Latest news with #screenwriting
The Independent
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
David Koepp is Hollywood's go-to scribe. He's back with a fresh start for 'Jurassic World Rebirth'
EXT JUNGLE NIGHT An eyeball, big, yellowish, distinctly inhuman, stares raptly between wooden slats, part of a large crate. The eye darts from side to side quickly, alert as hell. So begins David Koepp's script to 1993's 'Jurassic Park.' Like much of Koepp's writing, it's crisply terse and intensely visual. It doesn't tell the director (in this case Steven Spielberg) where to put the camera, but it nearly does. 'I asked Steven before we started: What are the limitations about what I can write?' Koepp recalls. 'CGI hadn't really been invented yet. He said: 'Only your imagination.'' Yet in the 32 years since penning the adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel, Koepp has established himself as one of Hollywood's top screenwriters not through the boundlessness of his imagination but by his expertise in limiting it. Koepp is the master of the 'bottle' movie — films hemmed in by a single location or condensed timed frame. From David Fincher's 'Panic Room' (2002) to Steven Soderbergh's 'Presence' (2025), he excels at corralling stories into uncluttered, headlong movie narratives. Koepp can write anything — as long as there are parameters. 'The great film scholar and historian David Bordwell and I were talking about that concept once and he said, 'Because the world is too big?' I said, 'That's it, exactly,'' Koepp says. 'The world is too big. If I can put the camera anywhere I want, if anybody on the entire planet can appear in this film, if it can last 130 years, how do I even begin? It makes me want to take a nap. "So I've always looked for bottles in which to put the delicious wine.' Reining in 'Jurassic World' By some measure, the world of 'Jurassic World' got too big. In the last entry, 2022's not particularly well received 'Jurassic World: Dominion,' the dinosaurs had spread across the planet. 'I don't know where else to go with that,' Koepp says. Koepp, a 62-year-old native of Pewaukee, Wisconsin, hadn't written a 'Jurassic' movie since the second one, 1997's 'The Lost World.' Back then, Brian De Palma, whom Koepp worked with on 'Carlito's Way' and 'Mission: Impossible,' took to calling him 'dinosaur boy.' Koepp soon after moved onto other challenges. But when Spielberg called him up a few years ago and asked, 'Do you have one more in you?' Koepp had one request: 'Can we start over?' 'Jurassic World Rebirth,' which opens in theaters July 2, is a fresh start for one of Hollywood's biggest multi-billion-dollar franchises. It's a new cast of characters (Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali and Jonathan Bailey co-star), a new director (Gareth Edwards) and a new storyline. But just as they were 32 years ago, the dinosaurs are again Koepp's to play with. 'The first page reassured me,' says Edwards. 'It said: 'Written by David Koepp.'' For many moviegoers, that opening credit has been a signal that what follows is likely to be smartly scripted, brightly paced and neatly situated. His script to Ron Howard's 1994 news drama 'The Paper' took place over 24 hours. 'Secret Window' (2004) was set in an upstate New York cabin. Even bigger scale films like 'War of the Worlds' favor the fate of one family over global calamity. 'I hear those ideas and I get excited. OK, now I'm constrained,' says Koepp. 'A structural or aesthetic constraint is like the Hayes Code. They had to come up with many other interesting ways to imply those people had sex, and that made for some really interesting storytelling.' The two Stevens Koepp's bottles can fit either summer spectacles or low-budget indies. 'Jurassic World Rebirth' is the third film penned by Koepp just this year, following a nifty pair of thrillers with Steven Soderbergh in 'Presence' and 'Black Bag.' 'Presence,' like 'Panic Room,' stays within a family home, and it's seen entirely from the perspective of a ghost. 