Create a conflict that can go the distance and chances are you're writing a screenplay that will go places. You've talked about the commercial potential of different projects. Everyone wants to work. And many actors are wanting to branch out and do something different. I'm looking for a character who takes a journey, who takes risks on that journey, and who experiences internal conflicts that tear them apart and cause them to do something worth telling a story about while searching for the resolutions to those conflicts.
Concept is also important.
You want a concept that you can sum up in one quick line that leaves the person who reads or hears that line wanting more, just like the people who see the one-sheet will be wanting to know more, and will pay their money at the box office to find out what happens next. The keys I look for are subtext, where people don't say what they really mean, where people talk around each other, at each other, where their personalities and points of view are distinct. Everyone sounds different on the page. Somebody who writes funny, creates laughs and conflict on page one, and has a skewed way of looking at the world. Somebody who's appealing.