A visitor to the site wrote an eloquently worded letter asking why most movie companies don't accept unsolicited material and ideas. His questions were so well put, we thought they deserved an answer, though it may not be the answer you all want.

He points out that a few companies accept submissions if the writer is willing to sign a release form, which is intended to protect the production company from being sued if they later make something that has elements of the writer's submitted idea, but is based on someone else's work, or a book, or another movie, etc. Here's the problem: experience has shown that release forms don't really offer much protection. Companies are sued anyway. Some larger companies, especially in television, are sued constantly by people claiming their ideas were stolen. This happens even if the company has a "no submission" policy. They spend thousands of dollars defending themselves from claims which are, in many cases, outright fraud. In that climate, the no submissions policy is a better defense than the release form. The company is saying, "We don't read anything from anyone, so we couldn't have stolen your idea."

For smaller companies, like Stampede, there's an additional problem. We simply cannot commit the man hours to reading unsolicited material. We've experimented with it in the past and the truth is, one must read many many scripts to find even one worth pursuing. Most are absolutely terrible. Yes, we sometimes worry that we're missing a great idea out there, but we'd never get any of our own writing done if we attempted it. Even at larger companies the reading staff is kept very busy with just submissions through normal agent and book manuscript channels.

Many in Hollywood have thought about this issue. But solutions are hard to come by. Some companies are experimenting with using the internet to sift through ideas from writers outside the Hollywood mainstream. But even that requires staff people to monitor the systems nearly full time. Time will tell if these new technologies will open doors in ways that haven't been possible before.

The Stampede Staff.