PART 1 - The Tease | PART 2 - Lori Announces It | PART 3 - How This Screenplay Came To Be | PART 4 - The Fic is Posted | PART 5 - Continuity Questions | PART 6 - the Importance of Fanfic | PART 7 - Nichols Competition Reader Notes | PART 8 - Festival Results | PART 9 - I Got LaLaLanded | PART 10 - Cheeky Update | PART 11 - The Screenplay is Optioned
Hello friends! It’s time for another TO A STRANGER update.
Welcome to PART 12 - Gimmie
I last left the narrative with information that a film director had signed the rights for development on the screenplay, and that his company was working on pre-production in Toronto. That was in August of 2018.
It’s now April 2020, and with all film production halted due to the global pandemic and preventative lock-downs, what little the production company was able to do has ground to a stop.
After a conversation with several other filmmakers, and my agent, I came to the difficult but ultimately freeing decision to invoke the sunset clause on my contract with the director, and sever our ties. He’s a nice dude with some nice ideas, but clearly this thing wasn’t going to be happening under his company or we would have been much further along than “I’m talking to some people” after two years.
The screenplay, IP, and all the rights have been fully returned.
Which is good, because just after I decided to pull the plug on this relationship, my agent reached out with an offer to pitch some stories to a really big player in the media development game. This company is looking for some unpublished novels, short stories, and scripts to turn into audio books or audio dramas.
So, TO A STRANGER has been pitched to this company. Please keep your fingers crossed!
And there’s a big grant available to Canadian artists right now to help creators transfer their thwarted art into a digital format so the audience can still access it. It’s meant for folks whose plays were cancelled, or art shows were pushed back, or for people like me, whose films got shut down. The grant provides both money and mentorship, allowing artists to find ways to transform their in-person thing to a remotely-created-and-shareable-online thing.
I also pitched TO A STRANGER to the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) as an audio drama podcast (professionally performed and produced, of course).
So that’s where it’s all sitting now--just waiting to hear from either of these opportunities. (That’s the joy of being a professional writer... so much of your time is spent waiting to hear back.)
As always, thank you so everyone following along, and for your support and love. I look forward to the next update.
In the meantime, you can still read the fanfiction version here. And if you’re interested in me and what else I’ve written, you can find my novels here.
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EDIT: I did not get chosen for the grant (apparently they had EIGHT THOUSAND applications), but I’m still waiting to hear from the CBC Podcasting team about whether they’re interested in taking it and funding it from their own budget, as well as from the major media company.
