I’m always hesitant with making David O Russell related threads but I think this is an interesting study.

American Bullshit was the original screenplay to American Hustle and got on the BlackList. Written by Eric Singer.
Script: dailyscript.com/scripts/American_BullShit.pdf

Later David O Russell got ahold of it and did a full page one rewrite.

I think this is good to study to see how you can take an already really good screenplay and advance it even further with rewrites.

If you don’t wanna read both screenplays this podcast does a good job of establishing the difference between the original and rewrite:
draft-zero.com/2014/dz-07

I personally haven’t read the original yet but it sounds like David did a lot of character work and changed the screenplay from being plot heavy to a more character driven film. Apparently the characters (especially female characters) were very 1-dimensional and he breathed alot of life into them.

Hangover is another script that was very different before Todd Phillips got involved

Also Toy Story 2

I love spotting differences between drafts I gotta check this out

Oh word? I never heard of that with Hangover and Toy Story 2

I really like the character work in American Hustle. They all
Got distinctive personalities even tho some may call it over the top.

So it was interesting to see all of that came out of the rewrites and an original (fully completed and marketed) screenplay already existed without that character work.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen American Hustle so it’ll be fun to read this then watch the movie right after

I have posts listing all of the differences I found in the OG Hangover and Toy Story 2 scripts I’ll have to find them

Joker’s first draft is one of the worst things I’ve ever read

link