Final Draft's Write On Podcast sits down with Blackberry writers Matt Johnson and Matthew Miller to talk about how they wrote this epic story of the rise and fall of the world's first portable email machine. 

Johnson and Miller loosely adapted the script from Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff's book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry. The film Blackberry is a bio-pic dramedy that follows the fictional story of the Blackberry creator Mike Lazaridis, played by Jay Baruchel and his main investor played by Glenn Howerton.

“Because we had the book, it was the blueprint for the movie. It has so many of the facts and details that we extrapolated and then sort of placed in the script," says Miller.

The production of the movie was a bit like the push to get Blackberry into the marketplace - there was a lot of hustle.  “The structure of the movie as it stands came from needing to reuse the same locations over, and over again,” says Johnson. 

We sat down to hear about this wild ride from true story to script to budgetary concerns and on-screen production. Click to hear more and listen to the podcast. 

“I just really encourage people to truly go to those darker places because the way forward in dealing with dark material is not to do some partial version of it. Go there so that it sparks a truth to people watching it because people want to be moved. People want to see their experiences reflected in a new way back at them. If you're drawn to it and it's meaningful to you, chances are it's going to be meaningful to others. Stick with it and be brave,” says writer/director Sean Durkin about exploring the darker side of human nature on film.

Durkin’s new film is The Iron Claw, starring Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White as brothers from the real-life wrestling family, the Von Erich Brothers, who are said to be cursed. Durkin talks about his childhood obsession with wrestling, using the structure of a Greek Tragedy to craft the screenplay and investigating American masculinity through the lens of this one Texas family.

Just a warning: This podcast discusses suicide as it relates to the characters in the film. If you or anyone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or is in crisis, please call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crises Lifeline.

To hear more about Durkin's journey of writing and directing The Iron Claw, click to listen to the podcast. 

The film Air was released in theaters back in April – right before the WGA Writer's Strike. It tells the story of how the iconic partnership between Nike shoes and basketball player Michael Jordan came to be way back in 1984. It’s one of those partnerships that really wasn’t supposed to happen, but when it did, it changed the world of sports marketing forever.

Directed by Ben Affleck, the script is written by Alex Convery and made the Blacklist in 2021. But just like the partnership between Nike and Michael Jordan, there are a million reasons why this film shouldn’t have happened but luckily, it did!

“If you are really passionate about an idea and believe in it, you should write it. Whether it seems practical or not because that’s typically going to produce your best work. And producing your best work is ultimately the goal, right?” says Convery.

Convery also says it’s important to be patient and persevere. “I came out from Chicago in 2010 and it took until 2023 to get a movie released. It can take a long, long, long time and that’s okay…there’s no finish lines. Just invest in the work itself. Surprise yourself on the page, have fun and make yourself laugh!”

For a deeper dive into Convery’s screenplay, listen to the podcast.

“I like having sympathy for the devil. And all of them are devilish!” says Emerald Fennell about her characters in the new film Saltburn.

Writer/director/actress Emerald Fennell dazzled us with 2020’s Promising Young Woman, for which she took home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Now she’s back with Saltburn, a shocking romantic tragedy (or triumph according to her!). On this episode of the podcast, I speak to Emerald in depth about crafting the screenplay for Saltburn and finding empathy for even the most devilish characters.

Just a note: there are spoilers in this interview which I feel are crucial to breaking down some of the most controversial scenes in the film, including the taboo “vampire scene” and the startling “bathtub scene.”

“That scene was never meant to be disgusting. It is a love scene. It’s an act of, not service quite, but of devotion. It’s a kind of prayer. I think the thing films often get wrong about sex is that it’s just two people rubbing up against each other, it’s penetration. But the really fascinating thing about sex and desire is that it’s much, much more complicated than that,” says Emerald Fennell.

Saltburn stars Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi and Rosemund Pike. It’s currently playing in theaters and streams on Amazon Prime Dec. 22.

