Winner
Powerhouse by Justin Daries James
Born and raised in central Florida, Justin spent his childhood running around barefoot with a video camera glued to his hand.
With a lifelong dream of following in Steven Spielberg’s footsteps, Justin set out for the west coast at nineteen, where he spent the first few months bouncing between PA gigs and living out of his car. Eventually, he worked his way up the production ladder, while squeezing in late night writing sessions in pursuit of his ultimate dream.
In 2014, a family health crisis sent him and his high school sweetheart back to the east coast, where they were forced to put their careers on pause. What was meant to be a two-month hiatus turned into a three year ‘all is lost’ detour ripped straight from the pages of Blake Snyder’s “Save the Cat.” Despite the growing financial and geographical hurdle, Justin continued pursuing his dream, even when that meant restarting from the bottom. With two thousand miles between him and the industry, Justin sought alternative methods to get his material noticed.
In 2017 one of his pilots landed at the top of The Black List, where it stayed at number one for an unprecedented seventeen weeks.
In 2018, while working nineteen hour days as a PA for an east coast reality show, he decided on a whim to enter his first screenwriting contest. With a sobering One-hundred-and-thirty-two dollars in his bank account, he coughed up the $60 admissions fee and prayed for a miracle.
On July 29th, that miracle came true when he was announced the winner of Script Pipeline’s 2018 TV Writing Contest. By early August, he was jumping from one corner office to the next, meeting with top producers and agents.
With a second chance at his dream, Justin aims to write original television pilots with a twisty mix of dark comedy and complex drama. As one studio exec described his writing, “He’s like the lovechild of Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy, raised by Carl Hiaasen.” A comparison he’s quite happy with.
Runner-up
End of Life by Sean Collins-Smith
Sean Collins-Smith is a former midnight crime journalist, journalism professor and nurtures a life-long obsession with Bruce Springsteen. He’s lived in Richmond, Virginia, for all of his 30 years, where he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University after studying cinema and broadcast journalism.
Sean started entering teleplay contests in 2017, when he became a finalist in the Austin Film Festival. Since then, Sean has been in a finalist in the Atlanta Film Festival, the WeScreenplay Diverse Voices Competition, and won the 2018 ISA Fast-Track Fellowship, which connected him to his eventual manager, Jewerl Ross of Silent R Management.
Sean and his wife are moving to Los Angeles in November in pursuit of a television writing career with nothing more than four pilot scripts, two cats and a dream of being a showrunner.
In “Badlands,” Bruce Springsteen declares:
“Poor man wanna be rich,
Rich man wanna be king,
And a king ain’t satisfied ‘til he rules everything,
I wanna go out tonight,
I wanna find out what I got.”
For Sean, it’s time to cross the country and find out what he’s got.
Finalists
End of Life by Sean Collins-Smith
In Irons by Sommer Rusinski
Inner Beast by Greta Harrison & Matthew C. Vaughan
Lost Time by Jenny Raftery
Mindfulness by Daniel Rivera
Powerhouse by Justin Daries James
Priceless by Joshua Faulkner
Seamstresses by Margarita Rozenbaoum
Sugar Land by R.B. Ripley
White Power Barbie by Joshua Berman & Janelle Goforth
Semifinalists
American Made by Samuel Tofsted
Atlanta – “Stockholm” by Jovan Robinson
Bitch by Gary Sewell
Black & White by Richard McGovern
Black Circle by Nathan Wilcoxen
Black Hostel by Jovan Robinson
