Winner
Brobot Island
James Anderson Hunt
James Anderson Hunt is a writer/director based in Los Angeles, California. He grew up in Georgetown, Texas and graduated from Baylor University with a BA in Film & Digital Media.
Whether imagining elaborate tales with action figures as a kid, writing and directing parodies of The Lord of the Rings in high school (where he and his best friend played every character) or expanding his creative voice beyond screenwriting through improv courses at the Upright Citizens Brigade, James has only wanted to do one thing: tell stories.
Having been raised on The Twilight Zone, he’s most drawn to stories that can entertain us on a large scale while also revealing something to us about what it means to be human. The bigger the premise but more intimate the story, the better. His previous scripts have placed in the ScreenCraft Sci-Fi & Fantasy Screenplay Competition and the Austin Film Festival. Most recently, he won the 2023 Script Pipeline Screenwriting Contest with his A.I. reality dating show action/comedy, Brobot Island.
Runner-up
Devils Reach
Shauna O’Meara
Shauna O’Meara is a screenwriter and multiple-Aurealis-Award winning short story writer based in the cold, mountainous reaches of far southern Australia.
A feature and TV writer in the action-adventure, thriller, and dramedy space, Shauna’s aim is to combine complex concepts with popular genre tropes to create stories that explore contemporary social issues while keeping audiences hooked to the end.
Shauna’s love of quality film and TV spans the full genre spectrum from workplace sitcoms, societal- critique thrillers, monster-in-the-house movies, and science-quests, to the incredible run of iconic science fiction, natural-disaster and comedy films of the 1990s and 2000s. Her favourite films include The Big Short, Adaptation, Parasite, Twister, Moon, The Way Way Back, and Talladega Nights.
Shauna is inspired by the cool science and accessible storytelling style of Michael Crichton, the creeping tension of John Carpenter, and the incisive social satire and ensemble character-work of Adam McKay. Her work centres upon three-dimensional characters whose world-view and circumstances shape the narrative: competent, professional and working-class women in their many forms; complex chess-move antagonists; found families; and thrown-together teams of regular people that audiences can see themselves in. Ever looking for high concept means of telling the smaller, personal tales of what it is to be human, Shauna’s humour-laced work often touches upon themes of ambition, class mobility, financial security, belonging, and the opportunity cost of the paths in life not taken.
Devils Reach, Shauna’s Script Pipeline feature, is a wilderness survival thriller set among the people and landscapes of the rugged, timber-and-sea countryside of Tasmania. Exploring the divisive forces of gentrification upon rural and remote communities, Devils Reach draws real-life inspiration from Shauna’s former career as an outback veterinarian.
Shauna grew up in Perth, where the beaches are stunning and the white pointers very hungry. She is currently writing an Australian shark movie that isn’t about surfing ;)
She can be found at:
Twitter: @OMearaShauna
Instagram: @shaunaomeara
Finalists
Alma
Indi Rees
Buzzkill
Colin McLaughlin
Point Nemo
Brad Starr
Sundown
Eve Symington
Tell Them of Me
Joshua Joel Bailey
The Mission
Joshua Sonny Harris & Lyle Parsons
The Money Shot
Brett Konner
Y’all Qaeda
Zach Freshley
Semifinalists
Abigail Franklin’s Improbability of Stardom
Carley Aggromito
As We Know It
Amy Thomas
Big Game Saga
Bill Poore
How To Make The Negro Soldier
Xavier Stiles
Love-15
Natalie Malizia
Nookie
Gregory Goodness
Picture Us in the Light
Justin Brenneman
(based on the novel by Kelly Loy Gilbert)
Plutonic
Era Ming
Skitching
Thomas R. Schrack
Tell Me A Story
Brittany Wang
The Silent Room
David Schlow
u, me and catastrophe
Ben Servetah
Waiting Games
Jeffrey Field
Where the Rainbow Ends
Devon Bostick
Quarterfinalists
Ally All Over Again
Monika Moreno-Lapp
Astral Bodies
Brad Starr
CARDBOARD
Juice Caballero
Deaf
Joshua Sonny Harris
Everybody Hates Rosemary
Ashley Oliver
Killer Road Trip
Evan Rindler & Jon Rizik
Marge and Deborah’s Haunted Halloween Hayride
John Brugal
Margo & Perry
Becca Roth
Powder Keg
Joe Favalaro
Power Couple
Peter Andrews
Rise
James Barrett & Tony Robenalt
Scores
Gavrielle Jacobovitz
She Used to be Zoey Darling
Nat Cowan
They Have Eight
Cassandra Betancourt
Upstaged
Cynthia Riddle
Where They’re Kept
L.X. Mitev
White Elephants
Marguerite Spellman
Your Turn
Jessie Gill
Finalists Announced – August 1st
Winner Announced – August 12th