“It really comes down to scene work. Do these characters pop? Is this fun to read? Is it fun to imagine what’s going to happen next? When you get to the end of that pilot do you want to find out what’s going to happen in the next episode? It’s all of that,” says Graham Yost, showrunner for Silo on AppleTV+.

You may not know the name Graham Yost, but you certainly know his TV shows: Justified, The Americans, Slow Horses, Sneaky Pete, From the Earth to the Moon, and Band of Brothers just to name a few – he also wrote the blockbuster film Speed in 1994.

On today’s episode, I chat with Graham about his show Silo on AppleTV+ which is a startling apocalyptic thriller that’s been renewed for a second season. It stars Rebecca Ferguson, David Oyelowo, Common and Tim Robbins. We talk about the lessons he learned making Speed, which show impacted his writing the most and if a new season of Justified – that includes Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), will be coming back to television.

Graham also shares his advice for emerging writers. “The big thing I say to writers who are starting out is, ‘What are you working on next?’ If they only have that one project, well, you need more. You need to find out what you’re good at. That’s the job. We’re paid to write,” he says.  

“We can’t make Lawrence of Arabia anymore – not that that’s not a good movie, but it’s kind of a thing of the past,” says screenwriter David Scarpa about writing the script for Napoleon.

Scarpa says both he and director Ridley Scott wanted to bring a freshness to the historical figure from our history books by, “Showing the more irreverent, dark, more psychologically motivated side of [Napoleon].”

In our conversation, we dig into writing the battle scenes at Toulon and Austerlitz and how to know when to stick to history and when to embellish scenes for dramatic effect.

We also talk about the complicated relationship between Napoleon and Josephine, played by Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby, respectively, in the film, and how the power dynamics shift through the movie.

And if you’re wondering why Josephine has short, spiky hair at the beginning of the film – Scarpa gives an explanation based on the shocking fashion trends of the time period that will make your blood run cold.     

David also gives his expert advice on tackling historical figures and finding the scintillating details that may have been lost to history.  “[Take] those little moments that tell a part of the story that you wouldn’t have otherwise known and then expand on those. Find things that are so small, they’re relatable on a human level,” says Scarpa.

“My cardinal rule – the rule that you cannot break is: don't be boring. Because you can have the perfect script that follows every screenplay formatting rule, but if you're boring, it doesn't matter. First and foremost, you’ve got to hook the reader,” says screenplay and short story writer Chris Hicks.

Hicks is the author of a short story called “I Am Not Alone,” that recently was the subject of a five-party bidding war that came down to Warner Bros. and Netflix, with Netflix proving the victor. Genre writer Misha Green (Lovecraft Country) is set to write the screenplay and Jessica Chastain is attached to star.

Hicks is part of a growing group of short story writers who are quickly making the jump from Reddit (r/NoSleep) to the big screen. But Hicks’s success didn’t come overnight. He talks about the long process, sometimes even years, it takes to perfect a short story. But it’s clear he understands the relationship between reader and writer better than most.

“You have a very limited window to grab somebody's attention. In the case of writing on Reddit, you have to have a clickbait title, something to entice somebody to click, ‘Oh, what is this?’

And then you've got a paragraph to set the hook…The internet is a vast place and people are fickle with their time, so you have to make it worthwhile for them to hang around,” says Hicks.

To go deeper into Hicks’s writing process and hear details of the bidding war, listen to our podcast.

“I don’t write sex scenes. I write character scenes and sometimes they’re having sex during their character scenes. It’s a beat about character,” says Tony McNamara.

Known for the TV show The Great on Hulu and 2018’s The Favourite, screenwriter Tony McNamara’s new film is Poor Things, staring Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe with a genius performance from Mark Ruffalo who’s already getting Best Supporting Actor buzz.

