A year ago, we gave you a sneak peek at the industry diary of our director, Ian Kennedy, as he pitched our winners projects in Los Angeles. Now, as we start a new pitching push, we look back at a year like no other and how it’s shaped our plans for the future.
In March 2020, Ian was pitching our winners’ scripts to the very best the movie industry has to offer in L.A., establishing new connections and reigniting old ones, and creating new opportunities with major organizations and production companies.
We shared what he got up to in our industry diary articles, which you can read here. After starting his week with a meal with former WriteMovies winner Kathryn Nawrocki, he had a series of meetings with top producers and execs.
Meetings followed with Impossible Dream Entertainment, where he met with Yvette Yates and Shaun Redick (GET OUT, BLACKKKLANSMAN), Oscar nominated VFX expert Habib Zargarpour, and the Head of Partnerships at BAFTA Los Angeles – among many others!
It was a productive week, and just a glance of the work we do for our winning scripts. We’d established some great connections and opened up new avenues for future pitching and collaborations. Best of all, the One-Page Pitches for our ENTIRE slate of award-winning scripts were presented, in person, to Oscar-winning producers and other successful executives.
And then the pandemic hit.
Covid-19 has been hugely disruptive for everyone in every walk of life, and WriteMovies was no exception. Many of our plans were put on hold, as the face of our industry changed: productions stalled, movie theaters closed, and scheduled releases were either pushed back or moved online.
Suddenly, the “old normal” in L.A. was gone. But we weren’t about to give up – WriteMovies is still here and still determined to do our best, pitching our winners’ scripts to industry and continuing to grow our slate through our screenwriting contests.
This last year hasn’t gone as planned, but the work Ian did twelve months ago was still productive for us. We’ve maintained the contacts he made, giving us more avenues to pitch our latest winning scripts, and established business relationships that will bear fruit for a long time to come.
Another great outcome was reacquiring the assets for THE LIST, a movie produced by WriteMovies from a contest-winning entry, and which was distributed by Warner Bros for ten years. Now back in our hands, we’re actively searching for new distribution to get it in front of audiences again!
As the world changes because of the pandemic, new opportunities have appeared as well. With so many people working from home and communicating via Zoom, the world seems smaller and it’s become easier than ever to create contacts.
Distance is no longer the obstacle it used to be. No matter what country someone’s from or what city they live in, meetings via Zoom are the new normal, giving us the chance to work together in ways we never used to!
As we work on a new pitching push over the coming months, we’ll be keeping you in the loop through our industry diary articles. Just because things have changed doesn’t mean we’ve stopped. There are new opportunities to be explored, and we’ve got plenty of plans for our award-winning slate of scripts.
If you want to get involved, enter our current competitions – the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Award and Spring Screenwriting Contest – for your chance to join our slate and have us pitch your script to industry!
Until then, keep an eye out for future news about our activities – and keep writing. Producers will always be looking for new scripts, and so will we!