Drew Goddard's 7 Rules for Getting a Movie Made

Project Hail Mary just had a very good weekend.

Ryan Gosling's sci-fi epic shot to $140.9 million globally in its opening frame, including $80.5 million domestically, per Variety.

Not bad for a $200 million film about a schoolteacher who wakes up alone on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there. And then meets an alien he nicknames "Rocky."

The man who put all that on the page is Drew Goddard. His career began in TV, moving from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Angel , then Alias and Lost , before shifting to features with Cloverfield , The Cabin in the Woods , and Bad Times at the El Royale. He earned an Oscar nomination for his 2015 adaptation of Andy Weir's The Martian , __and now, 10 years later, he's back with Weir's Project Hail Mary.

He recently appeared on The Ankler's Prestige Junkie podcast to discuss the film, and we pulled seven lessons for screenwriters. Check out the whole conversation here.

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Protect Your Writing "Cave"

Goddard and novelist Andy Weir have been friends since The Martian , sustaining a low-key, text-based friendship across the years. But Goddard was deliberate about not pushing Weir on what he was working on next with Project Hail Mary.

"I know as a writer, the process of writing, you kind of need to tune out the world," he said. "So I just let him know if he ever wants to talk about anything, I'm here and happy to, but if he needs to just be in his—I call it the writing cave—writing away, go ahead, I will help protect your time and your space so that you can do your best work."

This can cut both ways. Whether you're the writer who needs the cave, or the collaborator who has to learn to stay out of it, protecting creative space is a prerequisite for doing the work at all.

Brainstorming in a Room Is Writing

When Goddard came onto Project Hail Mary with Lord and Miller already attached, a big chunk of his early time wasn't spent on pages at all. It was spent talking. And he counts that as part of the work, he says.

"Part of the time it's taking is us just sitting in a room talking about the best version of the movie and brainstorming and trying different things," he said. "That falls under writing to me, but it's not like I’m actually putting pencil to page at that point. We're just talking through what the movie could be. And that takes a long time."

He also addressed the relationship between TV and feature writing here, and how each project has its own calendar, some fires burning hotter than others.

He was writing the High Potential pilot and Project Hail Mary simultaneously, and his approach was simply to let each project breathe according to its needs.

"This one's closer to the launchpad, so let's focus on this one right now, while the other one you can percolate on," he said.

Don't mistake activity for progress. Some of the most important writing happens before you open the document.

Your First Draft's Job Is to Get a Green Light

It’s hard as a writer to ever be truly “done” with a script, but there does come a time when you have to release your story into the world. Know what you want to do with that first draft and what it should accomplish.

"The job of draft one is to get the movie greenlit," he said. "That doesn't mean it's going to be what the movie is, but my job with the first draft is to just give the studio the information to decide, ‘Are they going to make this?’"

He laid out a clear three-draft framework: draft one gets the greenlight, draft two is about how to actually make the movie, and draft three is the best version of it.

He's also learned to read the room after draft one. "I have found in my career, they kind of know after the first draft. It's either a fast yes or a slow no.”

What the first draft needs to accomplish is conveying the soul. It shouldn’t be cheap or cautious, he says.

"You want the soul of the movie to be on the page," he said. He added, "The goal is to capture the soul that I see and that we're all sort of rowing towards."

Project Hail Mary Credit: Amazon/MGM

Come in with the Whole Package

Studios change hands. Executives come and go. Project Hail Mary went through exactly this, as the executives who greenlit it moved to a different studio mid-development, and a whole new team came in.

But the script and the accompanying visual development from Lord and Miller were strong enough to speak for themselves.

"That's why we worked so hard," Goddard said. "The thing I have found that allows us to weather these storms is getting the early draft of the scripts in such shape before we show it to anyone."

He was blunt about how this applies to original, unconventional material in particular.

"That’s part of the battering ram of just saying like, ‘We don't want to be in development for five years,’" he added later, describing how his approach to Cabin in the Woods was to write a spec, do the budget, put together the full production package, and go to everyone saying, "It's happening."

The spec market has only gotten harder since then. Arrive with a vision people can see.

How to Write a Beautiful Film

Project Hail Mary is a massive, expensive, visually stunning film. When asked how he wrote for that scale as a screenwriter, Goddard essentially said he didn't. He avoided spectacle to focus on the soul, but he didn’t change the story to downplay the beauty either.

"Each movie has its own language," he said. His job is to create the foundation, then leave room for his collaborators and director to translate it.

"It's more about creating a structure and a soul of a movie that allows them to be playful," he said. "And to be very clear about the things I think are important at every stage. And sometimes those things are emotional, sometimes those things are plot-based, sometimes those things are technical."

He also credited cinematographer Greg Fraser directly for making the movie beautiful.

The screenwriter's job is to create the conditions for great work to happen, and to inspire others, not to do all of it alone on the page and lock your collaborators into specific visuals or frames or beats.

Have Hard Conversations Early

Before he signed on to The Martian , Goddard walked into an exec's office and told her every reason the movie might fail. He didn't want to hear those objections two years into a project.

"I'm gonna give you all of the reasons that you're not going to make this movie," he said. "Because I don't want to hear them two years from now when I write the script."

He's more anxious when people say yes than when they say no, because a yes means it's time to ask the real question.

"The next question I always ask is, ‘Okay, tell me what you think you've bought,’" he said. "What do you think this movie is?"

Get aligned with your creative and business team early. Make sure everyone is on the same page.

The Work Is What You'll Remember

This conversation happened before opening weekend, and Goddard admitted some anxiety (although we know now the movie has performed very well).

"I've had movies do really well. I've had movies do less well," he said. He added, "What I've noticed is all of it really matters for three weeks. For three weeks, when the movie comes out, it really matters. And then after three weeks, the only thing that matters is, ‘Do I like the movie?’"

He described looking at Project Hail Mary the way you look at an old yearbook photo. It was made six years ago, and what he took away was the experience.

"The true joy I get is from the act of making it," he said.