Adapted from the book Poor Things by Alasdair Gray, this film is part Frankenstein story, part fairytale and part coming-of-age story full of female sexual liberation! I chat with Tony about his ability to create fascinating female characters, sex without shame and the ways Poor Things is similar to this year’s blockbuster Barbie ­– both are wildly different takes on the theme of feminine identity.

“This is a great Frankenstein premise to wrap a story of a young woman entering the world completely naïve and also be a satire about the seeming need for human beings, men in particular, to control. It was about this woman having this adventure and creating herself while everyone around her is trying to control what that creation is,” says McNamara about his vision of the protagonist, Bella Baxter, played by an electric Emma Stone.

To go deeper into McNamara’s writing process, take a listen to the podcast. Poor Things is in theaters Dec. 8.

“I'm now at a place where I say to myself, ‘What haven't we seen?’ And then we take it to a place that’s completely, absolutely bonkers,” says writer Kirk Ward about his new show The Continental: From The World Of John Wick. “You take the audience down the road of a trope and then turn. That's the joy of collaboration and creativity for me.”

The Continental is a disco noire three-part miniseries that tells the origin story of The Continental Hotel from the famed John Wick universe. In my discussion with Ward and director Albert Hughes, we talk about creating The Continental Hotel as a character in the show, writing a totally unhinged role for Mel Gibson and depicting the High Table in the most unexpected way – even though they were told not to go there.  

“Chad [Stahelski, the director of the John Wick films] said, ‘Whatever you do, don't reveal the High Table. Do not come up with your own impression of what the High Table is.’ Well, I don't know what it is. So, we had to really lean into the mysterious elements of this show for that,” says Hughes.

To learn more secrets about The Continental, take a listen to the podcast. The three-part show is currently streaming on Peacock and is a must-see for every John Wick fan. 

“A lot of the scenes are [shot in] one take. The space that they hold, the amount of air that they let sit there before saying their next line. I mean it’s an incredible amount of tension and intimacy,” says screenwriter Samy Burch about her new film May December, which streams on Netflix December 1st.  

It sounds so simple and commonplace, but it's a lesson in not only great acting but also writing great subtext. Directed by Todd Haynes and starring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, May December is about Gracie (Moore), a middle-aged woman who seduced and later married a 13-year-old boy. Natalie Portman plays Elizabeth, an actress who gets to know Gracie so she can play her in an upcoming film. 

In my interview, Burch talks about taking inspiration from the real-life story, handling delicate material and finding the dark humor in this strange story of human folly. Samy also breaks down Elizabeth’s powerful monologue at the end of the film which is both hilarious and heartbreaking. 

“I think it's an intersection of a lot of things. I think it's the climax of Elizabeth's performance. I think we get the sense that it's she's never going to do better than this, she's never going to feel as confident.” 

To go deeper into the script, take a listen to the podcast. 

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters picks up the "monsterverse" story after the battle between Godzilla and the Titans and follows one family's journey to uncover secrets about their history linking them to Monarch. 

“Be sneaky and read every script that you can get your hands on. If you can work in a studio, read the original draft, read the revisions, see how the script got to the final script. That's what I was doing. I would use the opportunities of working in that system to learn,” says screenwriter Julian Breece on Final Draft’s Write On Podcast.

Julian, along with Dustin Lance Black, wrote Rustin, the new biopic about little-known civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, played exquisitely by actor Colman Domingo. Rustin, alongside Martin Luther King, helped make the 1963 March on Washington a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement, while dealing with racism and homophobia as an out gay Black man in the 1960s.

Julian shares his inspiration for writing the film, Bayard Rustin’s belief in non-violent civil disobedience and what it was like working with Ava DuVernay on the Netflix series When They See Us.

Julian also talks about sneaking his own scripts into the reading pile while he was working at Disney and other risks he took to help jumpstart his career. Take a listen to the podcast to see what you can learn from Justin’s journey.

