003 - How To Sell A TV Show

Michael Jamin and Phil Hudson explain why this popular question is not the right question to ask, and what you should be doing instead. Learn things you can do today to make breaking into Hollywood easier.Show Noteshttps://michaeljamin.com/course - Michael Jamin's Online Screenwriting Course.https://michaeljamin.com/free - Free Screenwriting Lessonhttps://www.imdb.com/name/nm0588005/ - Bruce Miller's IMDB ( Showrunner of The Handmaids Tale)https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/6/7/15736998/margaret-atwood-bruce-miller-handmaids-tale - Bruce Miller and Margaret Atwood discuss adapting The Handmaid's Tale for TV.https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/ - Person of Interest, Jonah Nolan's TV Show Phil couldn't remember.https://www.wgfoundation.org/ - The Writer's Guild Foundation Official WebsiteMichael: (00:00)So today's episode, welcome everyone. We're talking about selling a TV show. And before we begin, I'm going to start with a little story that I think might help everyone understand, uh, selling a TV show. So imagine, imagine Phil that we are, uh, we have a business venture and this venture is going to cost us around maybe 10 or $20 million. But we stand to make, uh, from this hundreds of millions of dollars, but what we need to do to make all this money, we got to get a pilot and we gotta get, uh, a plane, someone who's going to track who will fly us all around the world. Cause this is an international thing. We gotta, we need to fly all across the world. All right. So we've we found this guy on the internet and his, according to the pictures, the plane looks really nice.Michael: (01:41)It looks pretty good. Right? We go check it out. Me and you, we check it out and, and uh, we go inside the plane. It's really, it looks great. It's got wings, it's got nice furniture. It's set up. It's because it looks like it's the right size for us. And then we talked to the pilot because we need the pilot with the plane and we say, Hey man, this is a really nice plane. You, you got here. And he says, yeah, I built it myself. And we're like, that's pretty impressive. You built this all by yourself. Good for you. And then we asked, so, um, you know, how long have you, have you been a pilot? And then he says, well, I have never been a pilot before. Really? Now you just built this. He just, he's a, been a fan of planes for a long, long time.Michael: (02:19)He likes going to the airport, he watches the planes land and take off really. Okay. So, but uh, like what else do you know much about, please know, I've never actually been inside of a plane, never flown in a plane at all. And we're like, oh, okay, well, we're kind of looking for someone with experience because this business venture, we got to fly all across the world. The airports, some are gonna be big. Some are gonna be small. We're gonna fly at night. It could be bad weather. It could be tricky airports. And we're kind of looking for someone with experience to fly this plane for us. Cause it's a big business venture. And this guy is like, yeah, well, I don't need any of that. I built this plane. And even though I'm not a pilot, never flown a plane, uh, you should still hire me and my plane because look how beautiful it looks. So what'd you say fell. Should we make cut a deal with this guy? Or keep moving? Yeah.Phil: (03:02)Pass hard pass. That's a hardMichael: (03:04)Pass. Okay. So let's just swap the word airline pilot for a television pilot. Yeah. It's the same thing. Right? So a lot of people say, well, how do I sell my pilot? And that the truth is like, well, you don't because a network is going to want someone with experience because there's all sorts of troubles that come up when you're making a TV show. And uh, and you need an experienced pilot at the, at the helm to troubleshoot because I, you know, and that's what they're paying. They're, they're trying to protect their investment at this point. They're not trying to, um, cheap out and get someone, some DIY guy. Right.Phil: (03:41)Would you, if you stand to make that much of a return on an investment, uh, yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna S you're gonna pay the price. You need to, to close that deal.Michael: (03:51)Right. Right. And they're not really, so the network, I guess, like in the old days, it was a little different. When I say the old days, like before streaming, the network was really, they really wanted to get, when you sell a pilot, they weren't really buying the pilot. They were buying the hopes of a hundred episodes for, they could make all that money. And now with streaming, it's like, like Netflix, they really hope to do that. Their business model is different. So they'll try to do maybe three seasons of like 12 episodes each, but they still want consistently good episodes. They still in that. And that's why they are, they're paying, you know, who are they going to? If they're going to buy a pilot, who are they going to buy it from? They're going to buy either from me or the guy who been ...

Bluebird- ok, I get that.

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