Smokin’ Aces director Joe Carnahan is stuck between a rock and a hard place; George Clooney dropped out of his next movie, White Jazz. Since Clooney was the only name attached to the movie (Charlize Theron is only rumored, according to IMDB), chances are the movie will be put on the backburner by the studio. So he can either work to put White Jazz back on track, or move onto another project (in this case, Killing Pablo, based on a biographical book on drug kingpin Pablo Escobar).

How to decide? Easy: put both screenplays on your website and let everyone else choose for you.

This is what Carnahan had done on his own website. Unfortunately, the studios didn’t approve this move, so they had him take them off (but guess what, they’re still there! Click here for the White Jazz screenplay, and here for the Killing Pablo screenplay! Both required Adobe Acrobat, btw. Don’t forget to post your comments on the script on Joe’s blog!)

It’s understandable why the studios made Joe take down the scripts, technically the scripts are the studio’s property, not his. And of course they don’t want anyone knowing how the movie ends! But it’s still an interesting method of getting a movie made, to include audience feedback before the movie even exists. Maybe a modified method, involving a treatment or even just a pitch instead of the entire script, would satisfy both the director and the studios.

I myself have considered using a similar tactic; as an amateur moviemaker producing shorts on my own dime, I have to be selective about where I put my efforts, and then again about where I submit it to (festivals and such) once it’s finished (it costs a lot of money to submit to many festivals). I had 2 movie ideas that I thought I could produce concurrently and then based on how well they do on sites like Youtube, Myspace, etc., the better would be submitted to the festivals.

Posted on October 25th, 2007 by Enrique
Filed under: Opinion