Growing up in Texas, Jacob Rainer was obsessed with movies. He watched Turner Classic Movies nonstop, read Roger Ebert’s reviews, and became fascinated by monsters. His favorites were cryptids, mysterious creatures like Bigfoot, Yeti, and the Loch Ness Monster. None of these have been proven to exist, but the possibility is so alluring.
“I’m an open-minded skeptic,” Rainer says. “I’m kind of like the perfect combination of Scully and Mulder. I don’t believe, but I want to believe.”
Bigfoot in particular had been lurking in Rainer’s imagination for years. He remembers attempting a Bigfoot screenplay as a teenager, but it never became a finished script.
Years later, Rainer discovered Scriptshadow, Carson Reeves’ website devoted to screenwriting, and became a regular reader. When Reeves announced Blood and Ink, a horror screenplay competition, Rainer saw an opportunity to finally do what he had been thinking about for years: Write a screenplay about… Bigfoot! Titled Wildman, the logline goes like this:
When his little brother is killed by hunters, Bigfoot goes on a quest to retrieve the body while killing everyone responsible along the way.
The script was recently acquired by Badlands, the genre label run by Scott Strauss that is an arm of Wick franchise producers Thunder Road (Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee). For Rainer, the sale is even more remarkable considering Wildman was the first screenplay he had ever truly written.
“I don't really have what's considered a traditional screenwriting background,” says Rainer. “I've never worked in Hollywood, never been in a writer's room.”
Instead, Rainer learned about movies by watching them. “You’ve always wanted to write something,” Rainer told himself. “It’s time. This could be your moment. Let’s give this a go.”
Making the Monster the Protagonist
Rainer initially approached the story from a familiar horror perspective. A man would kill a Bigfoot, prompting the creature’s family to come after him for revenge. But then Rainer asked the question that gave the story a fresh take: What if Bigfoot wasn’t the monster?
“It would be much more interesting if we flipped this,” he says. “And Bigfoot was the protagonist, and he was going for revenge.” Suddenly, audiences would experience the story through Bigfoot’s eyes.
Rainer named his protagonist Joel. The tone is serious and a bit melancholy. He says the Nicolas Cage revenge film Mandy had a big influence on him. “I like a lot of heart and heartache at the same time,” he says.
Just Go the Distance
Perhaps the most surprising part of Rainer’s story is how little he expected to happen when he entered Blood and Ink. He wasn’t dreaming about a bidding war or imagining Jacob Elordi playing Joel. He simply wanted to finish the script.
Rainer found inspiration in Rocky. Before fighting Apollo Creed, Rocky tells Adrian that he doesn’t expect to win. His goal is simply to go the distance, to still be standing when the fight ends and prove to himself that he belongs there.
“That’s kind of how I was approaching this contest,” Rainer says. “I didn’t think in a million years that this script was ever going to get turned into a movie. I just wanted to prove to myself that I could write something and submit it on a deadline.”
To Rainer’s surprise, Reeves liked Wildman. The script attracted attention through Scriptshadow, and Reeves connected Rainer with manager Jake Wagner of Alibi Entertainment. From there, the screenplay ultimately landed at Badlands.
Suddenly, the writer who had never worked in Hollywood and had nearly abandoned his screenplay several times had sold his first spec. Rainer has an appropriate sequel for his Rocky analogy.
“Then Rocky II happened,” he jokes, referring to the film where Rocky finally defeats Apollo Creed. “And I guess that’s what’s happening now.”
Learning Screenwriting by Reading Screenplays
Rainer’s journey offers encouragement to writers who don’t have access to film school, writers’ rooms or Hollywood jobs. When it came to learning screenplay format and storytelling, he educated himself largely by reading scripts.
“I’ve just read a lot of screenplays over the years,” he says. Among the scripts that influenced him were The Sixth Sense, Get Out, Black Panther and Hell or High Water. Watching movies also helped him internalize story structure.
For writers waiting for the perfect idea, the perfect connection, or the moment when they finally feel qualified to call themselves screenwriters, Rainer’s unlikely journey proves that, like Rocky, you don’t have to know whether you can win the fight. You just have to go the distance.