'Black Bag' deliciously combines marital drama with spy movie, organized around a dinner party and a polygraph test. Those films completed a zippy trilogy with Soderbergh, beginning with 2022's blistering pandemic-set 'Kimi.' Much of Koepp's career, particularly recently, run through the two Stevens: Soderbergh and Spielberg. 'What they have in common is they both would have absolutely killed it in the 1940s,' Koepp says. 'In the studio system in the 1940s, if Jack Warner said 'I'm putting you on the Wally Beery wrestling picture.' Either one of them would have said, 'Great, here's what I'm going to do.' They both share that sensibility of: How do we get this done?" Spielberg and Koepp recently wrapped production on Spielberg's untitled new science fiction film, said to be especially meaningful to Spielberg. He gave a 50-page treatment to Koepp to turn into a script. "It's even more focused than I've ever seen him on a movie,' says Koepp. 'There would be times — we'd be in different time zones – I'd wake up and there were 35 texts, and this went on for about a year. He's as locked in on that movie as I've ever seen him, and he's a guy who locks in.' 'Your own ChatGPT' For 'Jurassic World Rebirth,' Koepp wanted to reorder the franchise. Inspired by Chuck Jones' 'commandments' for the Road Runner cartoons (the Road Runner only says 'meep meep"; all products are from the ACME Corporation, etc.), Koepp put down nine governing principles for the 'Jurassic' franchise. They included things like 'humor is oxygen' and that the dinosaurs are animals, not monsters. A key to 'Rebirth' was geographically herding the dinosaurs. In the new movie, they've clustered around the equator, drawn to the tropical environment. Like 'Jurassic Park,' the action takes place primarily on an island. Going into the project, Edwards was warned about his screenwriter's convictions. 'At the end of my meeting with Spielberg, he just smiled and said, 'That's great. If you think we were difficult, wait until you meet David Koepp,'' says Edwards, laughing. But Edwards and Koepp quickly bonded over similar tastes in movies, like the original 'King Kong,' a poster of which hangs in Koepp's office. On set, Edwards would sometimes find the need for 30 seconds of new dialogue. 'Within like a minute, I'd get this perfectly written 30 second interaction that was on theme, funny, had a reversal in it — perfect," says Edwards. 'It was like having your own ChatGPT but actually really good at writing.' 'Everyone's got a note' In the summer, especially, it's common to see a long list of names under the screenplay. Blockbuster-making is, increasingly, done by committee. The stakes are too high, the thinking goes, to leave it to one writer. But 'Jurassic World Rebirth' bears just Koepp's credit. 'There's an old saying: 'No one of us is as dumb as all of us,'' Koepp says. 'When you have eight or 10 people who have significant input into the script, the odds are stacked enormously against you. You're trying to please a lot of different people, and it often doesn't go well.' The only time that worked, in Koepp's experience, was Sam Raimi's 2002 'Spider-Man.' 'I was also hired and fired three times on that movie,' he says, "so maybe they knew what they were doing.' Koepp, though, prefers to — after research and outlining — let a movie topple out of his mind as rapidly as possible. 'I like to gun it out and clean up the mess later,' he says. But the string of 'Presence,' 'Black Bag' and 'Jurassic World Rebirth' may have tested even Koepp's prodigious output. The intense period of writing, which fell before, during and after the writers strike, he says, meant five months without a day off. 'I might have broke something,' he says, shaking his head. Still, the three films also show a veteran screenwriter working in high gear, judiciously meting out details and keeping dinosaurs, ghosts and spies hurtling forward. Anything like a perfect script — for Koepp, that's 'Rosemary's Baby' or 'Jaws' — remains elusive. But even when you come close, there are always critics. 'After the first 'Jurassic' movie, a fifth-grade class all wrote letters to me, which was very nice,' Koepp recalls. 'Then they wrote, 'PS, when you do the next one, don't have it take so long to get to the island.' Everyone's got a note!''
