Lets talk about money

This is a tricky one to tackle. Not because everyone’s embarrassed to talk about how much they earn, but because there are no fixed prices in this game, and incomes can vary wildly.

Hollywood is a free market, and a highly efficient one. Writers for hire will earn what the industry dictates they’re worth. At different points in my career I’ve been paid six figures for a single step, and $10,000 for the twice that amount of work.

It's all the more pronounced with scripts. They are individual assets, separate from their author. They have an inherent value all of their own. How that value is determined is something of an ever-shifting dark art. And attaching talent only complicates things.

A script is suddenly worth exponentially more money if it’s packaged with Brad Pitt to star and Joseph Kosinski to direct.

So trying to predict exactly how much any script might earn you is a fool’s errand. But let me try and draw some sort of useful intel out of the smoke by discussing payment structures.

To start, have a look at the current WGA “schedule of minimums” - AKA the minimum amount you can legally be paid for any particular job, step, or sale as a member of the Writers’ Guild of America.

(That last part is crucial. If you’re working with a company that isn’t a WGA signatory, there is no lower limit to what you can be paid. It’s the Wild West.)

These minimum figures are known as “scale”. The general idea is to always earn more than scale.

Early career writers will often score what’s known as “scale +10”. Meaning the minimum amount plus an extra 10%. During negotiations, your agents should be using any leverage they can to bump up your fees. And typically there’s a back-and-forth between the production company’s BA (Business Affairs) department, and your reps.

This link breaks down what writers are getting paid in real terms to give you an idea of how things shake out in practice.

The numbers look very different to the WGA’s minimums - in part because of new guarantees the WGA won after the strike.

So if you’re lucky enough to land a paying gig with a WGA signatory, those figures can seem pretty good. Some of them do indeed look like big numbers.

But they tend to get smaller - pretty quickly.

First, you have to pay your reps. This could be your agent as well as a manager or a lawyer. Or all three.

I have a UK agent as well as a US agent and manager. At some point they all huddled and agreed to take 7.5% apiece, so 21.5% gets lopped off any fee coming my way before I even get to see it.

If you have a writing partner, you can also go ahead and cut everything in half because you’ll be splitting one fee down the middle.

Then you have to put aside tax on what’s left. I’m sure you know your own tax rate, but that could be anything from 20-50%.

What remains is all yours, but don’t expect it to all land in your bank account one blessed day. Because it’ll inevitably be broken into instalments.

These instalments will change depending on the specifics of your contract (which can take anything from 3-12 months to negotiate, so budget for that time lag as well).

Structurally, your payment schedule will look like this:

The sale price: the price a buyer is willing to pay in order to own the rights outright.

A rewrite: a spec deal will offer you first refusal on a paid rewrite of the script you’ve just sold. In fact as of the last negotiating round, I believe this is baked into every contract.

Further rewrites: if that process goes well, and they don’t fire you, they’ll pay you for more rewrites or a polish on the script.

This is all the money you’re guaranteed and, honestly, can reasonably expect from any feature film project.

However, if you happen to have written one of the roughly 0.1% of scripts that make it into production, you’ve got more good stuff coming your way.

Credit bonus: If you’re the sole writer, you’ll get 100% of this lump sum once the film is greenlit. If you share writing credit, you’ll share the bonus accordingly.

Production bonus: Generally between 1-3% of the production budget (minus what you’ve already been paid). This arrives as a lump sum on the first day of shooting (principle photography).

Expenses: If you’re invited to the set you’ll get travel, accommodation, and a daily stipend known as a “Per Diem” all covered by the production.

Performance bonuses and royalties: In the increasingly rare scenario your film makes it onto cinema screens, you may well unlock some box-office-performance-based bonuses.

You’re also entitled to a small percentage of the film’s net profits. But considering the Harry Potter franchise famously didn’t turn a profit, I wouldn’t count on that gravy train.

When the film moves off cinema screens and onto various other screens, you’ll start receiving a teeny tiny portion of every dollar it makes in the form of royalties and residuals collected on your behalf by the WGA.

This used to be a meaningful source of regular income for produced screenwriters. In fact, residuals were a necessary contingent of any writer’s income due to the feast-and-famine nature of the work.

But streamers don’t pay royalties. So now during the famine part of the feast-and-famine cycle, you just…well, you just go hungry.

And I definitely should write an article soon on exactly what else those cool tech bros have wrought upon our beloved industry.

These tend to be broken down into steps, depending on how many swings at the script you’re guaranteed to be paid for.

A one-step deal equates to a single draft of the script. A two-step deal adds a rewrite, and a three-step deal adds a polish.

Each step will typically be broken down into three instalments:

Commencement: or signature, is the amount you’re owed as soon as you sign the contract.

Delivery: is payable when you first send over your completed draft.

