Exclusive: Frank Spotnitz on new voices, ‘The X-Files’ and the secret to Hollywood’s success

Frank Spotnitz (Source: Big Light Productions)

As Leonardo firm Big Light Productions welcomes its latest writing apprentice, CEO Frank Spotnitz tells Mark Layton why it’s so important to nurture new voices, what he learned 30 years ago on The X-Files, and why the content bubble bursting is a good thing.

Frank Spotnitz’s Big Light Productions (Leonardo, The Man In The High Castle) has selected Israeli screenwriter and director Dekel Nitzan as the latest recipient of its annual writer’s apprenticeship programme.

Nitzan, who is currently based in Germany, has written for Israeli crime drama Line In The Sand for Keshet 12 and serves as a staff writer on a yet-to-be-announced MoviePlus Productions’ drama series for HOT Cable Communication.

He was selected having completed the Serial Eyes postgraduate television training programme for TV writers at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin, where Spotnitz is a founding tutor. Nitzan will take up his apprenticeship in January and gain practical experience in a writers’ room, collaborating on local and international projects and new series development.

“[Nitzan is] a brilliant writer – and it was a really tough decision, honestly, because there were so many brilliant writers in the programme to choose from,” Spotnitz tells TBI.

Dekel Nitzan (Source: Big Light Productions)

Getting a leg up

For the past seven years, Big Light Productions has held the apprenticeship programme, designed to support emerging screenwriters with a three-month placement at the firm, which is also behind Devils and Medici, and marked a decade in the business this year.

“For us, it’s a chance to help emerging talent find its place and use Big Light not just to provide added training, but kind of endorse them and help them get a leg up in the industry.”

Spotnitz says that the lack of new blood entering the industry is “a really serious problem” and explains that the apprenticeship programme is Big Light’s way of addressing the imbalance. He tells TBI: “It’s shocking, how un-diverse the television business is; racially, socio-economically, different religious backgrounds, different gender orientations – it’s a shockingly monolithic culture.

“I think there’s a kind of a conservatism and a reluctance to change and embrace other voices. That’s part of why I like to teach and embrace people that others aren’t giving a hand up to.”

Big Light also sets up writers’ rooms on some of its shows, a common way of working in the US that Spotnitz – an American writer and producer now based in the UK – notes is “very unusual” in Europe, but which he believes Nitzan and other new talent can benefit from.

Leonardo (Source: Big Light Productions)

“When I came onto [Fox ’90s sci-fi hit] The X-Files, which was my first job in television 30 years ago, the first day, I walked into the writers’ room with five other writers who had far more experience than I did. And I was paid as a full-time job, I was paid to sit in that room, and see how they approached story and character and theme, how they argued and came to the best possible answer and the work ethic they had about their writing. I was paid to learn – and I got so much better for being in that writers’ room.

“Here in the UK and the rest of Europe, writers are just expected to be geniuses somehow. You don’t have any exposure to the rest of the business, you don’t really talk to many other writers – you’re supposed to know all of this somehow. This, to me, is one of the secrets of Hollywood success in the last 30 years – it fostered this system of collaboration and learning from other writers,” says Spotnitz

Looking back on his time on The X-Files, which also celebrates its milestone 30th anniversary this year, Spotnitz says that his favourite episode to work on, and one of the show’s most lauded, also demonstrates the benefits of working in a writers’ room.

“The one that I always cite as my favourite is called Memento Mori, which is the episode where Scully (Gillian Anderson) finds out she has cancer from her alien abduction. It’s the only episode of The X-Files that has four writers names on it and it’s the only one for which I was nominated for an Emmy for writing.

“It was written in a crisis situation because we’d lost a script we thought was coming in – so that’s why there were four writers who did it. It was the most improbable success of the whole series.”

Gillian Anderson and Frank Spotnitz behind the scenes on The X-Files (Source: Frank Spotnitz)

Bursting the bubble

Looking ahead to 2024 and beyond, Spotnitz has several irons in the fire, including an adaptation of TM Logan’s novel 29 Seconds, Warhammer series Eisenhorn, and a co-pro with Constantin Film about the Nuremberg Trials, as well as plans to develop the company’s first non-English language production, he tells TBI.

While acknowledging that it has been a “really tough year” for the industry, Spotnitz also sees the silver lining in the content “bubble” having burst in the long term, as commissioners scale back on both budgets and orders.

“I have to say, I think it’s a really good thing that it burst, it really made no economic sense. Both the volume of shows being made and the money that was being spent on those shows wasn’t rational.

“I think now there’s kind of a reckoning. People sobered up and the business that’s going to emerge, I think probably in the next six to 12 months, it’s going to be much more rational, much more sustainable and much better, I think for everybody. So I’m optimistic.”

Spotnitz says that he looks forward to the emergence of more water cooler shows, as a result. “What I hope is that in this new less crowded TV landscape, there’s more room for more shows like The X-Files; ones where we’ve all watched it, we all talk about it in school or in the office the next day and we have that common cultural experience that has kind of gone by the wayside in this era of binge watching.”