BBC News
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
West Midlands students' short films get red carpet premiere show
Aspiring young screenwriters across the West Midlands took part in a project aimed at giving students a "hands-on" experience in film students from Wolverhampton, Walsall and Solihull created short films that were showcased at a red carpet premiere event at Millennium Point on Tuesday. The students took part in a screenwriting masterclass before taking on production, filming and acting roles to produce an emotive film, a psychological thriller and a sci-fi Boughey, a City of Wolverhampton College student, said she was "thrilled" with her first assistant director role after being selected from her media course. The project also included students from Walsall Studio School and Solihull College and University Centre. "The creative sector is so important to the region because it's something everyone can get involved in – you don't need to be a genius," said Ms Boughey. "In the future, I'd love to work in the industry, whether it's in live television, as a director or assistant director or a producer - as long as I get to be bossy."The project was set up BBC Studios Drama Productions and West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) Careers Hub. 'Real experience for CV' BBC Studios Drama Productions produce shows such as EastEnders, Silent Witness, Father Brown, Shakespeare & Hathaway, Casualty and Pobol y Spruce, curriculum manager at the college, added: "We were delighted to give students the opportunity to work on real productions alongside experienced industry professionals."The project is a part of modern work experience, a pilot scheme being rolled out by The Careers & Enterprise Company, the national body for careers Kendall, student at Walsall Studio School, said the project provided her with real experience to put on her CV."Getting involved has made me think about my career in a different way - I was thinking of being a director but this project helped me learn about other job roles in the creative side of film production", she said. Mayor of the West Midlands Richard Parker, visited Millennium Point to watch the films and congratulate spoke of the importance of young people taking part in "practical and useful work experience"."The work of these aspiring young screenwriters is truly inspirational," Parker said. "This course's innovative approach to work experience gives young people a real-world taste of what it is like to work in the creative sector."This is how we can equip them with the skills and insight they need to secure meaningful work and enjoy fulfilling careers." Follow BBC Wolverhampton & Black Country on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
In The Age Of ChatGPT, Workers Want A Say On AI In The Workplace
Writers Guild of America Strike (Photo by). On May 2, 2023, six months after the launch of ChatGPT, screenwriters anxious about the use of AI in scriptwriting and development, kicked off what became the Writers Guild of America's second-longest strike, lasting 148 days. Since the emergence of generative AI and throughout the strike action, one question has been on everyone's mind: Is AI coming for our jobs? This piece tackles that very question and explores what happens when AI is brought up at the bargaining table, the concerns unions have, what protections they are asking for and securing, and how management can work with unions as a strategic partner. One thing is, however, crystal clear: as interest in and concerns about AI grow, workers around the world are not waiting for robust regulations to safeguard their interests; instead, they are actively raising the issue at the bargaining table. What are the Concerns About AI in the Workplace? ChatGPT and AI more generally clearly have several beneficial uses, but workers are concerned about their impact. Job displacement is a primary concern, and the WGA strike action, which touched on this, is a prominent example. Another concern unions have raised is that employers are often not transparent with employees about their use of AI. There have been instances where workers only learn about these AI tools at the bargaining table after submitting requests for information. Therefore, workers must pay attention to changes in their workplace to identify how AI use affects them, whether positively or negatively. Surveillance and monitoring have also emerged with the use of AI in algorithmic management. Some companies reportedly use AI to monitor employee communications and sentiment. Along with employees feeling the need to compete and keep pace with AI, this can lead to increased stress that affects workers' mental and physical health. Also, gig workers often report that they