Script

Treatment

Also called Film treatment

What is treatment in film production?

A treatment is a prose summary of a film or episode, written in present tense, that tells the whole story scene by scene without dialogue formatting. Treatments run from two to around twenty pages and are used to pitch a story, or to agree its shape, before the screenplay is written.

A treatment reads like a short story told in the present tense: what happens, in order, with the key turns and the ending included. Producers want the ending — a treatment that withholds it reads as a story that does not have one yet.

A treatment that grows to include beats of dialogue and scene detail is sometimes called a scriptment, sitting between a treatment and a full draft.

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Reviewed 2026-10-09

Related terms

Logline: A logline is a one- or two-sentence summary of a screenplay that names the protagonist, what they want, and what stands in the way. It is the first thing a producer, agent or competition reader sees, and it has to make them want to read the script before they have read a page of it.
Scriptment: A scriptment is a hybrid of a treatment and a screenplay: mostly prose description of the story, with key scenes written out in screenplay form, including dialogue. It is a working document, used to develop a story's shape in detail before committing to a full draft.
Beat sheet: A beat sheet is a list of the major story events in a screenplay, in order, each written as a short line or paragraph. It lays out the structure — where the inciting incident, midpoint and act breaks fall — so the story can be tested and rearranged before scenes are written.