Franchises and Final Draft

John and Craig examine why almost all of the top-grossing movies are part of a franchise — and the chicken-or-egg question at the heart of it. You don’t get Minions without Despicable Me. We also look at the sale of Final Draft to an accounting software company and speculate wildly about the fate of the company and the state of screenwriting apps. Plus: follow-up on Zola, sleep paralysis and dead scripts. In the premium feed at Scriptnotes.net, you’ll find audio from John’s live panel with the WGA nominees, including Matt Charman, Drew Goddard, Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff, John McNamara, Phyllis Nagy, Charles Randolph and Adam McKay, Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy, and Aaron Sorkin. Links: Vanity Fair on the original Game of Thrones pilot @clmazin’s followers growth over the past two months Deadline on the 2016 WGA Beyond Words panel, which you can listen to now with a premium subscription at scriptnotes.net Grease Live on Fox Scriptnotes, 222: Live from Austin 2015, and Variety’s article on the upcoming Zola movie based on this Rolling Stone article Scriptnotes, 233: Ocean’s 77, and Dead Awake Regus Variety on the acquisition of Final Draft by Cast & Crew, and the official press release Highland, Slugline, Writer Duet, Movie Magic Screenwriter, Fade In, Amazon Storywriter, and a host of other apps for writing in Fountain John’s blog post on franchises all the way down Shut Up & Sit Down’s spoiler-free review of Pandemic Legacy The Katering Show, and the Craig-recommended third episode Outro by Sam Tahhan (send us yours!) You can download the episode here: AAC | mp3. UPDATE 2-14-16: The transcript of this episode can be found here.The post Franchises and Final Draft first appeared on John August.