Acceptance: is due when they officially accept your completed draft.

But surely acceptance comes a mere email reply after delivery? Alas no. Because what is routinely expected - what’s baked into the very process of script development, but is NEVER written into the contract - is what’s known as the “producer pass”.

Put very simply (one day I’ll write an article on the nuts and bolts of the development process), a producer’s pass is a chance for the producer to give notes on your draft and solicit an unpaid rewrite before officially handing it over to the studio.

And it’s rarely just one round of notes. It’s common to do multiple producer passes before said producers deem the script ready to officially accept. This process can take months.

If that sounds very, very not cool…well we’re focusing on money today. I promise I’ll get round to my scorched-earth take on development at a later date.

Once you’ve been paid your “acceptance” instalment, you’ve officially closed out the step. If you’re on a one-step deal, you’ve also closed out your contract and you’ll need to be re-hired on the same script to continue working on it.

If you were fortunate enough to land a two-step deal, the whole merry-go-round starts again.

These are even gnarlier to pin down than film, because the differential between success, failure, and mediocrity is mind-bogglingly vast.

A successful show can sell around the world, run for multiple seasons, license its format, and resell its library. That’s not to mention merch, live shows, and spinoffs. Case in point being South Park, whose two creators are comfortably billionaires. That’s with a B.

Another famous example is Jerry Seinfeld, who is a fellow member of the triple comma club thanks largely to his iconic sitcom Seinfeld.

On the other hand a one-and-done season of television on a minor streamer might bring in a solid salary for the time it takes to make and broadcast, but little more than that.

And that’s if your script actually gets picked up to series. If anything those odds are narrower than in film.

With all that in mind, it’ll all shake out something like this:

Option: Likelihood is your script will get optioned for development before it’s reworked and sold to a broadcaster.

Essentially a production company is leasing the rights to your script for a period of time, usually 12-24 months, in the hope of convincing someone else to buy it lock, stock and barrel.

The option fee could be anything from $0, a “handshake” or “shopping” agreement, to $10,000 or more. Several thousand dollars is common. But I have a feeling $0 is getting commoner…

The sale price: Pilot scripts rarely create the same kind of furore as feature scripts, and so the sale price will cleave fairly closely to your own personal “quote” (being the value placed on you by the industry that I mentioned at the top of the article).

But to give you some sense of numbers, I sold a pilot to FX for $60,000 with very little in the way of leverage on my part. This was several years ago.

Rewrite: Much rewriting in TV development is done entirely pro bono, out of the goodness of your own heart. But if you get in with the right studio or streamer, or if you land a buyer, they may well pay you for a rewrite. Possibly as much as 60-70% of your sale price.

Second script: Increasingly, a buyer might commission a second episode from you before fully committing to a greenlight. This will be priced at your episodic “quote” - probably what they paid for the pilot script.

And if your script goes no further than this, you’ll never see another cent from that particular adventure.

If however your script gets a greenlight and is picked up to series (congratulations); you can expect the following:

Episode fees: For every episode you personally write, you’ll get your episodic quote. If you co-write an episode, you’ll get half your quote.

EP fees: As the creator of the show, you’re likely to land an executive producer credit. This comes with its own fees, usually a few thousand dollars per episode.

Writers’ room fees: If you put together a writers room (where a group of writers work together to map out and write the series), you’ll be paid for the time you spend in the office, like a working stiff. This is usually structured as a day rate and tends to be pegged to your quote.

Production bonus: For every one of your written scripts that goes in front of cameras, you’ll receive a production bonus equal to 100% of your episodic quote.

Per Diems: Again, on a film set you’ll get a stipend to cover any incidental costs you incur. If you’re the creator of a show, you’ll spend much more time on set than if you’d written a feature. That being the case, Per Diems might be baked into your contract fees but expenses will always be covered by the production.

Territory sales: In some cases your finished season of television can be sold to different regions around the world.

Licensing rights: If different channels or outlets want to broadcast your show after its initial run, they have to lease the rights. And you get a little piece of that.

Royalties: Did you create Heil Honey I’m Home? You’ll be lucky to get pocket change. Did you create ER? Then you are John Wells and you’re extraordinarily rich. Congratulations, John.

There are a hundred other ways to get paid as a screenwriter. Staff writing gigs; punch-up rooms; treatments & outlines; variety shows; overall and first-look deals; even unscripted, game shows and structured reality shows need writers. Too many to cover here.

The reality is that screenwriter compensation exists on an exponential curve. At a certain level of success, you default to becoming a producer, an equity shareholder, perhaps even a business owner. Your income compounds accordingly.

Before then, you’re essentially a hired hand, an artisan. A cabinet-maker. It’s not a bad life - so long as people keep wanting cabinets.

Until next Tuesday, go sharpen your tools and get after it.

Thanks for reading,

Rob