631 - Adapting for Television

John welcomes writer and showrunner Francesca Sloane (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Atlanta) to talk about her process of bringing a big-screen property to television. She shares how she and Donald Glover found their way into the story, how it evolved in development, building a room that was all women of color, re-writing on set, and the many lessons she learned as a first time showrunner. We also follow up on writing partners and phonetic alphabets before answering listener questions on writing samples, casting on the page and why some screenplays are free to read. In our bonus segment for premium members, we dig into the benefits (and drawbacks) of film schools and fellowships. Links: Francesca Sloane on Instagram Mr. & Mrs. Smith on Amazon Prime Video ISPA: Inter-Species Phonetic Alphabet for Transcribing Animal Sounds by Masato Hagiwara, Marius Miron and Jen-Yu Liu Bluets by Maggie Nelson A Unified Theory of F-cks by Mandy Brown Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt! Check out the Inneresting Newsletter Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription! Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram John August on Threads, Instagram and Twitter John on Mastodon Outro by Eric Pearson (send us yours!) Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Email us at [email protected] You can download the episode here.