WRITERS DIP INTO WELLS' CO-OP AT WARNER (VAR)

By Nancy Vialatte

In a new program designed to give writers gross participation and better control over their scripts, Warner Bros. based John Wells Prods. has created the Writers Co-Op with 19 screenwriters thus far attached.

Over the next four years, the Writers Co-Op will generate at least 18 scripts from writers who will risk their usually high upfront salaries for the reward of receiving first-dollar gross, the right to participate as producers and a guarantee they will not be rewritten without their consultation and approval. The scribes will also have a say in the decision making process from development all the way to post-production.

The new program was conceived by Wells, Nick Kazan and Tom Schulman. Co-Op writers will cut upfront fees by as much as 90% for a first draft and possibly up to two sets of revisions. When films get made, the scribes will receive their full standard fees and production bonuses.

In an era in which studios often run through development budgets months before the completion of a fiscal year, the Co-Op deal will give Warners a low-cost first crack at a minimum of four scripts per year by some of Hollywood's highest-paid writers. Over four years, WB will pay 10% of what conceivably would have cost the studio tens of millions of dollars in development costs to get at least 18 scripts.

The formula for the Writers Co-Op could help dispel the notion that the writer is replaceable. The key to success, though, will be follow-through and execution, says Variety.

This is the most ambitious attempt to leverage the clout of big-name writers into gross deals where others have not fared well. Several years ago, Columbia Pictures touted a program that would give gross participation to top-tier writers but it quietly died.

The Writers Co-Op could be different. Warner Bros. (or another studio if Warners doesn't embrace the project) will pay gross to the Co-Op that is comparable to that earned by high-end producers. Since the Co-Op will act as the film's producer, part of that percentage would be retained by the production company. The rest will go to the scribes, who will be motivated, under this arrangement, to write projects with high commercial upside. They'll only get paid their usual freight if a film gets made, but they stand to earn a windfall for gross paydays on big hits.

The Co-Op members currently include: Ron Bass ("Rain Man"), Henry Bean ("Internal Affairs"), David Benioff ("Troy"), Scott Frank ("Out of Sight"), Robert Nelson Jacobs ("Chocolat"), Kazan ("Reversal of Fortune"), Callie Khouri ("Thelma & Louise"), Richard LaGravanese ("The Fisher King"), Phil Alden Robinson ("Field of Dreams"), Bruce Joel Rubin ("Ghost"), Stephen Schiff ("The Deep End of the Ocean"), Schulman ("Dead Poets Society"), Ed Solomon ("Men in Black"), Dana Stevens ("For Love of the Game"), Robin Swicord ("Memoirs of a Geisha"), Michael Tolkin ("The Player"), Rafael Yglesias ("Fearless"), and the writing team of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel ("City Slickers").