CraveOnline: You’re moving into somewhat different territory doing adaptations of major franchise novels. Was Mockingjay already a two-parter when you were hired for that?
Danny Strong: Yes.
So you went into the book thinking of where a part one might end?
I really can’t talk much about it but I’ll tell you that the pre stuff was they were looking for a writer for Mockingjay and they knew it was going to be a two-parter, so part of the pitch that I had to give was how I would write both parts. But I was just hired to write the first part and then after I turned it in, they hired me to write the next part.
Oh, so you might have only been hired for part one.
Yeah.
That’s interesting. So how different is the world of doing the Mockingjays and Lost Symbols from doing the political historical screenplays?
I get asked that and I don’t even really know how to answer it because every time I’m facing the blank page or every time I’m rewriting, it’s all the same to me to a certain extent. I’m just trying to make it work. I’m just trying to make the scenes work. It always has its own unique set of challenges depending on whatever that story is. In the case of the historical pieces, there’s a challenge because you’re, as a screenwriter, somewhat shackled by history. At the same time, if the history is not pretty fascinating, then you’re probably not writing the screenplay in the first place because I wouldn’t want to do the movie. So there’s so much great stuff in there, and the same is said for the novel.
The novels, you can change more, depending on the book. Some books you have more liberty for more creativity and some books you have less because A, the books are great. You want to use as much of them as you can, and B, they’re so wildly popular that it’s not an open season for interpretation. I’ve done adaptations that haven’t been made that weren’t as high profile in which I changed quite a bit. Each has its own unique set of challenges.
You don’t have that freedom with Hunger Games or Dan Brown though, right?
Yeah, I’m not going to really get into the specifics of how I approach those because I’m not allowed to.
Of course, I just meant these aren’t the flexible ones. You must be a good fit for The Lost Symbol though because Dan Brown does include a lot of history and exposition. Are you well practiced in turning that into the visual medium of film?
Yeah, I think maybe that’s why they approached me. I had written a historical thriller for Warner Brothers, a book called A Conspiracy of Paper, a David Liss novel, really cool, very cool book. It’s fiction but it takes place during the 1719 financial bubble in London but it’s a murder mystery thriller. I think it was actually the script I wrote for that that got me under consideration to do The Lost Symbol.
Are any of those unmade projects getting more heat now that you’re the acclaimed writer of Lee Daniels’ The Butler and Game Change?
No, not really. It’s always difficult. With Conspiracy of Paper, everyone really liked the script. It was very well received. Game Change had not come out yet. I’d written Game Change already but it hadn’t been made when I wrote that script, but it’s just hard to get any movie made. Really, it’s so difficult. Every single one you’re just climbing a mountain from the get go.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
