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Solving Equation of a Hit Film Script, With Data

J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times

Vinny Bruzzese, president of Worldwide Motion Picture Group, and Miriam Brin, script analyst.

LOS ANGELES â€" Forget zombies. The data crunchers are invading Hollywood.

The same kind of numbers analysis that has reshaped areas like politics and online marketing is increasingly being used by the entertainment industry.

Netflix tells customers what to rent based on algorithms that analyze previous selections, Pandora does the same with music, and studios have started using Facebook “likes” and online trailer views to mold advertising and even films.

Now, the slicing and dicing is seeping into one of the last corners of Hollywood where creativity and old-fashioned instinct still hold sway: the screenplay.

A chain-smoking former statistics professor named Vinny Bruzzese â€" “the reigning mad scientist of Hollywood,” in the words of one studio customer â€" has started to aggressively pitch a service he calls script new evaluation. For as much as $20,000 per script, Mr. Bruzzese and a team of analysts compare the story structure and genre of a draft script with those of released movies, looking for clues to box-office success. His company, Worldwide Motion Picture Group, also digs into an extensive database of focus group results for similar films and surveys 1,500 potential moviegoers. What do you like? What should be changed?

“Demons in horror movies can target people or be summoned,” Mr. Bruzzese said in a gravelly voice, by way of example. “If it’s a targeting demon, you are likely to have much higher opening-weekend sales than if it’s summoned. So get rid of that Ouija Board scene.”

Bowling scenes tend to pop up in films that fizzle, Mr. Bruzzese, 39, continued. Therefore it is statistically unwise to include one in your script. “A cursed superhero never sells as well as a guardian superhero,” one like Superman who acts as a protector, he added.

His recommendations, delivered in a 20- to 30-page report, might range from minor tightening to substantial rewrites: more people would relate to this character if she had a sympathetic sidekick, for instance.

Script “doctors,” as Hollywood refers to writing consultants, have long worked quietly on movie assembly lines. But many top screenwriters â€" the kind who attain exalted status in the industry, even if they remain largely unknown to the multiplex masses â€" reject Mr. Bruzzese’s statistical intrusion into their craft.

“This is my worst nightmare” said Ol Parker, a writer whose film credits include “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.” “It’s the enemy of creativity, nothing more than an attempt to mimic that which has worked before. It can only result in an increasingly bland homogenization, a pell-mell rush for the middle of the road.”

Mr. Parker drew a breath. “Look, I’d take a suggestion from my grandmother if I thought it would improve a film I was writing,” he said. “But this feels like the studio would listen to my grandmother before me, and that is terrifying.”

But a lot of producers, studio executives and major film financiers disagree. Already they have quietly hired Mr. Bruzzese’s company to analyze about 100 scripts, including an early treatment for “Oz the Great and Powerful,” which has taken in $484.8 million worldwide.

Mr. Bruzzese (pronounced brew-ZEZ-ee), who is one of a very few if not the only entrepreneur to use this form of script analysis, is plotting to take it to Broadway and television now that he has traction in movies.

“It takes a lot of the risk out of what I do,” said Scott Steindorff, a producer who used Mr. Bruzzese to evaluate the script for “The Lincoln Lawyer,” a hit 2011 crime drama. “Everyone is going to be doing this soon.” Mr. Steindorff added, “The only people who are resistant are the writers: ‘I’m making art, I can’t possibly do this.’ ”

A version of this article appeared in print on May 6, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Solving Equation of a Hit Film Script, With Data .

USA Network to Explore Sitcoms and Reality Shows

For most of the past decade the USA Network has lived by the mantra “blue skies,” which has translated into programming a string of upbeat hourlong drama hits, like “Burn Notice” and “Royal Pains.”

That strategy has paid off, with USA ranking as the most-watched entertainment network on cable for eight straight years. So why is the network going to make a new pitch to advertisers on May 16 that emphasizes areas previously little explored by USA, like situation comedy and reality shows?

The most obvious reason: USA paid a hefty price â€" $1 million to $1.5 million an episode â€" three years ago to acquire reruns of the hugely popular ABC comedy “Modern Family.” Those episodes become available this fall, so a shift toward some comedy-based nights was inevitable.

