Unmade: Five Unproduced Screenplays

Five Unproduced Screenplays from books by William MeikleThe AmuletIsland LifeThe SirensThe Copycat MurdersThe Auld MitherI’ve written a few screenplays, most of them quite a few years ago now, and even had some produced.Back in 2006-2009 there was a handful of shorts, all of them low budget. One of them, HOTLINE even made it onto IMDB to get me my first listing there. The others have all disappeared off the face of the earth, including my favorite, a wee glossy production of my script DANCERS that was very well done by GET THE SWORD studios, who subsequently folded and went dark. I’ve got another handful of short scripts in a folder gathering dust somewhere. Doubt they’ll ever emerge.On the longer screenplay side, I have a feature length IMDB credit for HALFWAY TO HEAVEN which I co-wrote with producer/director James Sharpe back in 2009, a gentle wee supernatural rom-com with no budget that has a fair bit of charm despite that. I co-wrote another comedy with James back then, but it never saw the light of day.Apart from that on the longer side, I spent a few years trying to flog scripts for some of my books. I wrote scripts for THE AMULET, THE SIRENS, ISLAND LIFE, THE AULD MITHER and THE COPYCAT MURDERS, tried to flog them around and got tickles of interest for all of them at different times, but ultimately nothing came of any of them. These scripts are the ones collected here in this book.Another feature script, based on my novella CLOCKWORK DOLLS was on option to a UK producer for 14 years. I had a great meeting with him over lunch in Glasgow, talked to a screenwriter who was going to adapt it and then… tumbleweed. Since then it’s gone through at least three other writers at two studios that I know of, and changed so much from my original script that my involvement is now down to a ‘based on a novella by…” credit, but I don’t think it’s ever going to come out of pre-production hell.All of that has somewhat disillusioned me on the screenwriting and I stopped sending things around more than five years ago now.I’ve had another glimmers of interest more recently, but that faded again as I was ghosted twice, once by a film agent and once by a producer who both asked to see some work, expressed high interest, then never got back to me despite prompting.It frustrates me a bit, as I’ve got all this material that readers tell me is really cinematic ( the S-Squad stuff in particular) and should be a movie / TV series… but I can’t get anybody in the business to see that potential.Same as it ever was. Read more