Digital Riot rejection

So… I just received my official rejection from Digital Riot Media regarding my script Personal Demons.

Took long enough!

Seriously… they requested my script on March ?? and I respectfully checked in with them every few weeks (increments of two weeks if memory serves) and they finally get back to me 4 months later… nearly half a year later… very professional.

And their notes?

“Hi Erik, 

   Thanks for following up. Unfortunately, Personal Demons is a pass for us. We didn't feel as though it had a culturally relevant enough hook for us to hang our hats on. Enjoyed the script though and best of luck. 

Best”

Now, perhaps I am taking this too personal (and I know I am… as I need to learn how take rejection better), but this seems like a personal dig at me.

Wondering if (as I’m warned about so much in this industry) they requested my script, forgot about it, then got annoyed that I badgered them (which I don’t feel as if I did badger them, as I began each e-mail with “I hate to trouble you…”) for a response and thus they decided not just to reject me with a impersonal boiler plate rejection, but to really turn the screws on me.

I dunno… not enough “cultural relevance”?

Huh.

Seems like Personal Demons is clicking with everyone else’s “cultural relevance” barometer, what with all the film festivals and screenplay competitions it’s winning.

Furthermore, I don’t see it as a real great loss that Digital Riot shot me down.

Would I really have benefitted from being under their banner?

If you take a quick look at their website (hyperlinked on their name at the beginning of this post), the most significant film (actually, the only significant project) that they have to their name is Happy Death Day and its sequel.

Happy Death Day is a film I saw the ads for in theaters and thought it looked cool (though derivative… it’s basically Groundhog Day meets Scream), then opted not to pay to see it in theaters because the studio released it as the most offensive of transgressions: a PG-13 horror film… I refuse to see most (meaning 99.9%) of them… to me it’s like eating sugar-free candy: what’s the point? Anyhow, I later checked out the film from the library (I didn’t even give them my money on home video) and watched it with my then-girlfriend (who was likewise intrigued by the film’s premise) on my 28^th birthday (March 19^th, 2018). The best way I can describe it is: entertaining, but unmemorable; a cinematic laxative… it went right through me.

I then saw the sequel in theaters, but it was thanks to an advanced sneak preview ticket given to me by a friend of mine.

(They still have not gotten any of my money!).

I recently spoke to this friend and we were trying to remember the last time we hung out… I dragged the waters of my memory and finally remembered that it was at a movie sneak preview… I then recalled the film. My friend said,

“I’m glad you remembered the movie we saw… ‘cuz I sure don’t!”

My thoughts on Happy Death Day 2 U were much the same as the original, but with two added complaints: the tone of the film drastically shifted from being horror-comedy (which was the tone of the first film) to being sci-fi/comedy and the events of the second film seemed to cancel out or undermine the events of the first film (Tree’s whole speech on finding out that her time-looped existence in the first film was the result of a science experiment gone wrong as opposed to some “cosmic reason” contains an element of a disappointment that was shared by the entire audience).

At any rate, the creative team had planned Happy Death Day as a (let’s face it, unlikely) trilogy.

That was not to be.

While the first film was “successful” (on a budget of an estimated $4,800,000 (which is about right for Blumhouse who, typically, makes their films for 5M or less, though this cost doesn’t include marketing, and a US box office take of $55,683,845 and a worldwide gross of $56,300,000) the second film was a disaster (with an inflated estimated budget of now $9,000,000 and a US box office take of $28,051,045 and a worldwide gross of $64,251,045).

Sure, on paper the first film looks successful.

But was anyone really clamoring for a sequel?

And, if they were, did they want a sequel that feels more like Weird Science or My Science Project or Insert-Name-of-Generic-80’s-Sci-fi-Comedy-Here?

Nope.

They wanted the same movie, but with perhaps a slightly different (and slick) plot twist.

The fact that nobody on this particular creative team realizes that makes me think that it’s a good thing that they passed on Personal Demons.

But further on Personal Demons’ “culturally relevance”: some of Personal Demons’ contemporaries (though, I have to keep reminding people that I wrote Personal Demons in the summer of 2015… a year before one of these projects debuted and two years before the other project premiered), such as: It (2017) and Stranger Things (2016 – Present) take place in the 80’s!!!!

Therefore… these films/shows might have adolescents (teenagers, in some cases) in them, but there is nothing immediately relevant (aside from, perhaps, school yard bullying… which has all but been (thankfully) demonized and stamped out now-a-days) that would appeal to young audiences: no one is playing around on an iPhone, no one is on Instagram or Snapchat, no one is playing a PS4.

That technology didn’t exist in the 80’s!

There’s not even relevant social/cultural issues being discussed, like school shootings, or racism or gender equality or gender fluidity/identity.

These things weren’t spoken about in the 80’s!

I know… I was born in 1980 and grew up in that era!

I’m telling you this with great authority.

Basically what I’m saying here is that Digital Riot Media is full of it.

Personal Demons is loaded with “cultural relevance”.

I based the characters off of students I’ve had in class (both at the high school and college-level) over the last ten years… which, by the way, is the ideal ticket-buying audience for these types of films.

I also modeled the characters in Personal Demons off of myself.

And, if I do say so myself, I’d like to think that I have my finger pretty close to the pulse of pop and counter culture.

But, whatever.

They can say what they want.

I just have to keep reminding myself that when Michael Dougherty tried selling Trick ‘r Treat to studios they didn’t want it because it had werewolves and vampires in it (this is before Twilight).

Now Dougherty not only directed my favorite Christmas horror film of all time (2015’s Krampus) but he directed my favorite film of 2019 and one of my favorite sequels (and summer blockbusters) of all time: Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

So keep the rejection coming (but not for too long), I will rise to the top, like my brother Dougherty, and when I do everyone will be begging to drink my bath water… and I might just let them.