Minimum salaries for union screenwriters are set by the Writers Guild of America. Non-union screenwriters may write for free; an established screenwriter may write for millions of dollars.
Definitions
Against: A word used to describe a script's unproduced price relative to its value if approved for production—for example, if a script is sold for $300,000, but the writer gains an extra $200,000 if it leads to production, the screenwriter's salary is described as "$300,000 against $500,000".
Option: If a script is not purchased, it may be optioned. An option is money paid in exchange for the right to produce—and therefore to purchase outright—a screenplay, treatment, or other work within a certain period.
Feature assignment: The writer writes the script on assignment under contract with a studio, production company, or individual.
Pitch: The writer works up a five- to twenty-minute presentation of a prospective movie and presents it to buyers in a short meeting.
Rewriting: The writer rewrites someone else's script for pay. The writer pitches his "take", much like he would an original pitch.
Spec script: Short for "speculative" or "on speculation" as in; He wrote his script on spec. The writer writes the script without being paid, and, subsequently, tries to sell it.
A typical screenwriter's purchase agreement will typically contain the following:
Guarantee: Literally, the money the writer is guaranteed to receive, whether the script is produced or not. This amount is usually divided into steps with payments and due dates. For example, a "three step deal" might include:
The guaranteed money is sometimes referred to as the "front-end."
Optional Steps: The deal may often define optional steps that the studio can trigger at their discretion. For example:
Bonus/Bonuses: Also known as the "back-end". Typically, a production bonus is paid once the script goes into production, or, if there is more than one writer, after the final credit is determined. A typical contract will specify a smaller production bonus for shared credit. There may also be bonuses contingent upon budget or grosses. The cousin of the bonus is the "penalty", which might be paid by the writer if, for example, the script has not been put into production by a set date; penalties are rarely included in writer's deals, however.
History
1900: One of America's first screenwriters, New York journalist Roy McCardell, is hired to write ten scenarios for $15 each.
1949: Ben Hecht is paid $10,000 a week. Claims David O. Selznick paid him $3,500 a day.
1984: Shane Black sells the screenplay to Lethal Weapon for $250,000.
1989: During the 1988 strike, John Raffo, sold his female-courier-has-to-take-a-cure-across-state-lines sci-fi spec scriptPincushion to Columbia for $500,000.
1990: Kathy McWorter, who was promoted by her agent as a 21-year-old wunderkind, though in fact she was 28 years old, sells her sex comedyThe Cheese Stands Alone for $1 million. This was followed by nuclear-terrorist technothriller The Ultimatum by Laurence Dworet and Robert Roy Pool and WWII action comedyHell Bent... and Back! by Doug Richardson and Rick Jaffa, both of which sold for a million dollars. None of these movies have been produced so far.
1992: Sherry Lansing is hired to run Paramount and spends $3.6 million in less than a week, $2.5 million for a two-page outline of Jade by Joe Eszterhas,and $1.1 million for the script Milk Money by John Mattson.Both deals are records, respectively, for outlines and romantic comedy specs.
2005: Terry Rossio and Bill Marsilii are paid $3 million against $5 million for the script of Deja Vu.
Current records
Some of the highest amounts paid to writers for spec screenplays: $5 million:
