There are reasons for writing a treatment or outline based on your brilliant original movie idea. Simply put a movie idea or concept cannot be copyrighted. Idea theft isn’t widespread in the movie business, but there is always that remote possibility some intellectual property thief hears your movie idea, loves it, and develops their own script or movie based on your idea. Not many aspiring writers, directors, or producers have deep enough pockets to get into a costly court battle over an idea. Writing a treatment and submitting it to the U.S. Copyright Office protects your movie idea.
It is possible to sell a script treatment, but usually that’s reserved for Hollywood insiders or established screenwriters with a proven track record. Not for newcomers on the scene. Hashing out solid a script treatment greatly increases the chances for a tight well written script to be born. This article is mainly for those aspiring screenwriters that have a movie idea they are going to eventually write themselves.
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