don't know how decisions are made or why they are assigned fewer tasks. They are monitored through tracking and delivery times and penalized for rejecting jobs. The ILO's platform economy report highlights this concern and informs ongoing discussions on a standard that will offer protections for platform workers. Algorithm bias and errors also raise concerns. For example, if a company implements an AI-driven performance evaluator to assess its call center agents, but the data on which the evaluator is trained involves call center agents who are predominantly white males, it could negatively score agents with different demographics—women and visible minorities—impacting their ratings, bonuses, and shift assignments. How Unions are Stepping in to Fill Governance Gaps Unions have observed that many workers feel intimidated by the technical nature of AI and are uneasy when discussing their concerns with their employers. Nonetheless, unions are taking matters into their own hands by ensuring that these concerns are addressed at the collective bargaining table. These discussions address a myriad of issues. For example, the Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas was able to negotiate a severance package requiring employers to pay $2,000 per year if an employee is laid off as a result of AI. Also, following multi-day discussions between the WGA and studio executives, a collective bargaining agreement was reached that, among other things, established guardrails for the use of generative AI, ensuring that writers retain control over their work and decisions regarding AI usage, and that AI supports human writers rather than replacing them. Ziff Davis Creators Guild has also ratified a collective bargaining agreement stating that there will be no layoffs or reductions in base pay due to generative AI. The agreement also provides for the formation of an AI subcommittee to evaluate AI use, and requires reasonable notice to the subcommittee before implementing AI. Most recently, in May 2025, the Communication Workers of America reached a tentative contract agreement for quality assurance testers at the video game studio ZeniMax Media (a Microsoft subsidiary). They have secured protections with ZeniMax committing to using AI solely to support employees and enhance productivity in a way that will not cause harm, as well as the right to appeal AI decisions to humans. 'Video games have been the revenue titan of the entire entertainment industry for years, and the workers who develop these games are too often exploited for their passion and creativity,' Jessee Leese, a QA tester at ZeniMax and member of the ZeniMax Workers United-CWA bargaining committee, said in a CWA press release. 'Organizing unions, bargaining for a contract, and speaking with one collective voice has allowed workers to take back the autonomy we all deserve.' Overall, trade unions involved in bargaining believe that AI significantly impacts the workplace. For them, the aim is not to hinder the use of AI, but to provide a voice for their members who want a seat at the table and an opportunity to work hand-in-hand with employers to ensure that AI use supports rather than harms employees. Research indicates that bargaining over AI is in its early stages but is continuously growing in relevance. UC Berkley is in the process of creating a technology bargaining inventory, 'a structured, searchable resource built to support organizers, negotiators, researchers, and other advocates,' says Lisa Kresge, lead researcher at UC Berkeley's Center for Labor Research and Education. The inventory will include over 500 collective bargaining agreements covering private and public-sector unions across different industries. Speaking on lessons from this research project, Kresge points out one interesting finding: 'Unions are negotiating around specific workplace technologies, rather than negotiating around technology in general.' She explains that historically, contracts included pre-adoption language in the event that an employer adopts technology or if it affects union rights. But that 'what we're seeing a lot more of now, is really very specific provisions around how employers can use specific technologies.' How Forward-Looking Leaders Can Engage Labor Unions as a Strategic Partner Given the increasing use of AI in the workplace and workers' and unions' interest in shaping how AI is used, management needs to consider AI as a collective bargaining issue. Here are five actions management can take to be equipped for this process: As AI tools proliferate and become embedded in business functions, and unions grow more vocal on the topic, companies can no longer afford to implement these tools unilaterally—they must partner with their workforce.