But the network’s top program executives also acknowledge that in order to grow, and to maintain the top position in a competitive cable environment, it is time to branch out into new programming directions.

At its advertiser presentation next week, USA is expected to announce that it has ordered its first two original sitcoms, as well as several new reality shows, and a new drama that breaks with the USA tradition by taking a bit of a walk on the dark side.

“One of the dances any network does, and we’re doing one now, is the balance between breadth and depth,” said Jeff Wachtel, the co-president of USA. “We are a very broad general entertainment network in a world that is increasingly about the depth of the commitment.”

He added, “We have a reservoir of good will. Now that’s great, but it’s also a trap. Because if anybody imputes a formula to you, you really are in danger of being formulaic. We’ve got to challenge the audience.”

Other cable networks have been doing that with great success: A&E has the reality hit “Duck Dynasty;” History collected big audiences for “The Bible;” FX has forged a reputation for dark dramas like “Justified;” and AMC has the biggest drama in all of television with “The Walking Dead.”

“There are a lot of networks infringing on USA’s territory,” said Derek Baine, a media analyst with SNL Kagan. “Changing the program lineup can be done. You just have to tread carefully because it can be jarring for the audience.”

USA’s numbers are unquestionably potent. Under Bonnie Hammer, who now is the chairwoman of the cable entertainment group for NBCUniversal, USA has been a profit machine. In 2012, the network exceeded $1 billion in profit for the first time, and it projects the number to be higher in 2013.

USA still has the top overall audience among cable entertainment networks with an average of 2.92 million viewers, ahead of the 2.43 million for the History Channel. USA is down slightly, 2 percent, this season.

It has remained No. 1, though narrowly, over TBS in one of the two audience groups that dominates sales to advertisers â€" viewers ages 25 to 54. But it trails TBS this season so far in the most important audience category, viewers ages 18 to 49.

That might not be bad news for USA, however, and not only because TBS gets a springtime bounce from college and pro basketball. The big winner for TBS is its package of repeats of the hit CBS sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” which runs as often as 16 to 20 times a week on TBS.

Chris McCumber, the network’s other co-president, said USA would most likely use “Modern Family” much as TBS has used “Big Bang” â€" all over its schedule, sometimes filling a whole night of prime time.

“We want to be careful not to overuse it,” Mr. McCumber said. “But we think it will raise all boats in prime time.”

There is some question about whether “Modern Family” can perform as “Big Bang” has. It is a filmed comedy without a laugh track, and those tend to repeat less well than taped shows with audience laughter.

A version of this article appeared in print on May 6, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: USA Network Strays From Script to Explore Sitcoms and Reality Shows .

Book Looks Behind the Scenes at Fox

Behind the Scenes at Fox

A few days before the presidential election last November, Roger Ailes, the chief executive of Fox News, ordered that Geraldo Rivera’s microphone be cut off after Mr. Rivera angrily defended the Obama administration against charges levied by others on Fox. So says a forthcoming book about the 2012 campaign by Jonathan Alter, a columnist for Bloomberg View and a contributor to MSNBC, a Fox competitor.

The book, “The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies” (Simon & Schuster, $30), which is set to come out June 4, includes a chapter about Fox’s influence on the campaign. Mr. Alter homes in on the channel’s extensive coverage of the Obama administration’s handling of the attacks on a United States diplomatic mission and C.I.A. outpost in Benghazi, Libya.

“Roger Ailes covered the Benghazi story as if it were Watergate just before Nixon’s resignation, with almost wall-to-wall coverage,” Mr. Alter writes before describing Mr. Rivera as the only Fox anchor who was “allowed to offer a dissenting view.”

Mr. Rivera did so on the conservative morning show “Fox & Friends” on Nov. 2, the Friday before Election Day. As the three hosts criticized the administration for failing to save the ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans who died in Benghazi, Mr. Rivera protested. He accused the co-host Eric Bolling of lying, calling him “a politician trying to make a political point.”

“After the argument continued for several minutes, Ailes called the control room and told the producers to cut Rivera’s mic,” Mr. Alter writes.

