How we read

An industry-style staged read before you send.

The Read Before isn’t a sycophantic chatbot pitching lines or telling you that your script is great. It simulates the pressure of a professional room: producer, creative attachments, studio executive, and greenlight committee, each judging only what that role would truly care about.

Not a scorecard. Not a rewrite service.

Real people will still make the decisions. The Read Before helps you prepare for them.

Before the rooms.

The product starts by setting the lens. Budget proposes; the read disposes. If the pages point to a different lane than the one you aimed for, the gap is explained in creative terms.

Before Budget, tier, and intent Your budget, logline, genre, comps, and IP status set the starting lens. The read can route the film differently when the pages make a stronger case.

Routing What this film realistically is The synthesis names the theatrical tier and streaming lane before the notes, so each room is judged against the right version of the movie.

The four rooms.

The writer advances phase by phase. A hold stops the experience at that phase; unrevealed downstream work is not shown, summarized, or folded into the report.

Phase One Producer Would I put my name on this and take it out?

Phase Two Creative Attachments Would we, as director and actors, commit our careers, time, and reputations to this?

Phase Three Studio Executive Can I defend this upward and send it into the greenlight room?

Phase Four Greenlight Committee Can I spend real money to make this movie, based on the simulated department-head pressures inside the greenlight read?

Each reader reads your pages through their own lens and reaches their own verdict.

Your project moves forward only when the pages have earned it.

The Read Before won’t pat you on the back. The real world won’t either.

Producer and Creative Attachments can read a Treatment, Partial Screenplay, or Full Screenplay. Studio Executive and Greenlight Committee require a Full Screenplay, 85+ pages.

The lanes your film could land in.

The reads also help define what your film realistically is — its budget, its genre, the kind of creative package it may need, and the lane it belongs in. There are three theatrical budget tiers your number points toward, plus one distribution lane that isn’t about budget at all.

Up to $20M Specialty Label Elevated, voice-driven, awards-lane material — the films a prestige division builds a campaign around. Anchors: Focus, Searchlight.

Up to $40M Genre Label Commercial genre with a hook — horror, thriller, contained action — made tight and sold on the concept. Anchors: New Line, Screen Gems, Blumhouse.

$40M+ Main Studio The big swing: scale, stars, and a campaign built to open wide. Anchors: Universal, Warner Bros, Sony.

Any budget Streaming Commercial at its budget level, but a read-driven call on theatrical viability — a film that lives and makes its money at home. A real destination, not a budget band and not a consolation. Anchors: Peacock, HBO Max.

Your budget proposes a starting tier, but the read disposes — genre and execution can route a film up or down, and a project at any budget can land in the streaming lane. So those notes are the ones your project would actually get, not generic coverage.

The full read.

The final report is not an unlocked extra phase. It is a recap of the path your material actually completed.

Report Final synthesis The final document recaps the completed path only: topline reaction, every phase you revealed, ranked notes, and the path back when a phase holds.

Proof Proofread in the report The proofread is report-only. It flags short fragments and corrections, never your pages.

A producer can talk about sending it out, polishing it as a sample, or learning from it before the next draft. Once a project reaches studio and greenlight territory, the language changes: development, make decision, or a named path back.