Pipeline Media Group Senior Executive Matt Joseph Misetich co-hosted the session Screenwriting 101: Demystifying Hollywood with Script Mag Editor Jeanne Veillette Bowerman at the 2019 Writer's Digest Conference in New York City....
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Perhaps the most important element for every television show is concept. Unlike movies, television shows need to convince audiences not only to watch the pilot but also to watch two or three or more seasons. This means combining a high-concept premise with compelling characters. Breaking Bad had that “wow” factor, as did stuff as diverse as Weeds, The Wire, and Killing Eve. But perhaps my favorite recent example is The Other Two. Here’s the premise in a nutshell: Imagine a teenager who becomes famous overnight after his Youtube music video goes viral (not unlike Justin Bieber). The show isn’t about him; it’s about his two older siblings, who are well into their late twenties and are not even remotely successful. It’s about them—the “other two.” Written by Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, the pilot’s teaser does an excellent job depicting that disparity. The show opens with 13-year-old sensation Chase Dubek…
Spenser Cohen’s spec Distant found a home with Amblin Partners, Automatik Entertainment, and Six Foot Turkey Productions. The sci-fi/romance follows a miner who has crash-landed on a hostile alien planet and must rescue the only other survivor, a woman trapped in an escape pod, as they run out of oxygen. We’re sure the movie will leave us breathless. Universal Pictures picked up Chris Borrelli’s action/thriller spec, which will be directed by Simon Crane. Although details are being kept under wraps, this marks Crane’s directorial debut after an impressive career as a stunt coordinator (credits include Salt, World War Z, and Edge of Tomorrow). Finally, Paramount Pictures and LuckyChap Entertainment are moving forward with Big Gay Jamboree, written by Jonathan Parks-Ramage and Maria Mindelle. The musical follows a raunchy woman who finds herself stuck in a 1940’s musical, sort of like Isn’t It Romantic? meets Judy Garland. Margot Robbie is set…
No Film School listed Script Pipeline as one of the top 5 screenwriting competitions worldwide. Previous Script Pipeline winner Evan Daugherty, who was introduced to management by Pipeline execs, sold Snow White and the Huntsman to Universal in one of the biggest spec sales of all-time. The success reverberated throughout the industry soon after and helped other contests gain more traction and legitimacy with producers. Read the full list of top screenwriting competitions here. Submit to the Screenwriting Competition Submit to the TV Writing Competition
January was unfortunately a lighter month for script sales (you can blame holiday recovery and Sundance for that), so here’s a list of the most notable stories: – Unburdened Entertainment and SB Projects have tapped Alyssa Hill to adapt Elaine Brown’s memoir A Taste of Power. The story follows Brown’s time as the first and only female leader of the Black Panthers from 1974–77. – Lisa Joy (Westworld) is set to direct Reminiscence from her 2013 Black List screenplay. Her Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan is set to produce. – Universal Pictures optioned Kim Liggett’s novel The Grace Year, set to be published this fall. Elizabeth Banks is set to direct. – Pete Davidson, Judd Apatow, and Dave Sirus’s untitled comedy script has been picked up by Universal and Apatow Productions. Based on Davidson’s own life, the film is set to star Davidson and will be directed by Apatow. – Amblin…
When it was released in 1993, Groundhog Day became a critical and commercial success, but its real legacy is its narrative. In the years since, countless movies and TV shows have played with the temporal loop structure Groundhog Day helped establish, in such diverse works as Edge of Tomorrow, Happy Death Day, Run, Lola, Run and at least one episode of nearly every sci-fi show the last two decades. The second most-recent example (barely beat out by Happy Death Day 2U—now in theaters!) is also the one that best exploits the premise from a thematic and philosophical perspective. Created by Natasha Lyonne, Leslye Headland, and Amy Poehler, Russian Doll takes the basic Groundhog Day premise and exploits it for all the existential dread it can muster. Although ostensibly a comedy (there are plenty of laughs to be had at the expense of NYC hipsters and with the dark comedy death…
Biophilia, co-produced by Script Pipeline, won the Best Screenplay award at the 2018 Brooklyn Film Festival. Written and directed by Marina Michelson, the short is “inspired by the effects of the 2008 recession” and serves as a commentary, in part, on self-reliance and our intimate connections to nature. The story: “Rachel, a former Brooklynite, has persuaded her boyfriend to take a stab at farming on his family’s abandoned sheep ranch. But the dream of self-reliance reveals itself to be a harsher reality and strains their relationship. When a sheep dies under their watch, Rachel becomes determined to deal with the remains and in doing so, prove her worth.” Biophilia was also accepted to three other festivals in North America. View the trailer. Read Marina’s interview with Women & Film and Film Pipeline. Follow: Facebook | Instagram
Winner Special by Jay Cundiff & Kyle Jorgensen Runner-up Watershed by Matthew Poisson
Winner Modelville by Emily Fairweather Emily Fairweather is an actress and screenwriter from the North East of England. She graduated from Northumbria University with a BA Hons degree in Media Production and went on to complete her classical acting training at Drama Studio London. Emily has acted for both stage and screen, including guest roles in BBC’s ‘Doctor’s’ and has made semi-regular appearances in ITV’s ‘Emmerdale’ and ‘Coronation Street’, as well as roles in a number of short films and theatre productions in both the North East and in London. She has been writing for TV and Film for almost three years and her first short film ‘108 Hours Missing’ was screened at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, as part of their Short Film Corner. She currently has a 6 x 60 TV Comedy Drama, ‘Serial Kleaners’ and a short film ‘Nan’, in development for 2019. She enjoys creating funny and flawed female characters, dark comedies and stories with a fantasy or hyper-realistic twist to…
