Being a Hollywood screenwriter is an unpredictable rollercoaster of a career even when the studio you've finally worked out a deal with hasn't just basically disappeared. But that's the case with those writers who had projects pending with New Line Cinema, the idiosyncratic company whose recent financial woes ended with the decision to fold it into Warner Bros. (the better to "streamline" its slate of films) and the departure of Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne, the CEOs who founded New Line forty years ago. A lot of people who thought their next projects had been safely sheparded past Development Hell have found themselves right back in purgatory while the "transition team" scours the wreckage with a mind to defining just what the new New Line is supposed to be all about. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Jay Fernandez identifies the types of projects that are probably safe, mainly sequels and remakes tied to New Line's licensed properties such as Freddy Krueger and the Nightmare on Elm Street series, and "low-budget comedies like The Grackle, The $40,000 Man and All You Can Eat." Imperilled: "higher-budget or prestige dramas and thrillers, such as writer-director Edward Norton's adaptation of Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn, Brett Ratner's production of Mr. S: My Life With Frank Sinatra and producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci's Red Cell." (Some lucky winners may be bumped up the chain to become Warner Bros. productions.) On the plus side, some projects that had become snared in New Line's corporate tentacles and weren't looking to get made may revert to their creators, who'll have another shot at placing them with another studio. Right now, there isn't much anyone can do besides wait and see.
