Thread:Blu-and-Jewel03/@comment-961279-20170511132723/@comment-961279-20170523060615

They wouldn't be mad, but it's a case of they're not likely to listen. You have to consider the fact that if all you've got is an idea for a movie, that's not really enough to go on. They would want to see a full script, or at least a detailed story presentation with things like concept art or storyboards or animatics. And even if you did that, it may not get marked for purchase and further development.

John Rogers, who created the TV shows Leverage and The Librarians, and also one of the writers on some movies like Transformers and The Core, has a blog where he covers screenwriting. In it, he gave an example that if there's about 10 major movie studios and they're going to release 10 movies a year each, that's 100 scripts they need. In order to get there, they have to pick scripts that are far enough along in the process and will fit within a certain budget and will attract the right director and/or actors. So grand total, all of those studios are looking at about 10,000 scripts. Multiply that by how many years movies take to get made when you factor in development, pre-production, location scouting and things like that, and it could easily be 30,000-50,000 scripts at any given time.

But's let's say things go well, you get everything worked out and lined up to present an idea for Rio 3 to Blue Sky Studios. They could listen to it and say they're not interested. And then if a decade later, they happen to come out with a movie that is similar to what you told them about, then you'd be looking to file a lawsuit over where that idea came from.

That's what's going on with Zootopia right now. A well-known and respected screenwriter named Gary Goldman has filed suit against Disney because he says he met with people connected with Disney in 2000 to pitch his idea for the movie, and then with different people in 2009 after he had worked on the idea some more, and both times they replied that they weren't interested. Five years later, they started work on a movie with the same name and very similar characters. You can get further details over on the Deadline Hollywood website and they have a link with a PDF copy of the lawsuit.

So unfortunately, for as much as fans like your or I would want to help in getting another Rio movie started, we just wouldn't have the resources to present it in a way that it's likely to be heard amongst the thousands or hundreds of thousands of other people who are trying to do the same thing. Lawsuits like the one over Zootopia are a big reason why actors, writers and studios can't even hear or read fan-made ideas.

It can be a bit discouraging, but at least you know a lot more about what it would take to do what you're proposing. Maybe continuing on with stories that are just fan fiction and not trying to make it an official story present to Blue Sky will give everyone a bit of freedom to write whatever they want to.