Update from Brandon Barker

In late 2014, we launched our very first Get Repped Now! It was a new kind of promotion — unlike a contest, there are no winners, no prizes, and you don’t compete against other writers. The concept was simple: send in your script for coverage, and if it scores a ‘consider’ (or higher for script — roughly 5% of submissions — we’d pass along your script to our panel of managers, who guaranteed to read it. If you didn’t score a consider, then you got 10-15 pages of detailed notes from our team telling you how to make your script better.

Right out of the gate, scribe Brandon Barker hit a grand slam. His script “Nottingham and Hood,” — in a nutshell, “Midnight Run” in Sherwood Forest — was selected as one of five considers, and it promptly caught the eye of several of the managers. But it was Benderspink’s Jake Wagner who moved like an arrow launched from Robin’s own bow, signing Barker and sending the script out PDQ. Within three weeks of us getting Wagner the script, he’d sold the script to Disney (although we couldn’t announce it until about a month later.) 

Brandon Barker, deep within Sherwood (his backyard)

Barker e-mailed us today to give us a quick update on how he’s doing:

Robin Hood (aka Nottingham and Hood – we don’t have an actual title yet) may have a director soon. Fingers crossed. Hope it keeps moving up the ladder. The Disney higher-ups and producers at Picture Company have been awesome. No horror stories! Learning a lot. These scripts are definitely a team effort. I’m working with Alex and Andrew (Picture Company) on a new pitch. And working on another with Broken Road Prod. Jake has been great with his sage advice and setting up meetings. And a great side effect — the spec sale has allowed me to work part-time at the current day job. Wa-hoo!

It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, and it proves that every once in a while, perhaps as rare as a humanely raised fast food meal with nutritional content, it really is about hard work and writing a good script, not just who you know. We’re getting ready to sending the latest batch of Get Repped Now! scripts to our panel of top motion picture and TV lit managers right now — ten damn good writers who deserve a shot. Will one of ’em be the next Brandon Barker? Stay tuned.

GET REPPED NOW RETURNS FALL 2015… Dates to be announced.