I've heard it's the norm - when searching for a literary agent - to send your script to only one at a time and was wondering if anyone knew whether or not the same principle applied to production companies..?
Production company advice please
Thats what Ive heard, apparently its considered bad manners to send the same project out to several at the same time. I suppose, in the wonderful but unlikely event that you sent the same script to several people and two of them were interested, then you had to turn one down because you were going with the other one, then your name could well be mud with that production company from then on. though, of course, if you do it one at a time, seeing as how it takes most months to get back to you, in a year you may concievably only get your script looked at by two production companies, which is just far too slow going. Say the sixth place you sent it to were interested, at the rate they get back to you it could then be several years on from when you first started shopping it around! So its tricky to know what to do for the best.
This is one reason why I always have several projects circulating around and dont just put all my eggs in one basket.
Matthew has pretty much covered the pros and cons. Personally, I'd send a synopsis and sample scenes to several companies, if any bite and want to see the whole thing then submit the whole script to them, exclusively, until they yeah or nay it. Once you have a reply, repeat the process.
It's always good to have several projects going out but i'm terrible at organising and get hopelessly confused as to who has what.
Good advice guys, thanks a lot.