For screenwriters, collaboration can be daunting. You’re not just sharing credit, you’re sharing instincts and ego. And then there’s the pain of your prized dialogue getting rewritten. Or cut. Basically, you’re giving up a good chunk of control.
But for Chris Grillot and Malcolm Badewitz, collaboration turned out to be the missing piece that helped turn a long-gestating idea into The Cage, a high-concept action thriller that recently sold to Netflix in a fast-moving deal produced by Dylan Clark.
An Advice Call That Turned Into a Creative Partnership
Badewitz, originally from Seattle, had been grinding his gears in Los Angeles for years, working production jobs, entering contests, and writing constantly. But breaking in as a writer still seemed like a distant dream.
“I decided I'm just going to quit my production job on this reality show I was on, and go to grad school,” he says, and enrolled in UCLA’s MFA screenwriting program during the pandemic.
With classes on Zoom and no organic way to meet people, Badewitz did something proactive. He logged onto UCLA’s alumni mentor directory and started calling people. Near the top of the list was Chris Grillot.
“I called Chris up and was like, ‘Hey, I’m a student at UCLA.’ Chris was like, ‘How’d you get my number?’” Badewitz says, laughing. Grillot had forgotten he signed up for the alumni mentor program back in 2017.
What started as a call for advice on navigating film school eventually turned into a creative partnership. Both writers shared a deep love of genre and a similar sensibility about what kinds of movies they wanted to make. They stayed in touch after Badewitz graduated, trading scripts and notes. Then fate nudged them again: by pure coincidence, they ended up signing with the same agent.
“It felt like the universe was saying, ‘You guys should probably do something together,’” Grillot says.
From 30 Pages of Ideas to ‘The One’
Early last year, Grillot and Badewitz made a decision that changed everything: they scheduled weekly meetings and committed to actually developing a project.
But the one they kept returning to was an idea rooted in Grillot’s past life as a crime reporter in New Orleans – something that was raw and grounded in real experience. As they talked it through, they kept circling back to it.
“You kind of know when you hit the one,” Grillot says. “We just kept coming back to it.”
That idea became The Cage. While they can’t share the logline with us, they knew immediately it had the thing they were both chasing: a big, hooky concept with room for great character development, action, and suspense.
After outlining The Cage together, Badewitz took the first pass while Grillot was tied up on another project. When they reconvened, they rewrote it together.
“We got very comfortable very quickly with rewriting each other,” Badewitz says. “You get used to seeing your words die.”
Grillot laughs. “Everything you write is only brilliant to you.”
Over time, they started absorbing each other’s instincts. “You start thinking with each other’s brain,” Grillot says. That cross-pollination didn’t just improve The Cage, it made them better writers.
Taking the Script Out
The script went out in the fall and the response was immediate. Producer Dylan Clark came on quickly, and the project went straight to Netflix. Within weeks, it sold.
“From taking it out to getting a yes, it was about four weeks,” Grillot says. “The fastest experience I’ve ever had.”
Advice for Writers Trying to Break In
For writers reading about spec sales and wondering how to make them happen, Badewitz points out that the script that got him his first reps was written five years earlier and he almost abandoned it along the way. “Sometimes it takes a while and that’s okay,” he says.
Grillot agrees that patience is non-negotiable but adds a crucial insight about the marketplace. “I’ve only had luck on the sales side with big, hooky ideas,” he says. “You can take personal stories and put them inside big ideas. I think people like to think that those things are mutually exclusive, where you can only have one or the other, but I think you can have both. Try and tell a story that encapsulates everything that makes you feel all the things, but also works as a sick trailer that makes an audience want to show up.”
Figure Out How Not To Be Afraid of Pitching
Most writers don’t enjoy pitching even though it’s a big part of the job. But Grillot and Badewitz have turned it into their superpower.
“Pitching used to scare the living sh*t out of me,” Grillot says. Then a mentor told him something he initially thought was trite: treat pitching as something fun. He thought it was ridiculous advice until he tried shifting his mindset. It worked.
“I don’t know what happened, but I started having fun doing it. And now I really enjoy pitching,” he says.
Badewitz is also on board with seeing pitching as a superpower, saying, “A lot of the work that I do on rewrites is just pitching what your rewrite would be.”
It’s good advice.