Why young screenwriters want to work on television series, not films
Long-form television can offer creative freedom, continuity and generous paychecks
By N.E.
THE emerging stars of European scriptwriting have been raised on a rich diet of “The Sopranos”, “The Wire” and “Breaking Bad”, so it is little surprise that more are striving to write for the small—rather than the silver—screen. In the past, the careers of David Chase, David Simon or Vince Gilligan seemed unattainable. But today, with more and more high quality television drama coming out of Europe, such as “Engrenages (“Spiral”) from France, “Deutschland 83” from Germany and “Gomorra” from Italy, the demand for young, creative and talented screenwriters is greater than ever.
The rise of long-form television series is twinned with a general decline in the film industries of many European countries. While there are exceptions, Italian films often struggle to do well overseas, and in France, fiscal difficulties mean that cinema is becoming increasingly mainstream in order to fill seats. Independent directors are finding new scope and creative freedom in television. Paolo Sorrentino, one of Italy’s most famous directors, will make his TV debut in the autumn with the HBO/Sky Italia production “The Young Pope”, starring Jude Law. In 2014, Arte, a French-German channel, recruited Bruno Dumont (an art-house director whose previous films include “Camille Claudel 1915”, starring Juliet Binoche) to make the series “P’tit Quinquin”, a black comedy about hooliganism in the coastal town of Boulogne.
Attitudes towards television are changing, too. The scriptwriting world used to consider the medium a poor relative of film and theatre. “I used to get film and theatre people coming up to me saying, ‘it’s so sweet you’re doing TV,’” says Abi Morgan, creator of “River”, a BBC drama that recently won best drama series at the Monte Carlo television festival. But now things have moved 180 degrees. “Film directors and producers approach me today and always say ‘we’d love to do a TV show,’” says Ms Morgan, who is also one of Britain’s most respected screenwriters for film (“Shame”, “The Iron Lady”, “Suffragette”).
Part of this shift is due to economics. Making long-form serialised television drama in Europe has become more profitable, and thus increasingly attractive, over recent years. Experienced and acclaimed writers—such as Matthew Weiner of “Mad Men”—can fetch around $2m-$3m for showrunning a series. A less well-known figure might earn $100,000, and a staff writer (the term given to an individual writer on the showrunner’s creative team) would earn a significant amount less. This figure is by no means uniform; in Germany, writers are paid an industry average of around €25,000-€30,000 per episode of scripted drama. In Poland it is generally far less. Across Europe, myriad different deals depend on how much a writer is involved with the development of an idea, if they are the producer, and whether they can negotiate a cut of the sales of foreign rights. “The money is probably not better than film—but there is more work,” believes Korbinian Hamberger, a freelance screenwriter whose first TV series “The Constable” has been optioned by Barry Films (the production company behind the film “Life”, which starred Robert Pattinson).
Indeed, the sale of foreign rights is particularly fruitful for breakout series such as “The Killing” and “Wallander”, which can be sold to territories all over the world. In many cases—such as “The Bridge”, “Broadchurch” and “The Killing”—remake rights are sold to America as well. The value of television is such that European countries are increasingly pooling their resources to create serialised drama with high production costs that can match the quality of an American series—an obvious example of this is “The Bridge”, which was financed by countries including Sweden, Denmark and Germany.
But for many screenwriters, the appeal of television lies not in money but in the creative freedom it allows. “I wanted to write for the TV before all the hype,” says Mr Hamberger. “Because you’ve got more time you can go way deeper with characters and live with them for years and years, whereas in a movie the relationship finishes after 90 minutes.” Some types of narratives lend themselves to serialisation. “You couldn’t do ‘Game of Thrones’ in a movie,” Mr Hamberger states. “You’d need three or four episodes just to know who’s who.”
Wiktor Piątkowski, a 33-year-old screenwriter who penned the pilot episode of HBO Europe’s “Wataha” (“The Border”), echoes this sentiment. In high-end television drama, “money is not the big issue”. It is about creative continuity; “in film, directors are gods. In serialised TV, because the seasons are so long, you normally have more than one director, so you need someone who can oversee the whole thing, control the story and characters arcs over many episodes. That’s the writer,” he says.
In a market where productions from all over the world are competing for viewers’ attention, it is the writer’s voice that can make or break a series. Those that have succeeded have achieved “pure creative freedom”, says Ms Morgan. For the auteur, the big screen has lost much of its glamour and allure. But in the world of television, the future has never been so bright.
