With nine out of the top ten grossing movies of all time being speculative fiction--science fiction and fantasy--its no wonder that Hollywood's future is seen to reside with the writers of science fiction and fantasy, or more specifically the winners of the Writers of the Future Contest according to Dave Wolverton, screenwriter, NYT bestselling author and Writers of the Future Contest judge."The mentality is simple in Hollywood: if it makes money, you do it. And if it keeps making money, you keep doing it," says Wolverton from his home in Saint George, UT. "And for reasons that are very simple, science fiction and fantasy have proven time and again to be huge money makers." The top ten grossing movies of all time include from #10 up: Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King, Star Wars - Episode III, Spider Man, Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest, Star Wars - Episode I, Extra Terrestrial, Shrek 2, Star Wars, The Dark Knight and Titanic - and nine of these are science fiction or fantasy.
"All of the top-grossing movies of all time have one thing in common," Wolverton says. "They all take the viewer to another time, another place. People crave to be transported out of the mundane world into a place that is new and wondrous, and that is what speculative fiction does best."
Wolverton was the grand prize winner of the L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Contest in 1987 and has since gone on to publish over thirty novels, with several becoming NYT bestsellers. Due to his success, he later became a contest judge, a video game designer, and now has branched off into screenwriting.
With all this diverse experience now to his credit, Wolverton observed, "L. Ron Hubbard was a very prolific fiction writer during the 30s and 40s, and wrote several works that are classics in their field. Based on this success, he moved on to Hollywood. He worked as a writer for Columbia Pictures for the highly successful movie serial The Secret of Treasure Island and The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok. And for Warner Bros., he worked with Norvell Page scripting The Spider Returns. So I find it very interesting that he created the Writers of the Future Contest, and that the legacy continues with writers like myself who are providing more material to feed Hollywood's voracious appetite for science fiction and fantasy."
Writers of the Future, now in its 25th year, is the world's largest and most recognized merit competition for writers of speculative fiction. Its over 250 winners have gone on to publish over 300 novels and 3,000 short stories. The latest edition, Writers of the Future Volume 24, showcases our latest stable of winners and can be found in Barnes & Noble, Borders, Walmart and Amazon.com.
Website: http://www.writersofthefuture.com
No comments:
Post a Comment