Phobia; The Beginning...

A few years back, a movie came out that was to be the next big thing. There was a story about a screenwriter that wrote a script and plotted out the next few movies in the saga. I liked the idea that you could actually plot out your movies and their character arcs. Not a totally original idea, but one that had never been laid out like this. The movie was a hit, and great, but the subsequent films never lived up to the hype. I wanted to take that idea to the next level and create a movie where the killer begat a killer who begat a killer. The idea gestated for quite a while. When Larry and I were developing script ideas, my story idea came back up. Collectively, we developed Phobia.

We took quite some time to research and gestate the idea and when we were ready, the first draft of the script was completed in four days. We made some edits based on our trusted readers' notes and worked on making the script better.

Flash forward a year or so, Larry and I were in a Reggae bar in Miami waiting to meet with an agent. We met and liked him. He had a long-term vision of what he wanted to create- his own studio. At the time he was a representative to some singers, soap opera actors and an HBO series' star who later appeared on Lost.

Over the next several months we spent quite a bit of time, and more money traveling from FL to CA to pitch our ideas (Phobia and others). We had quite a few companies that were interested in our script. In one week of pitching we had eight out of nine pitches end in requests for the script.

Our representative had little more to do than deliver the scripts that we had worked so hard to write and pitch. He decided that he would partner up and optioned our script himself. We didn't know better and let him. (HINT: Legally an agent can't be a producer.) He was able to get various "industry" people interested. He never wanted to go for any of the names that we wanted- but be he did get people that have been on various television shows.

Along the way we spent a year in development hell. (That will be subject of many future posts to come.) We did re-writes based on the asinine whims of those involved… The director wanted a classic car (that he could keep after filming) so we had to work it into the script- despite the fact that the whole script is set on a college campus with no cars needed. They wanted it "darker" but didn't have a clue how or what they wanted. More deaths. Done. More violence. Done. Less girl-on-girl action. Done. Our opening sequence became more like a Final Destination movie- than our original script.

We had become frustrated and disillusioned when we were finally told that a $10million budget had been set and financed and the pre-production crew was location scouting in New Orleans. Two days later we were told that the crew was being pulled out do to a hurricane. You may have heard of it… Hurricane Katrina.

After the devastation in New Orleans and surrounding areas, the cast and crew that had been on board started to head on to other projects. There was talk that the movie would be shot from places as far as Vancouver, Prague and even Florida. As the option date came closer to an end, we were told that a new deal was in the works that would have brought both Larry and I roughly double the WGA minimums and kept us on as producers.

While we would have liked the credit (and money), we were glad to be separated from the mess. We decided that we would not option Phobia again and that we would produce our own short film. When we began researching short films, we discovered a number of films that were produced in the hopes of expanding them to a feature. We decided to take a slightly different approach. Our first scene of the feature script would become the final scene of the short. That was just the beginning…

Don.