in the whole thing ... you just have to go back and push that forward.”
If you're a writer, keep on pushing.
