About Raindance Seven
Raindance Seven essays exist to expose the respectable lies that quietly drain filmmakers dry. Not scams — systems. Words that sound supportive while extracting free labour, emotional compliance, and silence. This one dismantles a phrase so normalised it rarely gets questioned: “exposure.” If you’ve ever been offered it instead of money, leverage, or commitment, this isn’t career advice. It’s a warning label.
Why “Development Hell” Is a Business Model
Let’s stop pretending this is an accident.
Development hell isn’t a tragedy.
It’s not bad luck.
It’s not “just how the industry works.”
It’s a deliberate operating system — one that extracts labour, ideas, and hope while avoiding risk, payment, or commitment.
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
1. Development Hell Converts Ambition Into Free R&D
Here’s what “development” usually means in practice:
Endless notes
Structural rewrites
New attachments
Strategy pivots
Tone shifts
Market recalibrations
All unpaid.
All speculative.
Your script becomes research and development for institutions that don’t want to finance originality, only to sample it.
They harvest ideas.
They test writers.
They lose nothing if the project dies.You lose years.
2. Time Is the Real Currency… And You’re Paying
Development hell works because time is invisible.
No invoice.
No deadline.
No formal rejection.
Just:
“We love it, but let’s take it to the next stage.”
Each stage delays you just long enough to stop you leaving — but never long enough to force a decision.
This is not mentorship.
It’s time arbitrage.
They sit on your project while you stop making new ones.
3. Notes Are Used to Transfer Risk Downwards
Every round of notes does one thing brilliantly:
It shifts responsibility onto you.
If the project fails, it’s because:
The script wasn’t quite there
The tone needed refining
The market changed
The attachment fell through
Notice who is never accountable.
Development hell is how institutions avoid saying:
“We don’t want to back this.”
Because saying that would end the game.
4. “Still in Development” Preserves Optionality
A project in development is a non-decision.
It allows companies to:
Signal taste
Appear active
Block competitors
Control IP without buying it
All while committing to nothing.
Optionality is power.
And development hell is how that power is preserved without spending money.
5. It Rewards Compliance, Not Vision
Here’s the quiet damage.
Development hell selects for:
Agreeableness
Endless rewrites
Deference to notes
Patience disguised as professionalism
The filmmakers who survive it aren’t the boldest.
They’re the most enduring.
The NonDē era exposes this for what it is:
a filtering system that removes urgency, edge, and ownership.
6. It Keeps You Identifying as “Not Ready”
As long as your project is “in development,” you are:
Emerging
Promising
Nearly there
Never:
Releasing
Shipping
Owning outcomes
This keeps you psychologically dependent.
You start believing the lie that:
“Once this project goes, everything changes.”
It rarely does.
Because development hell isn’t a phase.
It’s a loop.
7. The Exit Is Making the Film Anyway
Here’s the part people hate hearing.
Most projects don’t escape development hell.
They walk out.
Here’s how they walk out:
Reducing scope
Reclaiming rights
Rewriting for containment
Financing sideways
Building audience first
This is the NonDē move.
Development hell only works on filmmakers who believe permission is coming.
It isn’t.
The Brutal Truth
Development hell exists because:
Too many filmmakers wait
Too many institutions hedge
Too many careers are built on delay
If a system consumes years without forcing a yes or no,
it is not broken.
It is working exactly as designed.
What Replaces It in the NonDē Era
NonDē filmmakers:
Develop toward production, not approval
Limit notes by limiting stakeholders
Attach audience before financiers
Design films that can be made without consensus
They don’t ask:
“Is it ready?”
They ask:
“What version of this can exist now?”
Raindance CTA
If you’re done being processed:
🎬 Saturday Film School — design fundable projects from day one
✍️ Producers’ Foundation Certificate — learn how films actually get financed
✍️ Writers Foundation Certificate - Get that idea out of head and onto paper
🎓 Raindance Film School (HND / BA / MA) — build, don’t beg
🤝 Raindance Membership — community, labs, mentors, momentum
❤️ Independent Film Trust — backing filmmakers who choose action over delay
We didn’t start Raindance to help people wait better.
We started it to help filmmakers leave the room and make the film.
That was true in 1993.
It’s survival now.
This is exactly why my next film is one that I'd sold to a fancy company 15 years ago when I was solely a screenwriter -- but regained rights to now that I am a director. It has been THRILLING to take something out of Development Hell and into active production on a smaller Non-De budget, leaning into relationships made during my first film and lessons learned. Thanks for writing about this. As usual, you are exactly right.
This article makes so much sense because it literally answers the provoking question- why does it take a year to make an 8 episode season?
In a concise way, it explains how the current system monetizes off of slow development processes when that standard wouldn't survive during the cable days.