A spokeswoman for Fox News did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday.

Mr. Alter suggests in the book that the episode is atypical; Fox programming, he writes, generally reflected Mr. Ailes’s views without his explicit instructions.

With these anecdotes â€" another recounts Steve Jobs personally ordering that Apple ads be removed from Fox News â€" Mr. Alter is contributing to a body of work about Mr. Ailes. A friendly biography by Zev Chafets was published in March, getting ahead of another book about Mr. Ailes and Fox that had been set for publication this month. That one, by Gabriel Sherman, is now scheduled for next January.

BuzzFeed Takes Steps to Add Foreign News Coverage

BuzzFeed Takes Steps to Expand Foreign News

BuzzFeed, the swiftly growing social news site, has decided it is time to move beyond top 10 lists, animal videos and political coverage. It is going foreign.

The site recently posted a hiring notice for a foreign editor that said BuzzFeed wanted “to build a new kind of national security and world news coverage.”

Ben Smith, the editor in chief, confirmed that the foreign editor was the beginning of a new line of coverage. He said he expected to have as many as six reporters work with the new editor, with some in Washington, some covering topical issues and a couple based overseas, most likely in Cairo and Mexico City to start.

Mr. Smith said adding more extensive foreign coverage was a natural step in the company’s expansion, but he added that the timing was prompted by the Boston Marathon bombings. The resulting interest, he said, showed him the site was becoming a breaking news source for users.

“People have increasingly come to us for news like during the Boston bombings,” he said. “Now we have an audience that wants to learn what’s going on in the world.”

BuzzFeed is following other digital sites that have added dedicated foreign correspondents. The Huffington Post has operations in Canada, Britain, Spain, France and Italy, with editions opening in Japan and Germany this year. While most of the employees are from media outlets that are in essence licensees, there are at least some Huffington Post workers at every site, said Peter Land, a spokesman for the parent company, AOL.

Still, it is not a common practice. Mashable, another news site, has employees overseas but they do not specifically cover foreign news. Instead they allow the Web site to track digital trends there. Mr. Smith said he hoped to use the foreign correspondents in imaginative ways â€" for example, to cover news on gay marriage internationally.

TED Teams Up With PBS for Education Program

TED Teams Up With PBS On Ideas for Education

Television viewers â€" even those who watch the more sober-minded PBS â€" are generally not keen on sitting through long speeches. But TED, the nonprofit group that sponsors conferences on ideas, thinks it has found a way to bring its signature 18-minute talks to a TV audience that may not have found them on the Web or through mobile apps.

In its first television foray, TED has joined forces with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the New York public broadcaster WNET for a one-hour special, “TED Talks Education,” to be broadcast on PBS on Tuesday. If it is successful, the program could become a template for future joint projects, said Juliet Blake, one of the show’s executive producers and the TED official charged with bringing the conferences to television.

The program was 18 months in the making, a short time for public broadcasting but long for TED, which is accustomed to the more immediate online world. Other suitors have also sought to do TED television projects, Ms. Blake said, but “to reach the audience we want to reach, public television was the place.”

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting paid for the show’s $1 million costs under the auspices of an initiative that addresses the high school drop-out problem in the United States. “It was the perfect marriage of ideas that matter and our core value of education,” said Patricia Harrison, the corporation’s chief executive.

Hosted by the singer John Legend, who also has a foundation focused on alleviating poverty by improving education, and taped in April before an audience at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the show features teachers, students and educational reform advocates like Bill Gates.

The final speaker is the English author Sir Ken Robinson, whose 2006 TED talk arguing for more creativity in schools has been seen nearly 16 million times, making it by far the TED Web site’s most popular video.

The focus is on positive changes that speakers advocate. Mixed in are clips of students discussing what excites them in school.

In one concession to the medium, the show limited its speakers to 5 to 8 minutes. “People don’t sit in front of television and watch 18-minute speeches,” said Julie Anderson of WNET, also an executive producer. Some speakers went long, including Geoffrey Canada, the chief executive of Harlem Children’s Zone, so those talks were edited for the PBS program, although the full-length versions will be posted online.