So it's my first time writing a blog in almost ten years. This is cool and I'm looking forward to being able to splurge my brains out on a regular basis.
A little about me.
My name is Jake Thornton. I'm 32 and I live in LA with my wife, Siri, and our new three-month old boy, Phoenix. It's been an interesting journey here and I hope I'll be able to share it here successfully.
I was born and raised in my home city of London, which I miss very much. I don't miss it enough to move back there, but I have very fond memories of that great city. I love to visit when I can and hope to be back there in October to see my family and friends.
When I was 18, I saw Sam Mendes win an Oscar and I decided somehow I was going to do the same. I was at a sixth form college in my home town of Richmond doing an acting course. Later that year, I was accepted into the the BA acting course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where I trained until 2002, graduating with the gold medal for my year. I went onto a fairly successful career as an actor in theatre in the UK, working for the RSC and in the West End.
In 2006, I had the opportunity to come to LA with a show I was in and fell in love with the prospect of being in the movies. I moved here in 2007... and didn't book anything. I came close to several major jobs, but the BIG BREAK never happened. However, during that time I began writing. I had always had a passion for it, starting my first screenplay when I was still at Guildhall. I had also written a movie with my best friend in the UK and had delusions of getting it made (until I found out what it actually costs to make a movie!). But after a year of being here, I teamed up with a friend of mine and we began writing in earnest.
We wrote a film called Silverfox (a post apocalyptic western) which we pitched to several producers but got no bites. Then we wrote a film called Blood Soldiers (a film about vampire soldiers created by the US) and managed to get a manager. He had sold a big film for a lot of money the year before and we were very excited to be working with him. We were now getting closer to our dream of ACTUALLY SELLING SOMETHING! We developed a script called Twisted (a magical take on the Oliver Twist story) and got a BIG AGENT (at a little agency called William-Morris-Endeavour). We then partnered with an A-List production company and developed the script further.
Everything felt so close. We knew we were in the top 5% of people in our game. We had an awesome team behind us... but the script didn't sell... and then the relationship with our manager broke up. Poops.
We began working on new material and earlier this year the same production company we developed Twisted with asked us to write a new spec (speculative) script for them called Beauty and the Beasts. This was a sequel to the original tale and see's Belle travel to the island of beasts to rescue her love from certain death. It was fun.
Bit again unfortunately it also didn't sell.
But another producer read our work, loved it, and pitched us an idea for a screenplay. Amazingly, this was a script that we had already written a draft of. So right now, we're working on this new script and again hoping for that first sale that will get us on the map.
We're also writing our first pilot, and I'm writing Blood Soldiers as a novel which I plan to self publish.
So, that's me... so far.
I'll be talking more about screenwriting as time goes on, and also of my experience working on this book. It's all very exciting....
Jake
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