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Mark Peploe obituary
Mark Peploe, who has died aged 82, enjoyed his greatest success as a screenwriter with an Oscar for The Last Emperor (1987). It was shared with the director, Bernardo Bertolucci, who was also Peploe's brother-in-law, having married Mark's elder sister, Clare, in 1978. The project drew on the memoir of the final emperor of China, Puyi, from the Qing dynasty, who was crowned in 1908 aged just three. He was exiled after the Beijing coup of 1924 and appointed by Japan as puppet emperor of Manchukuo until the end of the second world war; in later years he worked as a gardener in the botanical gardens in Beijing. The challenges for the biopic were twofold: to combine epic sweep with telling interpersonal and psychological detail, and to get the script past the Chinese censors so as to access filming locations within the Forbidden City. The producer, Jeremy Thomas, recalled how Bertolucci and Peploe's judicious handiwork made negotiating with the Chinese authorities surprisingly easy: 'It was less difficult than working with the western studio system. [The censors] made only minor script notes and references to change some of the names, then the official stamps went on and the door opened, and we came in and set to work.' The results achieved a rare mix of scale and substance: David Thomson called The Last Emperor 'a true epic but with an alertness to feelings as small and humble as a grasshopper'. It won four Golden Globes (including best drama motion picture) and three Bafta awards (including best film) before scooping nine Oscars, including best picture and best director. Collecting his best adapted screenplay award, Peploe joked: 'It's a great honour and hugely encouraging to anybody else who wants to write impossible movies.' Two similarly ambitious though flawed projects with Bertolucci, the Paul Bowles adaptation The Sheltering Sky (1990) and the Tibetan lama drama Little Buddha (1993), fared less well. Peploe came highly recommended from an Italian film-maker of an earlier generation, Michelangelo Antonioni – who had a seven-year personal and professional relationship with Clare from the mid-1960s. He had enlisted Mark to write The Passenger (1975), his tale of a jaded journalist (Jack Nicholson) who co-opts a dead arms dealer's identity. That project had its roots in two earlier Peploe assignments: his short story Fatal Exit, and his screenplay for Technically Sweet, an Amazon-set adaptation of Italo Calvino's L'Avventura di un Fotografo that Antonioni intended to direct before mounting costs made the producer Carlo Ponti anxious. With the film theorist Peter Wollen, Antonioni and Peploe radically reworked the thematic core of these projects for The Passenger, planting one foot firmly in the bloody realities of the Chadian civil war of 1965-79 even as they pushed onwards towards rigorous philosophical investigation. 'Who we are is the central issue – and it turns out nobody knows who anyone is,' Peploe told Time Out on the film's release. '[Nicholson's protagonist] David Locke wants to change, wants to care, but he doesn't even know who he is trying to become.' Although Antonioni was frustrated by studio cuts, the finished film hooked viewers searching for meaning amid the moral miasma of the Watergate years; the critic Andrew Sarris suggested that 'it may turn out to be the definitive spiritual testament of our times'. Yet after inheriting the rights from MGM on winning an unrelated legal dispute, Nicholson withheld The Passenger from distribution until the mid-2000s. On its 2006 reissue, Peter Bradshaw called it 'a classic of a difficult and alienating kind, but one that really does shimmer in the mind like a remembered dream.' Born in Nairobi, in Kenya, Mark was one of three children of Clotilde (nee Brewster), a painter, and Willy Peploe, a gallerist and son of the Scottish colourist Samuel Peploe. Clare and Mark's younger sister was Cloe. Relocated first to Florence, later to Belgravia in central London, the siblings had an upbringing that was decidedly classical: Clotilde, the daughter of the painter Elisabeth von Hildebrand, insisted on having no art in the house that postdated Proust. Clare maintained she and her brother gravitated to film because 'it was one medium that [her parents] knew nothing about'. From Downside school in Somerset, Mark went to Magdalen College, Oxford, to study philosophy politics and economics. On graduation, he joined the Canadian producer and director Allan King as a researcher, working on films about arts figures for the BBC series Creative Persons (1968), although he grew frustrated with the documentary form: 'I thought that if you wrote the script, you would be able to control the movie more than I did.' He gained his first writing credit alongside Andrew Birkin on Jacques Demy's atypically realist adaptation of The Pied Piper (1972), featuring the singer Donovan in the title role; he was also a co-writer on the French