First Look Project Results

Action & Scifi – Winner – Against All Entropy by Nick McMurdy Nick McMurdy was born and raised in the rural Rust Belt wasteland just outside of Pittsburgh, where he witnessed his hometown slowly fade away like blotted watercolor. In fact, Nick’s own childhood home was converted into a meth lab by the last owners, and sold at a police auction for $1,000.* That’s why he writes offbeat dramatic features about working-class loners, focusing on themes of purpose and belonging. Some of Nick’s other notable screenplay awards include the Roadmap Writers Top Tier Grand Prize, Winner of the Summer Los Angeles International Screenplay Awards, and Top 1% on Coverfly. He also has nearly 20 years of experience in the advertising industry, with over 80 productions under his creative direction. (*Nick has never done meth.) – Runner-up – Sonny is a God! by Scott Tinkham Scott Tinkham is an award-winning Writer & Director…

SCREENPLAY Action/Sci-fi Loser by Elad Ziv – Winner Elad Ziv was born in the beautiful port city of Haifa, Israel. His family later relocated to the exotic, frozen tundra of Buffalo, NY before Elad decided to head for the beautiful California weather by his lonesome. All so he could sit in his home and write for the rest of his life. Elad was a Division I scholar athlete at Temple University where he graduated with a marketing degree. After college, Elad went on to explore the end of his adolescence by living as a model in New York City and Miami. It was after this exploration that he made the move to Los Angeles to pursue a career in writing. Since being in LA, Elad has received recognition for his writing by most recently winning the 2021 Script Pipeline First Look Project. He has also placed as a finalist in…

SCREENPLAY Action/Sci-fi Goodnight Jonathan by Theo Wanderydz – Winner Theo has always been an adventurer and thrill seeker – but grew up in a small town in Sweden where nothing comes about. Instead, he created his own adventures in his backyard – waving sticks around like elven swords or lightsabers. Those stories still exist today, but as he grew older, he learned that the pen was mightier than the sword… (stick). His first introduction to filmmaking came after he was robbed at 12-years-old, and the established filmmaker Ruben Östlund decided that the crime would make a great film. A few years later PLAY (2011) premiered around the world, and Theo got to see one of his real-life stories come alive on screen. However, it would take a few years before he wrote his first feature, but luckily that screenplay earned him a spot at the National Film & Television School…

SCREENPLAY Action/Adventure The Motherfuckin Ruckus by Joe Tower & Alex Gradet – Winner JOE TOWER is a screenwriter and content manager specialized in entertainment marketing and developmental editing. He taught creative writing at Columbia College, was the Associate Editor for F Magazine, and founded the renowned Chicago literary series, Readings Under the Influence. As a producer for Hatbeard Company, he created long-time Los Angeles storytelling series, Tales Of Our Folly, as well as multiple podcasts, and helped found the theater company Barker Room Rep with director Mark Sitko. He’s written dozens of commercials, TV pitches, and is a published interviewer, essayist, and cultural critic. Over the course of his career, ALEXANDER GRADET has created award-winning graphics, music, lyrics, screenplays, stageplays, puppetry, comic books, commercials, promos and branding content for Disney Channel, Blue Sky Studios, DC Comics, and The American Museum of Natural History. His most recent credits include co-writing The Motherfuckin’ Ruckus with Joe…

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….

SCREENWRITING Action/Adventure Dead Man’s Gulch by Rob Rex – Winner Rob Rex is a screenwriter from Telluride, Colorado — which is important, because it says a lot about the influences that shape his writing. Known to most for its world-class skiing, extreme sports, and year-round festivals, Rob has found (or was born with) a particular fascination with Telluride’s Wild West history of bank robbers, outlaws, miners, and bootstrappers. But there’s more to it than that. The dramatic peaks and vertical cliff faces — formed over millennia and blanketed by a night sky so dark that you can see the Milky Way with your naked eye — evoke grander schemes and otherworldly muses. Thus, both history and science-fiction intermingle in much of Rob’s work. Rob has won a number of awards for his writing. His dual wins in Script Pipeline’s First Look Project (Action/Adventure and Sci-Fi) mark the first time in…

SCREENWRITING Action/Adventure Sweep by Matthew Barr – Winner Matthew was born and raised far away from Hollywood. He grew up reading sci-fi, fantasy, and comic books, and watching each and every movie he could get his hands on. An early love for art and storytelling shaped Matthew’s drive and ambitions for the rest of his life. Majoring in Illustration at Rochester Institute Of Technology, with a minor in Creative Writing, Matthew was convinced that he wanted to create comic books for a living. Soon after acquiring his art teaching certification, however, his love of visual storytelling began to crystallize into its purest form: movies. Matthew embarked on the perilous screenwriting journey and never looked back, incorporating all of his past experiences and skills into his writing. After writing countless pages, placing in numerous contests, undertaking the FAST Screenplay program, and now winning the First Look Project for Action/Adventure, he’s just getting started. Above…

SCREENWRITING Action / Adventure Bury Your Dead by Rick McGovern – Winner Rick grew up in a small town in California–so small that most people living there haven’t even heard of it. With only he and his Stephen King novels to keep him company, he fell in love with the art of writing. It wasn’t until after getting out of the military as a medic, and taking an acting class out of pure desperation for an easy elective course, did he fall in love with acting, eventually moving to Hollywood, getting his SAG card, and doing bit parts in TV shows that amounted to maybe half a full acting part. Love for writing never fully disappeared, so he started dabbling in writing short screenplays, mainly because his brain had a hard time coming up with a feature idea worth pursuing. But eventually his first feature idea came in the Spring of 2012….

SCREENWRITING Action / Adventure Animal Heist by Aneesh Chaganty & Sev Ohanian – Winner Sev Ohanian graduated from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in 2012, and has been a producer on 7 feature films since, including his first film: Fruitvale Station which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2013. He’s also produced short form content such as the Google Glass spot Seeds (directed by Aneesh), which received worldwide acclaim. He was named in 2014 one of the 11 Innovators Changing Hollywood by The Wrap, alongside Angelina Jolie, Jimmy Fallon, and other high-profile industry names in film and television. Currently, Sev serves as an adjunct professor at USC. Aneesh Chaganty (USC ‘13) is a writer and director whose most recent work, a Google Glass spot called “Seeds”, became an internet sensation after garnering more than 1 million YouTube views in 24 hours. Following its success, he was invited to join The Google Creative Lab…

Adaptation Forty Thieves by Scott Hamilton & Peter Hamilton Action / Adventure Unheralded Power by Alan Koenig Comedy The Ex-Man by Debbie Lollie Sci-Fi / Fantasy Holorex by Eric Dietel & Taylor Gledhill Horror / Thriller The Beautiful Dead by Kyle Rynicki & John Rodgers Teleplay Ad Game by Greg Wayne

Adaptation Besa by Mike Miceli & Delson Armstrong Action / Adventure The Cause of it All by John Cruz & Mark Dormitorio Comedy Space Cadet by Nived Ravikumar & Ben Stebor Fantasy Rumpel by Lisa Garvey Horror / Thriller Under Angels by Jace Daniel Teleplay MFTV by Kristi Hall