Hollywood typically slows down for the holidays in December, and 2018 was no exception. To start things off: Ivan Reitman’s The Montecito Company and Tristar Pictures picked up the spec comedy The Best Friends. Chad Kultgen and Amy Rhodes’ script is described as a high-concept, meta romantic comedy. Lionsgate, The Picture Co., and Khalabo Ink Society are teaming up for Anthony Jaswinski’s horror spec The French Quarter Will Not Be Spared, which sets a vampire story during Hurricane Katrina. Endeavor Content snagged Peter Begler’s spec Wolf Country. The story follows a female cop as she tracks down a convicted fugitive, a former lawman who happens to be her father. Finally, Khalabo Ink Society and Twentieth Century Fox acquired Danny Segal and Isaac Schamis’ comedy The Guysmaids. Other script sales: – David Marshall Grant and Dan Savage are set to adapt Michael Ausiello’s book Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies for Focus…
Romantic comedy can be one of the most difficult genres to write. Sure, the ubiquity of mediocre romcoms might imply otherwise, but truly great movies in the genre are rather rare. For a good romantic comedy, the audience needs to not only care about the characters but also care about the stakes and believe that those stakes have real weight and real consequences. Over the summer, Crazy Rich Asians burst into theaters and became an immediate sensation—in equal parts because it provided much-needed representation of a group Hollywood often underrepresented and because it’s a damn good story. Directed by Jon M. Chu and written by Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim from Kevin Kwan’s novel, Crazy Rich Asians, the story follows Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) who travels to her boyfriend Nick Young’s (Henry Golding) hometown in Singapore to attend his best friend’s wedding and meet his family, who are crazy-rich and…
Let’s start things off with a slew of projects picked up by J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot: an untitled time travel story written by Ben Shiffrin; The Steps, Blair Butler’s twist on the possession genre; an untitled female-driven horror allegory by An Emmy for Megan’s Megan Amram; Courtney Hoffman’s The Seven Sisters of Scott County, which is about moonshining; a sci-fi romance Only the Lonely written by Dylan Meyer and Peter Glanz; and the “Clerks for a new generation” Everything Must Go, written by Lisa McQuillan and Logic, who is also set to star. (Whew!) Other, non–J.J. Abrams script sales include: – Legendary Pictures and The Gotham Group picked up Juel Taylor and Tony Rettenmaier’s near-future ByAll, which follows the aftermath of a post-LAPD Los Angeles. – BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, Rideback, and New Line Cinemas are teaming up for the supernatural horror Dear David. Written by Mike Van Waes, the movie…
It’s difficult to summarize Sorry to Bother You. Written and directed by rapper Boots Riley (his debut film as both writer and director), the film is easily the most original of 2018, and it’s got things to say. The story follows Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield), who really needs a job. The only place that’s hiring (and will also hire anyone) is a local telemarketing firm. At first, everyone Cash calls almost immediately hangs up on him, which is not so great since Cash works on commission. Eventually, he takes the advice of his coworker Langston (Danny Glover) and begins to use a “white voice,” which sounds exactly like David Cross. (Cross’s voice was dubbed over to hilarious results.) Soon, he becomes the firm’s number one telemarketer, and his life begins improving. That is, until the fratty CEO Steve Lift (Armie Hammer) takes an interest in Cash. From there, things quickly…
SCREENPLAY Action/Adventure Waitress #2 by Nathan Patton – Winner Nathan Patton didn’t grow up in a rural Arkansas town, population 85–he grew up on the outskirts of that town. That seclusion led to a lot of time spent inside his imagination, writing and drawing his own comic books, or acting out unmade Indiana Jones sequels in the woods behind his house. He’s still waiting to grow up, but he did eventually get a job, doing some work in the comics field, and working as a freelance journalist and weekly political cartoonist before eventually deciding to get his MFA in Writing. He’s a Michener Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, where he lives with his wife (who loves him) and dog (who tolerates him). His feature script, Greenwood, came in fifth place in the 2018 LAUNCH Million Dollar Screenplay contest and was a semifinalist in the 2018 Austin Film Festival….
Director Scott Speer (Midnight Sun) is set to helm Script Pipeline finalist and Recommend writer Greg Wayne’s dark romcom S21. Catapult and Needle’s Eye producing. Speer has also directed I Still See You and Step Up Revolution. This will be Greg’s first produced feature film. He previously won the Script Pipeline First Look Project with his comedy pilot Ad Game and has placed as a finalist and received a Recommend on numerous other screenplays and pilots, working closely with Script Pipeline development execs. From Greg: “Script Pipeline gives the best notes. Whenever I’m struggling with a project, their staff never fails to provide feedback that elevates the story. They take their commitment to Recommended writers, contest winners, and finalists incredibly seriously, and do an amazing job of getting those scripts out into the world.”
