Why Writing the ‘King Richard’ Script Was a ‘Lightning-Strike Moment’ for Zach Baylin

thewrap.com:

This story about Zach Baylin first appeared in the Down to the Wire Issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.The assignment was simple, according to “King Richard”producer Tim White. “It was a case,” he said, “of going to a writer and saying, ‘It has to be the one script that everyone in town is talking about.

Go.’”The writer he settled on was Zach Baylin, who’d never before had a produced script. Fortunately for Baylin, Tim White and his brother and partner Trevor White weren’t quite so explicit about saying they needed him to produce Hollywood’s buzziest screenplay for their film about Richard Williams, the hard-driving father of future tennis champions Venus and Serena Williams. “I don’t know if they let me into the room that much at the beginning,” said Baylin, who ended up landing an Oscar nomination with his first feature screenplay credit. “But it was pretty clear that having a script that got attention was going to be necessary to get the Williams’ family’s involvement.”Tim White had had the idea to make the film a few years earlier — but sending an email to Venus predictably drew no response, and he knew the next step had to be “a script that was absolutely undeniable.” He met with writers from 2015 to 2017 without ever finding anyone he thought could deliver that. “We heard every different permutation of the movie,” he said. “We heard everything from ‘It’s the entire story, from 1978 to 2000,’ to ‘The whole movie is the road trip from Compton to (tennis coach) Rick Macci’s academy (in Florida).’” Finally, they met with Baylin in New York about a different project — but when the writer announced that he was going to the U.S.