Franklin Leonard of The Black List makes The Moral Case for “Selling Out”.

Read the full post because it’s guaranteed to get your fired up for 2026. Leonard starts with:

“If you’re an aspiring professional screenwriter and you want this to be your job, write a commercial spec script.”

By commercial, he means something real audiences will pay to watch.

He then goes on to ask nine questions you must answer before you spend your limited time and energy on a script:

• Can you make a busy person want to read it in a single sentence?
• Is it in a genre lane with an engine?
• Does your protagonist want something visible and external?
• Do you have a “big bad?”
• Do you have a ticking clock?
• Do the stakes escalate?
• Do you have set pieces?
• Do you land the plane?
• Is it yours?

He concludes with this exhortation:

“Earnest as it may be, I still believe that a popular movie, done right, is a small act of care at a global scale. Look around. The world out there is rough right now for almost everyone. If you can help people set down whatever they’re carrying for two hours and, as Miyazaki puts it, “find unexpected admiration, honesty, or affirmation in themselves, and… return to their daily lives with a bit more energy,” there’s absolutely nothing soulless or frivolous about that.”

My take: I agree log lines are very important. Roger Corman would start with the poster. In both cases, they represent the concept of your story: the sum of character, plot, setting, conflict, and theme. This is the DNA of the work — choose carefully.