Confidentiality

Just about every company for whom I've worked has made some mention of how the work I do for them is "confidential." Basically, they don't want other companies to know what material they're looking at and what degree of interest they have in it. Letting out that information could drive up the cost of a project ("Hey, Disney is interested, too, so how about $500,000 more for the script?") or lead to copycat projects that beat theirs to the theatres.

To a certain extent, this means "don't talk about what you've read," but since scripts do go out to more than one company, most are hardly secret. This, of course, doesn't apply to sequels (which will be generated completely in-house, thus no one should know much about them other than that one is being worked on) or drafts of projects in general (for though others will know of the original screenplay, the twists and turns of development could begin to take the story in an original and interesting direction, something the company doesn't want leaked).

I've never known of a reader being sued or fired over talking about their work, but knowing when to keep your mouth shut about something (especially when it comes to identifying the company interested in a script) should be considered on a case-by-case basis.

I've had some interesting adventures dealing with producers' quests to keep things confidential. One time, a producer of a film informed the distribution company I was reading for (the project was about to go into production and my company was interested in buying the rights to various territories) that he didn't want any copies of the script to get out of his hands, so I was dispatched to his home to read the script in his dining room. As I sat down and looked at the title page, I recognized a script I had just read a couple weeks before for a different company. Same draft. So much for secrecy.

Another time, a different producer was working on a sequel to a classic film and didn't want any details leaked, so I was sent a confidentiality agreement to sign that promised expensive punishment should I say anything at all about the project, even any mention of its very existence. I signed it and got the script messengered to me. As with the previously mentioned script, I had just read the same script for a different company. So, if I did talk about the script, could I just claim to have been talking about the other company's draft and not the one I signed the confidentiality agreement for?

The first film was made and became a modest hit (they did change the title from the time I read it and I'm too lazy to check IMDB right now to find the correct title...but it really doesn't matter for my story). The second film still hasn't been made and I don't really want to challenge someone's interpretation of the confidentiality agreement by mentioning it.

There are no secrets in Hollywood, but that doesn't mean you can't assure your employers that their poorly kept secrets aren't safe with you.