Your Story, Your Way

Screenwriter Paul Fusco went to Atlantis hoping to get his screenplay, "Soldiers of the Dead," made into a motion picture - and now Soldiers is a full length graphic novel about to be released (for more on Fusco's "Soldiers of the Dead," go here).

Turning your screenplay into a graphic novel first "is a great way to test the waters," according to Watson. "It's a great place to work out all the kinks in your story, get feedback from people, and test whether it's a commercial idea or not. You can be a screenwriter for years and never see anything you do become a reality. With Atlantis Studios, you can produce your whole vision, and really become the director of your own film on paper."

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Lately, a number of screenwriters have been turning to graphic novels to try to build a buzz for their work. If your property has already proven itself in the marketplace, the odds are greater that a studio will take a chance on it. Last year, Atlantis attended Creative Screenwriting Magazine's CS Expo in Los Angeles, and met with many screenwriters looking to do graphic novels of their own.

"At the Expo, we talked to a lot of people involved in pitch meetings," Watson says. "I was surprised at how many producers and production companies would hear a pitch and tell the writers, 'I need some visuals. Can you show me a comic?' They want to see visuals, especially when it comes to high concept ideas, which tend to be action, sci-fi, and fantasy kind of properties. I picked up several clients at the Expo, people who said, 'I didn't know there was a place I could do a comic. They told me that I need to do one, so how can I?' "

Since the creators keep the rights to their work, if a comic that Atlantis helped to put together becomes a big hit movie, the company doesn't get a piece of the pie. Yet Watson says, "we hope that there are big ones that get away, because that will help put us on the map. If a couple of big ones hit, then people will come to us hoping that their comic will be big too." In fact, Fusco has already come back to Atlantis with other projects.

"We're not driven by the need to develop properties," Watson continues. "We're not like Marvel. Their whole business is about creating properties, creating characters, copyrighting them, then making millions from various types of licensing deals. A lot of comic book companies do that. The whole business is modeled around establishing characters, which they can then use to make money."

While Watson doesn't feel that they can replace the work of a good editor or script reader, Atlantis provides a lot more help to writers than most places. With Atlantis' help, one writer went from a one page outline to a full-length comic in 120 days.

Watson's confident that by sticking with their business model, Atlantis will stay in business, and continue to do well. "We don't believe that there's going to be a shortage of stories to be told, or comics to be written. What's missing is high quality visuals. We feel like there's a whole body of mainstream writing and storytelling that deserves a place to be seen in an affordable, high quality way. Next year's films, and the films that will be made two or three years down the road, are probably on sale right now at your local comic book store."