Director Alexander Payne’s new film The Holdovers, is set in the 1970s and tells the story of a grumpy ancient history instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school who’s forced to remain on campus during the Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually, he forms an unlikely bond with one of the students, an oddball troublemaker (Dominic Sessa), and the school’s cafeteria lady (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), whose son was recently killed in Vietnam. 

We speak to screenwriter David Hemingson about getting a very unexpected call from Alexander Payne (which at first he thought was a prank!) asking him to write the screenplay after reading one of his original TV pilots. Hemingson talks about his journey to craft just the right characters for the story, how to make their arcs feel authentic and give them meaningful, emotional lives.  

“The movie is a love story. I wanted these people to fall in love and do right by each other. Different people, from very different backgrounds with different problems and histories but they find a way, almost impossibly, certainly improbably, to come together over this small period and fall in love with each other and kind of save each other. I want to believe that’s possible,” says Hemingson. 

He also talks about bringing his own personal experience to the story even when it’s emotionally challenging. 

“I need to get to the place where I am very heartbroken about what’s happening on the page and really feeling it. There’s an honesty to it,” he says. 

To go deeper into the screenplay, take a listen to the podcast. 

One year after saving the town of Angel Falls from a psychotic killer on Christmas Eve, Winnie Carruthers (Jane Widdop) can’t let the fear and guilt of the event go. Struggling to make sense if her life, she wishes she’d never been born – only to find herself in a nightmare parallel universe. The film is a mash up of the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life and Scream.

On this episode, I speak to screenwriter/producer Michael Kennedy about using a classic Christmas movie as inspiration for a slasher horror/comedy film. We also talk about the importance of queer representation in the horror genre.

“I wanted to give this a cornucopia of vastly different types of representation in the movie, but I also didn’t want for that to be what the movie is about. I wanted it to be just matter of fact. For me, if I can make a movie where seven of the characters are gay, then I should do that!” says Kennedy.

He went on to say that the quest for queer representation in Hollywood has been slow, but those who want to see it need to speak up. “It is satisfying as a producer to see that a lot of the change and stuff in this industry can happen if you just ask for it. Sometimes, you won’t be in the position to be able to do that and I really bided my time with that, so I’m really fortunate. It was great to not only ask for what I wanted but also get it,” he says.

For a deeper dive into the screenplay, take a listen to the podcast.

Season 3 of The Morning Show is now streaming on Apple TV+. With some of the most engaging actors working in television (Jennifer Anniston, Reese Witherspoon, Billy Crudup and Nicole Beharie), showrunner Charlotte Stoudt talks with us about some of the most shocking and groundbreaking scenes that are meant to blow your mind this season.

This dramaturge-turned-showrunner, Stoudt’s love of working with other writers is palpable. “The delight of sharing a story space with other writers is one of the great joys of this job. I never get tired of sitting across from a writer and having them say, ‘What if we did this?’ It’s like a Christmas present every day,” Stoudt says.  

Stoudt also gives her advice on what to include in a spec script, no matter what kind of writing job you’re up for. “The best writing samples give some insight and truth about what it means to be alive. That can take any form – comedy, sci-fi ­– I don’t think the genre matters if you’re able to put something of your most primal self on the page. There has to be something that’s alive inside of you, that hooks you and makes you go, ‘Who is this person telling this story?’”

To hear more about the challenges and delights of running The Morning Show, take a listen to the podcast.  

The new film Nyad tells the true story of athlete Diana Nyad (Annette Benning) who, at the age of 60 and with the help of her best friend and coach Bonnie (Jody Foster), commits to achieving her life-long dream: a 110-mile open ocean swim from Cuba to Florida. We talk to screenwriter Julia Cox about what it was like getting to know the real Diana Nyad, structuring the screenplay to create a satisfying sports movie and creating one of the most daunting physical antagonists on the page: the ocean. 

