THE BASIC DEFINITION
In development is one of the most common and most misunderstood phrases in the film industry. A project is 'in development' from the moment someone decides to try to make it until pre-production begins - or, more commonly, until the project is abandoned. The phrase is used to describe everything from 'a writer has an idea' to 'we have a director attached, a cast attached, half the financing secured, and we start shooting in eight months.' The range covered by the same phrase is enormous.
THE STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
Option: A production company or studio pays a writer or rights holder for the exclusive right to develop a project based on their material - a book, a screenplay, an article, a true story - for a defined period, typically twelve to eighteen months, with the option to renew. The option fee is typically a fraction of what the rights would cost to buy outright. If the project doesn't go forward, the rights revert to the original holder.
Script development: A screenplay is written, rewritten, developed through notes from producers and studio executives, rewritten again. Most screenplays go through multiple drafts, sometimes with multiple writers. A script can spend years in development without ever being greenlit. The Writers Guild of America tracks the average number of scripts that enter development for every one that gets made: the ratio is not encouraging.
Packaging: A project gains 'elements' - a director, a lead actor, a financier - that make it more attractive to the next party in the chain. A script with no director attached is harder to take to a studio than the same script with a named director attached. A project with a director and a star is easier to take to a financier than a project with only a director. The packaging stage is the process of assembling these elements.
Financing: The money. For studio films, this is the studio's decision to greenlight - to commit the production budget. For independent films, this is the assembly of multiple funding sources: co-production agreements, presales to international distributors, government film fund grants, private equity, gap financing. A film can have a director, a cast, and a script, and still spend years in development waiting for the financing to close.
DEVELOPMENT HELL
Development hell is a specific state of development in which a project is perpetually almost happening. It has been announced, has attached elements, and never moves forward - because the financing keeps falling apart, because the key element keeps changing, because the studio can't decide what it wants the film to be, because the legal complexity of the rights situation keeps producing new obstacles.
Specific examples: Guillermo del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness has been in development at various studios since approximately 2006. The first two decades of attempts to adapt Isaac Asimov's Foundation. The long history of attempts to adapt Catcher in the Rye before J.D. Salinger refused all of them definitively. Development hell is not rare - it is the normal state of most projects that get announced in the trade press.
WHAT THIS MEANS WHEN YOU READ TRADE ANNOUNCEMENTS
When Deadline or The Hollywood Reporter announces that a film has been 'set up' at a studio, or that a director has been 'attached' to a project, or that a star has been 'cast' in a film: what this means is that the project is in development. It has moved a stage forward. This is not the same as the film being made, or the film being likely to be made.
The trade press covers development announcements because they signal industry relationships and agency deals as much as they signal films that will eventually exist. The announcements matter for what they reveal about the industry's circulation of projects and people; they should not be read as reliable predictions of the films you will eventually see.
Development hell is not rare - it is the normal state of most projects that get announced in the trade press.