Romance and Comedy Award – 1 Week to Deadline!
If you haven’t entered our Romance and Comedy Award yet, you’d better move fast. There’s just one week until the deadline, which is coming up fast on January 17th!
Online Introduction to Professional Screenwriting Course – starts January 28th!
Do you want to learn more about the craft of screenwriting? WriteMovies is proud to present our Online Introduction to Professional Screenwriting Course, which will enhance your skills and take you through the entire screenwriting process from start to finish!
WriteMovies is delivering this course in partnership with Screenwriters Forum, and it will be run via Zoom over a period of 6 months. Sessions will take place on the last Thursday of each month, with the first coming up soon on January 28th!
Available internationally, no matter what corner of the world you’re from, you can book the whole course for $150 or pick and choose the workshops you’re most interested in for $30 each. The course covers all aspects of screenwriting and each month is dedicated to a different stage of writing a script. We start with developing concepts, and take you through to pitching your work and developing your career as a writer.
Attendees of similar courses by Screenwriters Forum in past years have rated them at over 90%, reporting an average increase in confidence of 20% on each subject. Here’s some of their feedback:
“Very well delivered and easy to relate back.”
“Really found this session hugely useful to draw thoughts together and starting seeing how script might hang together in a way easy for others to understand.”
“Great exercises really brought this to life.”
“Given me some very good ideas to work with.”
Learn the craft from start to finish. Click HERE to find out more and sign up today!
MAKE THE WEATHER – Fall Contest 3rd Place Winner!
Taking third place in our Fall Contest was a female-led crime drama in which a professional thief must contend with both the mob and the challenges of her complex family, and which particularly impressed us with its fantastic characters: MAKE THE WEATHER by Tom O’Connell!
WriteMovies Wall of Fame 2020
Happy New Year from all the team at WriteMovies! Last year was difficult in a lot of ways, but we’re proud to continue supporting writers – and today, we look back at our winners from 2020 to celebrate their successes. Here’s the WriteMovies Wall of Fame 2020!
All of our winners received script development and pitching to industry from us, with a cash prize for our Grand Prize Winners too! Here’s a reminder of the scripts that took the top spot this year:
- FRANKENSTEIN UNLEASHED by Neal Wiser: A unique take on a classic story, updating it to a dystopian future to expand on the themes of the original; this script captured the current zeitgeist, as well as having strong visuals and a fascinating concept.
- THE BOY ON THE COVER by Elizabeth Savage Sullivan: A dramatic story that explores the ethics of journalists who do whatever it takes to the get the shot, and the impact it has on the lives of the subjects whose faces go viral.
- RIDING WITH CHARLIE by Shintaro Ogai: Based on the real story of a movie icon and his most trusted friend, the winner of our Fall Contest took us all the way back to the silent era for a biopic about Charlie Chaplin’s Japanese-American chauffeur, and the challenges and discrimination he faced.
Congratulations to all of our winning writers who made it onto our Wall of Fame 2020! We’re already hard at work with them, polishing their scripts and pitching them to industry.
If you’d like to see your picture on our Wall of Fame for next year, make sure you submit to our current contests! The Winter 2021 Screenwriting Contest gives you the chance to join our winners slate, with a Grand Prize of $3500 up for grabs. You also get free entry when you submit to our Romance and Comedy Award – the deadline is January 17th!
Why IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is a Christmas movie for the ages
“One man’s life touches so many others, when he’s not there it leaves an awfully big hole.” IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is a perennial festive rewatch for a lot of families in the holiday season, and after the events of 2020, its themes have become even more relevant than ever. Jake Morgan discusses why that is – and what screenwriters can learn about writing Christmas movies…
THE DEVIL’S TIDE by John McCoy – Q&A with our 2nd Place winner!
John McCoy not only took 2nd place in our Fall Contest, he was also our Horror Award winner with his script THE DEVIL’S TIDE! We’ve already introduced him and his script here, but we wanted a closer look at what inspired him, his writing process, and his advice for writers.
This Week’s News – STAR WARS, Disney, and streaming services
2020 hasn’t been the year anyone expected for movie releases, and the entertainment world has changed a lot. This week’s entertainment news shows the ongoing shift towards streaming services as movie theatres continue to struggle, with huge new projects for STAR WARS and a price rise for Disney+. Here’s our pick of the news…
- A new adaptation of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT is said to be one of the biggest budget films to ever be made in Germany, and it’s already been picked up by Netflix. Streaming services are competing more and more in the biggest leagues with movie theatres shut worldwide because of the pandemic; how this will affect the future remains to be seen, but Warner Bros already announced that they plan to simultaneously release all their productions in 2021 simultaneously in cinemas and on HBO Max. – Variety
- Subscribers to Disney+ in the United States will see a price rise in 2021, increasing by $1 to $7.99 per month. With Disney shifting a number of major films from cinema to streaming releases, and with their streaming service becoming increasingly more popular, this is unsurprising – but also demonstrates how significant streaming is now. – The Verge
- The price rise comes as Disney lays out their plans for Marvel going forward. They announced that THE FANTASTIC FOUR will receive a new movie (hopefully better than the last one…), Chadwick Boseman’s iconic role in BLACK PANTHER will not be recast, and explained how the films and TV shows will interweave with one another from now on. – Hollywood Reporter
- Keeping with Disney news, they’ve announced a whole lot of new STAR WARS projects for the next ten years, including new seasons of THE MANDALORIAN and new Disney+ series such as RANGERS OF THE NEW REPUBLIC and AHSOKA. The next STAR WARS feature film has also been announced: ROGUE SQUADRON is set to be directed by Patty Jenkins, best known for WONDER WOMAN. – Hollywood Reporter
- Among other Star Wars news, the original actor for Darth Vader, Dave Prowse, sadly died this week at the age of 85. The character was voiced by James Earl Jones, but Prowse was responsible for the iconic physical performance that made him so intimidating. Darth Vader will live on though; it’s been revealed that Hayden Christensen is set to return for the role in the OBI-WAN miniseries, which will also star Ewan McGregor. – Entertainment Weekly
- Good news for fans of Robert Eggers (like us here at WriteMovies), who directed THE VVITCH and THE LIGHTHOUSE: he’s completed production of his latest feature film, THE NORTHMAN. In a year when so many productions have been delayed and disrupted, it’s great to know that significant progress is being made by one of the most exciting directors out there right now. – IndieWire
We’re always keeping a close eye on our industry, and it’s something all screenwriters should do too. Because we pitch all our winners to industry, we need to know the lay of the land – and the landscape keeps changing rapidly at the moment!
If you want us to get your script out there, submit now to our contests. Enter our Romance and Comedy Award and you’ll also get free entry to the Winter 2021 Screenwriting Contest, with the chance to win script development, pitching to industry, and the $3500 Grand Prize!