Under the IMDB listing for Bad Santa 2 (Bad Santa, btw, was the best. movie. ever...), in project notes, it says "Two writers have been hired to pen competing screenplays."

WTF?

That's what we're up against, my friends...

Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798603/

Quoted from ajr Under the IMDB listing for Bad Santa 2 (Bad Santa, btw, was the best. movie. ever...), in project notes, it says "Two writers have been hired to pen competing screenplays." WTF? That's what we're up against, my friends...

So, they hired two and one gets paid?

Sandra

Well, first of all, I am far from a fan of the original movie...but...in terms of this, I'll tell you what it means to me.

It means that as usual, Hollywood is a fucking idiot.  If they're indeed "hiring" 2 writers, then they're just wasting money on the budget right out of the gate.  Give me a frickin' break.  And what happens when some nutsack in charge, says he doesn't like either script?  So they pay them both and start from scratch again.

Even more amazing, is the fact that it wasn't even a big hit.  Budgeted at $23 Million, it pulled in $76 Million WW, and that was 8 years ago.  Has Billy Bob Thornton had any recent success at the BO?  Bernie Mac's fucking dead, isn't he?

Poor idea all the way around, but it's nice to see that Hollywood has this kind of cash to throw around and away.  Beautiful...just beautiful.  

I guess they're trying to rake in off the success of Bad Teacher, but even that didn't do THAT great. I've heard before that when they hire two writers they kind of blend the scripts together? When they do this the movie ends seeming patchy so I really don't get it. I think it's a bit overdue for a sequel to Bad Santa, I actually completely forgot about it until now, I don't remember liking it too much... but hey, if they want to pay me to write a draft, I'll do it!

Makes sense to me tbh.

Gets the competitive spirit going, so hopefully they'll do their best work.

I'm not sure what the better alternative is.

It makes sense to pay 2 writers to write a script, that no one even knows if anyone will actually like it?  How could that make sense?

How about this, instead..pay 1 writer for a script that he's already written that the people with the money like?  Hmmm...nah...way to easy and logical.  Instead pay 2 guys when you have no clue what they're even going to come up with.  That's it...

It's not *that* uncommon.

Back in the day, Fox hired two writers to do competing drafts on one of the X-Men movies. Probably the second one. Not sure.

One of the writers called the other and said "eff this $hit", so they teamed up and turned in a draft together.

Quoted from Dreamscale It makes sense to pay 2 writers to write a script, that no one even knows if anyone will actually like it?  How could that make sense? How about this, instead..pay 1 writer for a script that he's already written that the people with the money like?  Hmmm...nah...way to easy and logical.  Instead pay 2 guys when you have no clue what they're even going to come up with.  That's it...

Well, it makes sense from my poit of view.Let's say I managed to turn myself into a studio of sorts and had some IP's that I thought there was still a market for, but didn't have a script...seems like a reasonable idea to employ a couple of guys to tyr and come up with one.

I can also understand the view point of the undiscovered writer who woulId rather new intellectual properties were optioned/developed.

It's standard business practice for companies and government to provide sometimes sizable amounts to multiple vendors to fabricate competing proposals, offsetting their costs for a contract not all can win.

Likely, both writers get paid for a screenplay that only one gets paid an contingent payment upon acceptance.

Performance carrots dangling all around.