Rogue One’s Gary Whitta Is Trying to Crack the Code of Original IP

This fall, from the author of Rogue One, The Book of Eli, and After Earth, a model new sci-fi journey is on the best way. Set in a future the place Earth has been conquered by large alien mechs, a younger girl finds a map that may maintain the important thing to saving humanity. Sounds cool, proper? Well, it’s known as Gundog however can’t see it in theaters. In reality, you’ll be able to’t “see” it, interval, which may be very a lot by design.

“At the beginning of my career, like almost 20 years ago, I would have written Gundog as a spec screenplay,” author Gary Whitta instructed io9 over video chat. “In the naive sense, I didn’t really understand at that point that big expensive original science fiction from not particularly well-established writers [are] a nonstarter…Even as established as I am in my career now, and I’ve got Star Wars on my resume and all this cool stuff, if I wrote that as a spec screenplay, I know exactly what’s going to happen. It’s going to go to every studio, maybe 15 or 20 different people are going to read it across the studios. They’re all going to pass. ‘Too expensive. It’s original.’ And six months of my life basically is wasted so 20 people can read a script and put it on a shelf. It’s heartbreaking. If I’m going to that amount of work into something. I want to know that it’s going to find an audience.”

So Whitta had an thought. After spending a while with comedian e-book author Mark Millar a couple of years again, he realized the person behind Kick-Ass and Kingsman had all of it found out. “He gets the creative satisfaction of writing the comic and getting it on the shelves the way that he wants it. But then the commercial satisfaction of it finding a much bigger audience through a movie or a TV adaptation,” Whitta stated. “So he kind of wins creatively and commercially, which I think is very, very smart.”

That’s why, in 2015, when Whitta had an unique thought he figured was method too bold to be made right into a film, he tried one thing else. “I had another idea for a spec screenplay I wanted to write called Abomination, which was this medieval horror thing,” he stated. “And again I knew no one was going to make it because it was medieval, it was a period piece, it was expensive. So I wrote it as a novel instead, and that did get published. It was much easier than the Sisyphean struggle of trying to push a movie uphill in Hollywood. And it found an audience and people liked it. And I consider that a win.”

It really turned a double win as a result of, as soon as individuals learn and preferred the e-book, guess what occurred? “People start [asking] ‘Are the screen rights to this available?’” Whitta stated. “I’m like, ‘Wait, where were you when this was a screenplay?’ But oh, now it’s a piece of underlying IP and that’s just the way that the business works.”

To his level, Whitta cites The Hunger Games as the proper instance of what he feels is the correct option to get a narrative on the market. “If Suzanne Collins had written The Hunger Games as a spec screenplay instead of as a novel, I guarantee you no one’s ever heard of The Hunger Games today,” he stated. “And that’s not just on the story at all. It’s just the reality of the market. No one makes that movie because it’s wacky and it’s a big swing. It’s like, what the hell is this? But because she wrote it as a book and millions of people bought the book, now Hollywood’s lining up because they know the audience is there.”

Which brings us again to Gundog. Whitta got here up with the idea in 2004 as a option to simply make a narrative about one thing he loves—mechs—however didn’t really write it till 2019-2020. “ I was sitting there for a while thinking, ‘What do I want to do with that?’ Like, do I want to send it to publishers? But I was thinking maybe this is the one where I just do it all myself just to see,” he stated. “No one else’s help. And, you know, maybe it means that it doesn’t find as big an audience, but I like the idea of just doing it all on my own terms.”

He didn’t do it on their lonesome although. Knowing that audiobooks are an important a part of the e-book market, he recruited a few of his well-known mates (similar to Shannon Woodward from Westworld and The Last Of Us Part II, and Journey and Assassin’s Creed composer Austin Wintory) to essentially make that piece of it shine. But, once more, Whitta had one more thought to search out much more of an viewers with out Hollywood’s gatekeeping: he made the audiobook into nine-hour-long episodes, which he’s been debuting one after the other dwell on Twitch, with dwell dialogue and a post-show Q&A, after which releasing as a story podcast. Like Mark Millar, he simply retains getting bites of that apple.

“These days, whether it be YouTube or Twitch or self-publishing on Kindle, whatever it may be, there are ways around the gatekeepers now,” he stated. “You don’t have to ask for anyone’s money or permission to get a story in front of an audience. So it’s been fun to get to experiment with trying to get directly to an audience and not having to worry about anyone getting in your way.”

Now, there’s one massive downside with this, which Whitta humbly acknowledges. He doesn’t make a residing writing unique novels or releasing them in audio codecs. Whitta’s day job, 90% of what he does by his personal estimation, is that of paid Hollywood screenwriter—a job that affords him the flexibility to dabble and experiment with these completely different types. And he’s totally conscious it’s a lucky place to be in as a result of not solely is he making nice cash, however he has a following, which not each author or creator has, and can also be an important a part of the equation.

“I remember talking to Andy Weir about The Martian years ago…because before that was even a book, he published that in chapters on his website and he had a little fan site,” Whitta recounted. “And I said ‘What was it about The Martian that made it blow up?’ He was like, ‘Honestly, to this day, I can’t tell you. I don’t know.’ But the one tip that he gave me was, [The Martian] wasn’t the first thing that he put on his website. He had other stories and built a little bit of an audience, which he called kindling. When you got enough kindling, and you finally have something that’s going to take off, there are enough people there that will go off and tell two or three of their friends and they tell their friends, but you’ve got to have that kindling to begin with.”

“And it’s a real shame because I feel like there are probably a million books on the Kindle Amazon Store that are really good, like the next Harry Potter is out there somewhere, right?” he continues. “The next Girl on the Train or next Hunger Games is out there, but they’re just sitting there with about a million other books because they don’t know how to get anyone to read them.”

Will audiences learn or hearken to or watch Whitta current Gundog? That’s nonetheless in progress. In the meantime, he has two lower-budget scripts he’s attempting to get on the market and continues to be attempting to make the film of his desires, The Last Starfighters, a sequel to the cult 1984 movie. Unfortunately, in the mean time, that movie is an ideal instance of all the things Whitta has been saying in regards to the Hollywood machine being so tough to navigate.

“We took it to Warner Brothers, they loved it, and they wanted to do it, but ever since then, we’ve just been stuck in contractual stuff,” he stated. “We’ve been trying to figure that out for a while now. So it’s still alive [but] right now I don’t think there’s that much happening with it.” While we wait although, there’s one other world of heroes, villains, aliens, and science fiction followers can get pleasure from from the thoughts of Gary Whitta: Gundog. And you’ll be able to get pleasure from it nonetheless you see match.

Gundog is at the moment accessible to hearken to on Whitta’s Twitch in addition to his YouTube. The podcast is coming very quickly, so go ahead and subscribe now. The e-book model is coming quickly too.

Want extra io9 information? Check out when to count on the newest Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on movie and TV, and all the things it is advisable to find out about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.