Strong writing makes all the difference about whether a Hollywood show turns out like Game of Thrones or Pee-Wee Herman’s Big Adventure. That’s why Ron Howard and Brian Glazer’s Imagine Entertainment opened an incubator for writers called Imagine Impact.
The film and TV industries employ 2.6 million people in the U.S. alone, and those businesses generate $77 billion a year on wages. But there is no real LinkedIn for connecting talent.
So Imagine Impact, a division of the film production company that has had dozens of Oscar-nominated films, wants to create a pipeline of strong writers. It uses machine learning to sort through a flood of undiscovered talent to find the storytellers and scriptwriters with the best potential. Then, it puts the survivors through a boot camp so they can refine their scripts. And then the Hollywood directors and producers sift through an app to find the writers to staff their projects or find new scripts that could be the next gold mine.
You can think of it as a factory for entertainment writers. Entrepreneur and producer Tyler Mitchell, former executive vice president of motion pictures at Imagine Entertainment, started Imagine Impact by modeling it after Silicon Valley-style incubators in order to discover and nurture fresh creators who have unsold projects. And so far, of 44 graduates, roughly half have sold their projects.
“We are a content accelerator that was cofounded by myself with Ron Howard and Brian Grazer of Imagine entertainment,” Mitchell said in an interview with VentureBeat. “Our mission is to find, identify, and sign the most talented writers in the world. People who don’t have access to the entertainment industry. We want to democratize access.”
Big ambitions
Above: Imagine Impact’s Tyler Mitchell
Imagine Impact is an entertainment start-up whose mission is to cultivate and empower creative storytellers from around the world with an innovative and collaborative approach to content creation. Impact combines Imagine Entertainment’s decades of Hollywood experience with the principles of Y Combinator.
The hope is to create a new kind of entertainment industry accelerator program and marketplace that creates a frictionless and seamless way for studios/agents/screenwriters to identify, connect and sign creators and their compelling projects.
Vetting over 2,000 submissions per week, accompanied by seasoned veterans and advanced machine learning, Imagine Impact has created a results-oriented business solution, leveraging technology to identify talent and rapidly generate content at scale.
“The demand for content has been exploding over the last 10 years with the market cap of media companies going to nearly $4 trillion,” Mitchell said. “Spending on content will double over the next five years. But there are not enough great writers and the generators of the material to meet that demand. And so we took principles from Y Combinator and combined them with Ron and Brian’s 35 years of experience and knowledge to create a powerful system that leverages technology to identify talent at scale. Then we put them through a structured program to create their projects. And we bring them to the marketplace, both here in Hollywood and globally through this first of its kind mobile app marketplace.”
Scripts usually take years or months to come to fruition. But Imagine Impact tries to expedite the process by 50%, using a mobile app and partnering creators with “shapers,” established producers, writers and showrunners such as Doug Ellin (Entourage), Sascha Penn (Power; Creed II) and Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) to help bring story concept to market.
The sifting process
Above: Here’s how Imagine Impact gets a writer discovered.
Since its inception last year, 11,000 creators from 80-plus countries have applied and submitted their scripts. Only 40 final applicants were selected for Impact’s first two classes. These writers enrolled in an intensive 8-week bootcamp. The latest camp will culminate in a final pitch day on November 12, in front of top-tier studio executives and agents, with actionable next steps. Already, the program has resulted in 44 developed projects and 22 sold with major attachments to Netflix, Amblin and Village Roadshow, among others.
Mitchell himself is a successful maker, overseeing live-action projects including Fantasy Camp, starring Mark Wahlberg & LeBron James; The Girl Before, based on the bestselling novel; and reboots of Fear and Friday Night Lights.
Impact’s mobile app was crafted to enable busy people in Hollywood to browse through projects from new talent. The app presents a visually driven experience that highlights the information the decision makers need to know about a project — loglines, writer bios, writer and representation contact info, and more. The seekers can view video pitches that ensure the writer’s original voice, energy, and charisma are not lost in translation.
The producers and directors can instantly request and receive materials, whether it is a script, bible, or treatment. And they can sift through the candidates knowing that Imagine Impact has curated thousands of applications to find a handful worth pitching. Those who make it through do so because they have strong voices, Mitchell said.
“Our people are being hired by companies like Marvel, Netflix, and Amazon,” Mitchell said. “We’re proving our system works.”
Changing lives of writers
Above: Imagine Impact has changed the lives of scriptwriters.
They are turning up people like Justin Calen-Chenn, who was abandoned by his family as a teenager. He was homeless, and he turned to gangs and organized crime in Los Angeles to survive. After seeing his best friend decapitated (less than two years ago), Calen-Chenn knew he had to get out.
He decided to become a writer and applied to Impact and got in — his natural talent and raw, distinct voice leapt off the page. He wrote an original movie from scratch in eight weeks — an urban heist thriller based on elements of his life. Imagine bought it, he was signed at CAA and Grandview, and recently sold a new pitch to eOne.
Another graduate, Elizabeth Stamp, was a freelance journalist from West Virginia and wrote for online publications such as Buzzfeed and The Onion. She applied to Impact with an idea for a half-hour comedy series set in a post-apocalyptic doomsday bunker. She wrote the script and developed the series in eight weeks under the guidance of Saladin Patterson. And she got signed by CAA and Lit Entertainment Group, and attached Stampede Ventures to produce. They now have Barry Safchick and Michael Platt (Grace & Frankie) on board to show run and are taking the show to buyers.
There are a lot of stories like that from the incubator, which has been in formation and operating for about a year. Writers such as Malcolm Gladwell have come through to teach and mentor the classes.
Above: Imagine Impact has an app that lets producer sift through the talent.
“To integrate the best practices of the startup world into content creation, you need someone who can speak both languages and connect the two worlds. Tyler is incredibly passionate about storytelling and working with talent, but is also very entrepreneurial and business minded. We’re incredibly excited to have him leading this new venture,” said Grazer and Howard, in a statement.
Imagine Impact is a fully funded global content accelerator program that will operate in the U.S., Latin America, United Kingdom, Middle East and China. Imagine Impact makes money in a few ways. It owns a stake in every project that goes through the accelerator. And there are bonuses, like when a TV shows gets made. And the company gets a percentage of the profits as well.
Howard (the Happy Days star and filmmaker) and Grazer started Imagine Entertainment in 1986. They have more than 60 awards, including 43 Academy Award nominations.
Past productions include the Academy Award Best Picture winner A Beautiful Mind, as well as Grammy Award Best Film winner The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years.
Mitchell said the company has been approached by video game companies, but it hasn’t included video game writers in the incubator yet.
“Established writers like JJ Abrams get $500 million deals because there’s a belief there is a limited pool of talent out there,” Mitchell said. “We’re trying to expand that talent pool and we’ve created a system with machine learning that lets us go through 2,000 submissions per week. We want to scale that to about 5,000 per week.”
Author: Dean Takahashi
Source: Venturebeat
