PRODUCER
“Would I put my name on this and take it out?”
Your first champion. Reads for the premise and the commercial hook, tells you what’s already working, and, when it applies, names what’s keeping them from taking your script to talent.
How we read
How a script read works, draft by draft.
One script. Four readers waiting to read it.
Every pass you do on your script can P.A.S.S. through these readers:
ATTACHMENTS
“Should I do this project next?”
The talent deciding whether to commit a chunk of their lives to your film: a director, a lead, a supporting actor. Each tells you what they respond to, what gives them pause, and what they want to see next.
STUDIO EXECUTIVE
“Can I defend this upward?”
Weighs what it costs, the commercial upside, and the talent attached, then decides what has to be on the page before they’d take it toward a greenlight.
STUDIO GREENLIGHT
“Do we spend real money to make it?”
The last readers, and the hardest to get past. They weigh production cost, audience, and campaign against everything the earlier readers found. Then the Studio Head makes the call the whole read has been building to: do we make this movie, or send it back to development?
What comes back is feedback with a decision attached: what each reader responded to, what’s holding the script back, and what they want to see next.
What you can submit, for a feature.
A treatment, an outline, a pitch, a partial or full screenplay, or coherent narrative prose for a feature film. The readers are a feature greenlight chain, so that is what they read for. A project isn’t rejected for being unfinished. Intake judges the pages themselves, not the format selected in the form. A refused submission gets a specific explanation and doesn’t use a read credit.
Each reader reads the movie you actually wrote, not the one in your logline.
Before the first read, you provide a logline, comps, genre, target budget, and whether the project is original or based on existing IP.
That context tells the readers what you’re going for. The pages show what you’ve actually got. The project context carries into revisions and can be edited; you don’t enter it again for every draft.
How revision reads remember prior notes.
A revision carries writer-safe memory (the notes, never a copy of your pages) from the readers the project reached: the prior verdict, what’s still open, and the parts of the script worth protecting.
Each returning reader checks the current pages against what they raised before. They can credit a real improvement, say when a note is still there, or name something the rewrite weakened.
The scale and distribution your film could carry.
You may call it a $5M thriller. The pages tell the readers whether it really is one, or a $20M film wearing a smaller budget.
The company names below are reference points for scale and audience, not a connection to any company or a path to a buyer.
Tier (scale the film can carry)
Specialty: Contained or voice-driven films aimed at a focused theatrical release. Searchlight, Focus, Neon.
Genre: Commercial genre with a real hook, built for a wider theatrical push. New Line, Screen Gems, Blumhouse.
Main studio: Large-scale material that can carry production, talent, and a campaign. The five majors: Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros., Sony, Disney.
Distribution lane (how it goes out)
Theatrical: a cinema release, at any of the three tiers.
Streaming: straight to a home audience; a film at any tier can land here. Netflix, Amazon, Apple.
Notes that carry into the next draft.
A Project Pass or a Slate Pass keeps the same project moving, and each read remembers what the last one raised.
Choose the read that fits the rewrite ahead of you. No subscription; nothing renews automatically.