John August on how he pitched Prince of Persia

John August, who wrote "The Corpse Bride" and "The Nines," wrote on his blog how he pitched his upcoming film, "Prince of Persia," along with writer and game designer. It's an interesting read for a specific, insider's glimpse into the industry, and how creative you need to be sometimes in order to have your work greenlit.

From the blog:

Most movie pitches don’t involve video, but with PoP, most of the studio executives weren’t familiar with the game at all, so it became an important way to introduce them to both the franchise and the world. As Jordan notes in his post, this trailer doesn’t really tell the story of the movie, but it does give a sense of the characters and style: the dashing prince’s acrobatics, the devoted priestess/princess, the dagger with its time-reversing slickness.

Jordan and I pitched seven studios over two days. Each time, the presentation was pretty much identical.

1. Introductions. Apologies for keeping us waiting. (1 minute)
2. John hyping Jordan’s prestigious videogame background. (1:00)
3. Play the video. (2:10)
4. Jordan describes the world of the Persian empire, using artwork. (:30)
5. John pitches Prince Dastan, using artwork of him. (:30)
6. John and Jordan alternate pitching story, introducing character/prop artwork as new things come up. (6:00)
7. Questions about story, tone and scale. “Somewhere between Pirates and Raiders. It’s not Lawrence of Arabia.”(3:00)
8. Promises that they’ll follow up. (1:00)

Altogether, we could get through the pitch in less than 20 minutes. Disney liked it, and sent us to Jerry Bruckheimer’s company, who bought it from Jordan. The film comes out next May.

And below is the actual video pitch itself:

Prince of Persia movie pitch trailer (2003) from jordan mechner on Vimeo.

It's pretty creative, so budding filmmakers should take note. The official trailer for the film should be coming shortly.