“I did think of the ocean as the mother of all antagonists and I tried to structure the screenplay so it didn’t feel too episodic, really focusing on a different obstacle with each attempt [to swim from Cuba to Florida]. In real life, there are sometimes two or three reasons why something happens or doesn’t happen, but in a screenplay, you have the impulse to distill it down and confront each obstacle with enough attention to make that feel tense and satisfying when she overcomes it,” Cox says.  

Cox also discusses how this story didn’t fit into typical sports movie tropes. 

“It's an unconventional sports movie in that she doesn’t have an opponent. We get a whiff of other people attempting to do the same thing and that creates some tension, but for the most part this is about one woman in the sea, supported by her team but competing against herself. So along with the ocean, her obstacle was often her own body and her own mind and when all these things were aligned, when she made peace about continuing to try, when the elements were working for her, that’s when she was able to make it.”

For a deeper dive into the screenplay, take a listen to the podcast. 

“Starting to write a project like this, we always begin with a set of very strong personal desires,” says Anatomy of a Fall writer/director Justine Triet, adding, “I’m quite reticent of scripts that are too clever or that clearly have the intension of disseminating things where information or the person disseminating information has the upper hand over my ability to navigate the narrative.”

The new film Anatomy of a Fall won the Palme d’Or at the recent Cannes Film Festival and could be called Anatomy of a Marriage – at least one that ends in a mysterious tragedy. Set in a remote village in the French Alps – perhaps reminiscent of the hotel in The Shining, frustrated writer Samuel (Samuel Theis), is found dead in the snow beneath his family’s chalet and his wife Sandra (Sandra Hüller), becomes the number one suspect in his suspicious death. In this shocking family drama that moves into a chaotic courtroom, the verdict comes down to the couple’s 11-year-old blind son’s gut-wrenching testimony.

Directed by Justine Triet from a script written by Triet and her own life-partner Arthur Harari, Triet talks about writing the film from an emotional place and not relying on structure or over-used devices like flashbacks to create a deeper sense of mystery.

This film is the best lesson on how to tell a character-driven murder mystery – while keeping the audience guessing – I’ve seen in a long time! Listen to the podcast to go deeper into how Triet crafted the story.

“I’m not happy with a script unless I can look through it and find at least five or six pages where there’s no dialogue – where the story tells itself through imagery,” says horror screenwriter Dennis Paoli. Feeling strongly that the screenwriter’s job is to help the director see their vision for the scenes and characters, he says that instead of writing shot-by-shot, he writes, “Visual by visual. I try to give the important visuals that are inherent in that scene that help tell the story.”

Famous for writing the cult-classic body-horror film Re-Animator from 1985, Paoli has a new film called Suitable Flesh starring Heather Graham and Barbara Crampton just in time for Halloween.

In Final Draft's Write On podcast we talk about the importance of a screenwriter embracing visual storytelling on the page and discuss the challenges of reinterpreting H.P. Lovecraft’s story The Thing on the Doorstep to create two bewitching female leads.

Listen to the podcast to hear more about Paoli’s long working partnership with the late Stuart Gordon (director of Re-Animator), making the “Miskatonic-verse” feel fresh and modern, and planting Easter eggs in the new movie. 

“The Fly was our biggest reference," first time feature writer/director Anna Zlokovic tells Final Draft's Write On podcast about her inspiration for her horror film Appendage. The spooky thriller is about a young fashion designer who sprouts a mysterious growth on her body that changes her life forever.  

We sat down with the exciting newcomer -- who was recently listed on IndieWire's 28 Rising Female Filmmakers to Watch in 2023 -- to discuss her inspiration for the film. "That movie just has such an amazing blend of tone where it's tragic and sincere in its tragedy," she said.

Listen to Final Draft's Write On podcast to hear more.

Appendage premieres on Hulu October 2.

Adult Swim’s animated sitcom Teenage Euthanasia is back for season 2.

