When Snyder published his book in 2005, it was as if an explosion ripped through Hollywood. The book offered something previous screenplay guru tomes didn’t. Instead of a broad overview of how a screen story fits together, his book broke down the three-act structure into a detailed “beat sheet”: 15 key story “beats”—pivotal events that have to happen—and then gave each of those beats a name and a screenplay page number. Given that each page of a screenplay is expected to equal a minute of film, this makes Snyder’s guide essentially a minute-to-minute movie formula.

It doesn't surprise me that almost all screenwriting follows a formula.

Having a formula lowers the risk of production.

Who should write "Save the Princess! The Last Book on Free to Play Gaming You'll Ever Need!"?

I'll put that on my "to do" list after I write the "Badass Princesses" screenplay:

http://pandawhale.com/post/23324/tangled-rapunzel-vs-brave-merida-gif

Rather than a formula, I think it's the _structure_ of storytelling. (Mckee's book Story is referenced in the article, where he quotes 2000-year-old examples of story structure.) It's like saying "all web sites follow a formula" because they have navigation at the top, or similar ways to leave comments ... these are the structures we've gravitated towards because they work.