Reaper Pilot Script

I love Reaper. I love it. It's written by Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters. What I read is an unnumbered draft dated in December and is clearly not a production draft. No scene numbers. I had to count them: 45ish (accounting for my margin of error). A fast fun read with lots of laughs setting up what looks like a very fun series.

It's a premise pilot. And a terrific one at that.

And it has a measly little three page teaser (which I personally think they should lose, because why start on a fantasy sequence inside a computer game when the first act is so great and has such a great curtain that no viewer in his right mind would change the channel).

The story that the episode tells is funny and original. The characters are precise, their dialogue sharp. There are several action sequences which manage to be simultaneously comedic and cool. And what a great premise.

Here are some stats:
66 pages
Teaser plus five acts.

Teaser: 3 pages
Act 1: 16 ¾ pages
Act 2: 7 pages
Act 3: 11 ¼ pages
Act 4: 8 ¼ pages
Act 5: 18 pages

You'll note that the act lengths are very uneven. That's because they are situated where the best curtains are.

The script is written in a nice breezy way with a fair amount of action interspersed with the dialogue. In fact, quite rare is the page without 4, 5, 6 lines of action and frequently there is a lot more. There are at least 19 pages in which there is either more action than dialogue or there are approximately equal amounts of each.

I hope to write more about this one when I've had a chance to reread it and digest it.

Act One curtain.

The script is written in a nice breezy way with a fair amount of action interspersed with the dialogue. In fact, quite rare is the page without 4, 5, 6 lines of action and frequently there is a lot more. There are at least 19 pages in which there is either more action than dialogue or there are approximately equal amounts of each.

I hope to write more about this one when I've had a chance to reread it and digest it.

Do You Really Want to Know?

Will Dixon asks:
Can you elaborate? Are they still teasers anymore or just Act One's with a sexy beginning? And where is the title sequence falling in that opening chunk...pre first image? Or after 18 pages/minutes?

Can I elaborate? I was afraid to, lest you think my obsession with these details a little over the top, but now that you ask…

I can't address the location of the title sequence in these pilot scripts, since I have yet to see the produced versions (but I will and I will keep you posted on that front). However in terms of how nine hour-long pilot scripts are laid out I can give you more detail.

The short answer is there is a lot of variation:

Five of the scripts are divided into six acts:
Reaper, New Amsterdam and K-Ville each have a teaser followed by acts one to five, while The Darlings (a.k.a. Dirty, Sexy, Money) and Pushing Daisies avoid the word Teaser and label the acts one through six.

Four of the scripts are divided into five acts:
Life on Mars and Viva Laughlin call the first of those acts a Teaser but Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Babylon Fields call the first act Act One.

The scripts range in length from Life on Mars' wacky 50 pages to 66 for Reaper, but most hovering around the 60 mark.

You can read more about character dramas Viva Laughlin, a drama by Robert Lowry, here and Dirty, Sexy Money by Craig Wright, here.

It looks like K-Ville, written by Jonathan Lisco, is a straight up gritty crime show.

Did I mention that the paranormal is big this coming season? Pushing Daisies, written by Bryan Fuller, Reaper, written Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, written by Josh Friedman, Babylon Fields, by Michael Atkinson and Gerald Cuesta, New Amsterdam written by Allan Loeb and Christian Taylor and Life on Mars written by David E. Kelley (who can get away with a 50 page script) and Stu Moss all have sci fi, horror or fantasy elements.

And while we're on the subject of horror pilots, go out and find a screener of the pilot of the new British series Jekyll written by Steven Moffat. I'm telling you now, you need to see it. Hurry up. What are you waiting for?

Find this. Watch it. Amazing!