Set in a futuristic Florida, the Fantasy family is back at it with comedy and unbearable suffering. The show’s cast includes Cheer’s alum Bebe Neuwirth. 

Final Draft sat down with the show’s co-creators Alissa Nutting and Alyson Levy - a rare female animation duo in a male dominated industry - to hear about what it’s like to work together, come up with ideas and write this hit show.

Teenage Euthanasia's final season premieres September 27 on Adult Swim. Listen to our podcast here. 

The new film Golda – starring a bewitching Helen Mirren as Golda Meir, the Iron Lady of Israel, was written and produced by Nicholas Martin. Martin is best known for writing the 2016 film Florence Foster Jenkins. With two amazing biopics about strong, defiant women, we talk about how to find the moment that defines a character and how to focus the story on a short period of time instead of a cradle-to-grave saga. For Florence Foster Jenkins, it’s her journey to Carnegie Hall and for Golda Meir, it’s the 18-day Yom Kippur War. To Martin’s surprise, that focus on the war turned the film Golda into a thriller. 

“The structure was dictated by the phases of the war,” says Martin. “So, it was really a thriller and a war film rather than a personal drama about a woman’s struggle to command a nation at war. That’s what gave it its thriller shape.” 

To pinpoint that moment, Martin turned to a quote from Winston Churchill. 

“He famously said at the beginning of the Second World War, when he became Prime Minister, ‘All of my mistakes have brought me to this point.’ … And then I thought I think this is the same for Golda… We’ve got such a thumping narrative of the Yom Kippur War, such a clear beginning, middle and end and she’s under so much pressure, I think if we cut away from this it would dilute the tension and it would be mixing genres in a way. So, it seems that just sticking to this one story which is complicated enough, let’s try and keep it simple, tell this one story well,” says Martin.   

Listen to this episode to find out more about Martin’s research process, how learning to use a spreadsheet upped Martin’s structure game, and hear why Meryl Streep threatened to never speak to Martin again while making Florence Foster Jenkins. 

The Apple TV+ series Physical, starring Rose Byrne, is set to launch its third and final season on August 2. Set in the idyllic but fragile beach paradise of sunny 1980s San Diego, Physcial is a half-hour dark comedy following Sheila Rubin (Rose Byrne) as she navigates her personal demons, most of which come in the form of noxious self-talk and an eating disorder.  

I talked with series creator and showrunner Annie Weisman about writing this highly personal show that explores the dark undercurrents of the feminine experience. “I think about things like beauty culture and diet culture and it’s easy to dismiss them as something women are locked in, are trapped in,” says Annie, “but in many ways, for a lot of women, that’s all the control they have is their appearance. One of the goals of the show is to show a woman who feels really trapped in that way, really torturing herself, and have her go on this journey of discovering a way – this opening a door – into a new way to be in her body, a new way to be in the world, and a sense of empowerment. But I wanted to be honest about the struggle of it, it’s not easy! It takes three seasons of this show for her to get somewhere!”  

We also discuss her beginnings as a playwright and her journey to making the transition from stage to television. “I didn’t necessarily know a lot about visual storytelling – that was what I had to learn,” says Annie. “My first television scripts were filled with dialogue, I didn’t really understand how the camera worked, I had characters entering and exiting in every scene. I had to learn about the way time works in television and film.”   

Annie also shares her advice for writing original TV pilots and using your own authentic voice. Take a listen. 

When one woman's business trip turns into a quest to find her family, things get super funny in the new comedy Joy Ride, a raunchy road trip movie with a global spin. The film stars Oscar-nominee Stephanie Hsu, Ashley Park, Sherry Cola and Sabrina Wu. 

Screenwriters Teresa Hsiao and Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, who wrote the movie with writer/director Adele Lim, sat down with Final Draft to talk about writing a passion project they never thought would get made. “We were just going to write this dumb thing together and it's going to be just for us and then all of a sudden people are like, oh, we like it we want to make it, we're like, right now?” Hsiao said.