veteran René Clément's final film La Babysitter (1975). Neither was a great success, but Peploe soon began directing his own work, earning a Bafta nomination for his 26-minute Samson and Delilah (1985), adapted, with the poet Frederick Siedel, from a DH Lawrence short story. Other writing included Clare's artworld romp High Season (1987), set on the Greek island of Rhodes. Yet nothing quite matched the impact of The Last Emperor. Of The Sheltering Sky, Roger Ebert sighed: 'I was left with the impression of my fingers closing on air.' Despite cameoing in the film, Bowles dismissed it, saying: 'The ending is idiotic and the rest is pretty bad.' The critics were tougher still on Little Buddha, circling around the casting of a kohl-eyed Keanu Reeves, though it fared better commercially. Peploe's feature directorial debut came with Afraid of the Dark (1991), an offbeam horror item about an 11-year-old voyeur (Ben Keyworth) peeping out at an adult world beset by a razor-wielding killer; drawing on Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell, it featured a memorably nasty scene involving a dog and a knitting needle. Yet his textured Joseph Conrad adaptation Victory (1996), starring Willem Dafoe and Irène Jacob, ran into distribution issues, prompting Trevor Johnston of Time Out to ask: 'What's so terrible about it that it was consigned to three years on the shelf?' In the new millennium, Peploe served as a script consultant on Clare's lively Marivaux adaptation The Triumph of Love (2001) and as a mentor for the Guided Light scheme, run for aspiring film-makers by the Brighton-based Lighthouse organisation. Certain scripts remained unfilmed, notably Heaven and Hell, a Bertolucci passion project on the murderous composer Carlo Gesualdo, active around 1600, and action-thriller The Crew, from an Antonioni story. Peploe continued to tour the globe, though now as a guest of international film festivals. Asked at the 2008 event in Estoril, Portugal, where he sourced his best ideas, Peploe ventured: 'In cafes, watching the world go by.' He was married to the costume designer Louise Stjernsward, and their daughter, Lola, made a documentary film, Grandmother's Footsteps (2023), about Peploe family life, starting from Clotilde. After the marriage ended in separation in 1997, he had a 20-year relationship with Gina Marcou. Cloe died in 2009 and Clare in 2021. He is survived by his partner of the last seven years, the historian Alina Payne, and Lola. Mark Alexis More Peploe, screenwriter and director, born 24 February 1943; died 18 June 2025
South China Morning Post
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Meet Sara Waisglass, who plays Maxine on Ginny & Georgia: she did her first commercials at 6, studied screenwriting, and gained recognition on the Disney Channel and in Canadian sitcom Degrassi
At just 26, Canadian actress Sara Waisglass already has a career that spans almost two decades. Appearing in commercials as a child, Waisglass starred in the beloved Canadian sitcom Degrassi before playing 16-year-old Maxine Baker on Netflix's hit dramedy, Ginny & Georgia Sara Waisglass as Max in Ginny & Georgia. Photo: @sarawais/Instagram With the show's third season premiering earlier this month, Waisglass' Max struggles with mental health and her friendship with Ginny – who was dating her twin brother Marcus – as the series' titular characters Ginny and Georgia navigate a murder trial and not one, but two expected pregnancies. Here's everything to know about Sara Waisglass. She starred in a Disney show Sara Waisglass promoting Coca-Cola Spiced in 2024. Photo: @sarawais/Instagram Advertisement Born in July 1998, Waisglass was booking commercials from the age of six, per Cosmopolitan. Her first role was in an episode of The Jane Show in 2007. In 2009, Waisglass landed the role of Jordy Cooper on the Disney Channel's Overruled!, in which she appeared for three years. After the show ended, the actress took a step back from acting before eventually returning to our screens with a role in Degrassi: The Next Generation. When she finished filming Degrassi, Waisglass studied screenwriting at York University in Toronto, and got the role of Max in her last year of school, per Cosmopolitan. She is 'half a nepo baby' Sara Waisglass (right) as Max and Antonia Gentry as Ginny in a scene from Ginny & Georgia. Photo: @sarawais/Instagram In her interview with Cosmopolitan this month, Waisglass revealed that her early career in commercials was thanks to her mother. 'I consider myself half a nepo baby , because my mum was a producer, and she still is for commercials. They're very different industries, but still, she was doing a Dove campaign and she needed real people and my mum was like, 'Well, you're shooting at my house; you might as well use my daughter.'' Waisglass explained that at the end of the shoot, the commercial's director was so impressed, he told Waisglass' mother that she should get her daughter an agent. She wants to make it to Hollywood