Clearwater by Jenny Raftery
Double Time Dames by Davia Carter
End of Life by Sean Collins-Smith
Flesh + Blood by Emily Eslami & Jeffrey Nieves
Glitter Gulch by Scott Root
Hooch by Gabrielle Meyer
In Irons by Sommer Rusinski
Inner Beast by Greta Harrisonn & Matthew C. Vaughan
Lost Time by Jenny Raftery
Lyre by Amanda Prentiss
Mindfullness by Daniel Rivera
NPCs by Andrew Golder
Powerhouse by Justin Daries
Priceless by Joshua Faulkner
Psycho Spa by Allison Rose Phelan
Seamstresses by Margarita Rozenbaoum
Simonology by Grant Pardee
Sugar Land by R.B. Ripley
Ten Thousand Islands by Peter Short & Sue Batterton
Tested by Lisanne Sartor
The Machiavellis by Tony Dunoyer
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel – “Try Me” by Sean Hetherington
Wasteland by Adam Tinius
White Power Barbie by Joshua Berman & Janelle Goforth
Quarterfinalists
20,000 Leagues by Cody Pearce
American Made by Samuel Tofsted
Apostate by Lee Kunz & Katherine Montgomery
Atlanta – “Stockholm” by Jovan Robinson
Atlanta – “Ring Ring” by Jose Chavez
Banshees by Elizabeth Daly
Bastards by Erin Muroski
Better Call Saul – “Queso” by Jimmy Prosser
Binary by Eric Shahinian
Bitch by Gary Sewell
Black & White by Richard McGovern
Black Circle by Nathan Wilcoxen
Black Hostel by Jovan Robinson
Black Mirror – “Contest Kid” by Idil Tabanca
Bob’s Burgers – “Burga-Lounger” by Gregory Henn
Book of Ruth by Claire Newman
Broad City – “Eat Pray Run” by Molly Kiernan
Brooklyn Nine-Nine – “Sidetracked” by Michael Gene Conti
Brother’s Keeper by Jacqueline Wright
Child of Rage by Shoshana Sachi
Clearwater by Jenny Raftery
Days of Infamy by Saiya Floyd
Deadline by Tyler Chatham
Double Time Dames by Davia Carter
Drop Zone by Megan Wilson
End of Life by Sean Collins-Smith
Fargo – Spec by Valiantsin Balanovich
Filii Familias by Christopher Lastrapes
Flesh + Blood by Emily Eslami & Jeffrey Nieves
Galapagos by Lukas Hassell
Girl Arrested by Linda Davidson
Glitter Gulch by Scott Root
God Damn by Luke Mones
Hallelujah Baptist by Maggie Calton
Hazmat by Capucine Berney
Honest to God by Alyssa Lerner
Hooch by Gabrielle Meyer
In Irons by Sommer Rusinski
Inhereit-ly Gay by Michael Preston
Inner Beast by Greta Harrison & Matthew C. Vaughan
John Q by Jason Jung
LARP by Sean Frasier
Lionhearts: The Hawk and the Lion by Tobin Addington
Lost Time by Jenny Raftery
Lyre by Amanda Prentiss
Magical Girls by Eric Dietel
Mindfullness by Daniel Rivera
Nellie by Alice Packard
NPCs by Andrew Golder
Passé Blanc by Ron Huett
Powerhouse by Justin Daries
Priceless by Joshua Faulkner
Psycho Spa by Allison Rose Phelan
Radium Girls by Kelsey O’Brien
Rick and Morty – “Rick to the Future” by Michele Dahl
Rivers of Blood by Mario Theodorou
Road Kid Max by Nicole Feste
Seamstresses by Margarita Rozenbaoum
Shanda by Jillian Lauren
Simonology by Grant Pardee
Sins by Jason Walter Vaile
Stand Your Ground by LE Neal
Stringer by Elaine Loh
Sugar Land by R.B. Ripley
Ten Thousand Islands by Peter Short & Sue Batterton
Tested by Lisanne Sartor
The Chords of War by Samuel Gonzalez Jr.
The Crown – “Bad Mother” by BettySullivan
The Fourth Wall by Zac Loy
The High Priest by Guido Segal
The Institution by Christopher Crane
The Lucy Gray Agency by Pamela Jones & Anna-Lisa Jones
The Machiavellis by Tony Dunoyer
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel – “Try Me” by Sean Hetherington
The Rapture by Shalini Adnani
Thirty Ought Six by Scott Honea
Time Raptors by Simon Taylor
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt – “Kimmy Gives a Speech!” by Adam Pasulka
Vaudeville by Kevin Engelking
Vectors by Timothy Bacon & Grant Fraggalosch
Wasteland by Adam Tinius
When in Rome by Rob Thorman
White Power Barbie by Joshua Berman & Janelle Goforth
Zero Tolerance by Nick Coviello