The writers were thrilled, and they had worked together years before on the animated show Family Guy. “We were well versed in being collaborative and working together so when we started writing the spec it was very natural,” says Chevapravatdumrong.

Listen to Final Draft's Write On podcast to hear about the writing process, the laughs and making a movie they never thought would get made.

Joy Ride is out in theaters July 7.

The world out there is a brutal place. If you have a hankering for some of the rough justice you remember from old-school lawman Raylan Givens – you’re in luck. Justified: City Primeval is about to drop on FX starring the same Raylan (Timothy Olyphant), we all came to know and love in the six seasons of the hit-show Justified. His hair has more sliver streaks, partly due to age but also due to worrying about his precocious 15-year-old daughter Willa (played by Olyphant’s real-life daughter Vivian), in this thrilling 8-episode limited series.

I talked with showrunner Michael Dinner about evolving Elmore Leonard’s beloved lead character in this spinoff that’s set in the mean streets of Detroit, while staying true to the risk-taking Raylan who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty in the hollers of Kentucky. Now the father of a teenaged girl, Raylan’s priorities have shifted – so will he still reach for his gun with the same ease as before?

“In a way, this is the second chapter of his life,” says Dinner. “His first chapter is, ‘You can’t go home again.’ We pick him up 8 or 10 years later, he’s divorced, he has a daughter. I look at the work in these 8 episodes and it’s more adult and I feel he’s made another step – not the actor, but the character. So, I think it’s interesting to look at it with that kind of perspective, that it is a character who is further down the road.”

Dinner also shares his advice for creating characters who ignite conflict and push each other’s buttons in ways that help sustain a show over time and engage the audience in deeper ways. Also, I ask the question, who is Raylan Givens without Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), and if we might see Boyd Crowder anytime soon. Dinner’s answer may surprise you! Click to hear more from our podcast with Dinner about the new limited series Justified: City Primeval. Hear more in Final Draft's Write On podcast. 

Justified: City Primeval comes to FX on July 18.

With an excited fanbase and even more exciting plot twists, the drama/thriller series Cruel Summer is back for Season 2 on Freeform. Final Draft sat down with showrunner Elle Triedman to talk about murders, music from 1999 and the show's impressive ratings. (Season 1 was the most watched series in the Freeform's history!).  

This delicious show tackles teenage friendships, betrayals and characters with very big flaws. Triedman says one of her favorite parts of the show is all the room to play with morality. "Saints are boring. No one wants to write a saint, no actor wants to play a saint," she says.

Character flaws make things interesting, she says. And teenage life is about the bond you create with those around you. “It is that ride-or-die, it is the person where you call and you say I need you to help me... you know, bury a body and they say where should I meet you? That sort of crazy intense with all the highs and all the lows. And so, to build that friendship from ground zero and then blow it up,” she says. It's not only super fun to create, it's fun to watch. Click to hear more from our podcast with Triedman about the new season of Cruel Summer.

The surprise hit and breakout role for Jenna Ortega as the titular character in Netflix's spin off of the Addams Family, Wednesday, was just as exciting to create as it is to watch. "The writer's room started the first week of lockdown, so writing a Wednesday show during a global pandemic felt on brand," says creator Al Gough about writing the pilot before selling the show to Netflix. 

Final Draft's Write On Podcast sits down with Gough and his co-creators Miles Millar to hear about how they revitalized this character with a modern twist and brought back nostalgia with the return of Christina Ricci in the 8-episode series that follows Wednesday's life as she attends a boarding school for other teens with magical abilities. 

Wednesday is currently streaming on Netflix.

Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World tells the emotional journey of the world famous boxer from his poor upbringings in Texas to his rise to Heavyweight Champion of the World and then onto reinventing himself when it was time to look beyond the gloves.

