Movies in Development

Producers select story and/or acquire rights to underlying intellectual property (e.g. adaptation, remake, video game, etc.) and work with screenwriter(s) to craft a story outline into a workable script in an effort to garner a “greenlight” for the film from the financing studio and/or production company. An agreement for a major star or director to join the film can boost a project's prospects of securing financing, but those arrangements can reverse if scheduling and other details do not work. Films in this stage can languish for months, years, or fall apart completely.

Known as "development hell"-industry jargon for a film, screenplay, idea, etc. that remains in development for years, often bouncing between different studios and cycling through different scripts, writers, and directors, without actually making it to production.