When you signed onto the project, was this a TV mini-series or a feature film? My 32nd project just completed production. ![]() THE BEAST put me on the map, and I have been writing long-form television ever since. For reasons I will never understand (but for which I am eternally grateful to Alan for getting me in that position and to Lindy for taking a chance on me), she pitched me to Universal, and my meeting with the team there (several of whom remain treasured friends) went well enough, they took a chance on me as well. She had been in discussions with Universal Television, who had the rights to the underlying novel, to make THE BEAST for televiaion. That network was NBC, and my ability to deliver a makeable first draft as a rookie put me on the radar of Lindy DeKoven, its head of movies and miniseries. The network agreed, thinking (no doubt) “we’ll have this newbie write a script, then we’ll bring in an experienced writer to fix it.” As it happened, my first draft was strong enough the network greenlit the movie from it. A bold, but shrewd act of faith on his part. But my agent, the redoubtable Alan Gasmer, insisted I do or the network couldn’t have it. I was so green, in fact, that when I sold my first project (a story that became the TV movie GRAMPS, starring Andy Griffith), the buying network didn’t want me to write it. I was very new to the business (though not young by Hollywood standards I was 43). Bloody Flicks caught up with J.B to discuss bringing the story to life and how it could work as a modern-day, big-budget project.Ĭan you tell us how you got involved with adapting The Beast? ![]() This was the task set for new screenwriter J.B White in the mid-1990s as The Beast, a tale of a small coastal town terrorised by a giant squid was to become a TV mini-series.Ģ6 years later, outside of Jaws, The Beast remains one of the best Benchley adaptations. Adapting the work of Peter Benchley is no mean feat.
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