Final Draft's podcast Write On sits down with writer/director George Tillman Jr. (Soul Food, The Hate U Give) to hear the inspiration behind this film. "Biopics are very complicated to do, so I just started falling in love with the idea of this journey that this man took from a young man to an older one," says Tillman Jr. on how he chose Foreman's story. "Everybody knows him as the grill guy, so we really showed how he became the pitchman that led to the grill you know." Listen to hear more about bringing this larger than life man to the big screen. 

Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World released in theaters April 28.

The story of how Daisy Jones & the Six went from book to TV show is a fascinating one. Scott Neustadter, best known for comedies like 500 Days of Summer and The Disaster Artist, was sent the unpublished manuscript about the rise of a rock band in Los Angeles in the 1970s, on a whim.

Little did he know it would become a bestseller. At the time, he had given the book to his wife, with whom he had never worked before. But she just so happened to be at Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine. They loved the book and his adaptation and the show was born. Now, Neustadter is the co-creator and co-showrunner of the Amazon show.

Final Draft’s podcast Write On sat down with Neustadter to hear about his process. “If you're going to write television– it's an important, huge undertaking so you have to have passion, you have to love the thing... It isn't something you can do on the side. It will become your whole life, so you better love it,” he said.

Daisy Jones & the Six is available on Amazon Prime.

Please note: this podcast was recorded prior to the WGA Strike.

Final Draft's Write On podcast series sits down with co-creator Rafael Casal on the second season of his half-hour comedy series Blindspotting. The show centers on Ashley, who lives in Oakland, Calif. When her partner (who is also the father of her son) is sent to prison, she must move in with her mother-in-law, played by Helen Hunt. “That’s a part of writing for actors. You know what they're capable of and so sometimes in the script you're not writing everything they do, but you're writing the window into them having the freedom to do what they do best,” Casal says about writing for actors.

He also discusses what he looks for in a writer when hiring to fill his room. “I don't want somebody who's just trying to color within the lines book, especially for a show like ours that is really non-traditional. I'm looking for people that are willing to kick out an idea and try something even if it only works 70% of the way but you took the swing,” he says.  

Blindspotting airs on STARZ.

Written by screenwriter Dana Stevens, The Woman King is a historical epic about an all-female warrior unit that protected the West African kingdom of Dahomey during the 17^th to the 19^th centuries. The film is set in the 1820s and stars Viola Davis who is tasked with training the next generation of young warriors.  Stevens chatted with Final Draft about discovering the “richness of the story” while writing the script. “I just could not believe that I did not know this story, that I had never heard of it,” Stevens said. “And the more I delved into it, just on my own… I mean, I was watching things on YouTube, like things in French, you know, I was just I was just blown away.”

When asked for advice to aspiring screenwriters trying to break into the industry or write a passion project such as The Woman King, Stevens had some inspiring words. “Go ahead and write. Write a lot. Have a few things you're working on. Have your personal project that you just love, that you think maybe no one will ever make, but also maybe have another project that's your, you know, more commercial thing,” she says. 

The Woman King is now available on a variety of streaming platforms.

Triangle of Sadness is a satirical black comedy from writer/director Ruben Ostlund. The film, staring Woody Harrelson, takes the world of luxury boating to the next level with its wry comedy that exposes many upstairs/downstairs differences among the characters. Ostlund discusses the importance of pitching his project before he starts writing. “If you are a writer or if you are a director, your profession is to be the artistically responsible for the product that you are producing. You are the one that is deciding what ideas should be put into this, what should taken be taken out,” he says.

The film won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. This was Ostlund’s second win at Cannes. He talked about how special it is to him to have had these successes. “I have been kind of lucky because every time that I have finished a previous film and we have had a premiere of the film in Cannes, there's a little table on a small cafe where I walk to with my producer and my mentor. Two of my best friends and we sit down and we talk about what is going to be the next project that we are working on. And so, it is kind of how to say astonishing that we have been on this little cafe and exactly the same table four times now and decided which next project is.”