An historical drama set in Roman Britain adapted from the novel by Rosemary Sutcliff, OUTCAST captured us from the first page to the last with its superb world-building and dramatic story. Congratulations to its writer, Sarah Bellwood, for placing 3rd in our Spring 2019 Screenwriting Contest!
It’s one of the most exciting moments of the year for us here at WriteMovies… Yes, it’s the moment we get to announce the winners of our most recent competition: the Spring 2019 Screenwriting Contest!
THE TIME-TRAP: When the most dangerous man in America gets his hands on a time machine, an emotionally fragile FBI agent must go back through time after him, with the full knowledge that he can only return to the present by living his past all over again.
To describe THE TIME-TRAP as a thrilling ride would be an understatement. Partnering a great concept with high-octane action, this is a manhunt like we’ve never seen before. It kept us gripped from the first page to the last, coming through a highly competitive field to take first place. Congratulations to the writer of THE TIME-TRAP and the first ever winner of the WriteMovies Sci-Fi and Fantasy Award, Mark Flood!
As the WriteMovies Sci-Fi and Fantasy Award 2019 winner, Mark has won guaranteed pitching to industry, two sets of Development Note, and further advice on honing his script from our screenwriting experts. He’s also still in contention for our Spring 2019 Screenwriting Contest, which has a Grand Prize of $2000 and is open until June 16th. Click here if you want to enter the competition yourself!
Here’s a summary of THE TIME-TRAP:
Special Agent Sam Miller, a man haunted by the tragedy of his past, is the lead agent in the hunt for the FBI’s most wanted, Michael Barnton. After a dramatic chase across San Francisco Bay, Miller is successful in capturing Barnton, but instead of his mission coming to an end, he discovers it has only just begun.
Barnton escapes custody and stows away in a scientist’s car; a scientist who has succeeded in building a time machine which Barnton steals and uses to leap into the past, planning to change things in his favor. What Barnton doesn’t know is that although he can jump backwards multiple times, the only way to come forward to the present is to live all those days over again.
Realizing that he might be target in the past, Miller agrees to go after Barnton. Armed with a tracker and a second time machine, Miller embarks on an epic chase through time – with not just the chance to catch Barton, but also to right the pain from his past and discover that there might be more to Barnton’s crimes than it first seemed.
If you’re a producer interested in this project, email david.vogel@atalentscout.com today!
And here’s a quick bio of the writer of THE TIME-TRAP, Mark Flood:
Mark grew up in Northern Ireland and moved to Scotland to study at university. Because of his love of film and television, he decided to try his hand at screenwriting after university and even wrote a novel.
In recent years, Mark has continued to write for the screen. He is now writing with a better understanding of the process, a new love of the craft, and an appreciation of what his strengths are.
PROMISE OF TOMORROW: After finding a website devoted to insulting him, a struggling, separated and obsessive Project Manager becomes determined to track down who created it.
A romantic-comedy with heaps of charm, PROMISE OF TOMORROW made us laugh more than any other script in this competition. In the tradition of great British rom-coms, it captured our attention with its quirky characters, heartwarming story, and fantastic audience appeal. This is a script that deserves to go far – a huge congratulations to its writer, the winner of our Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest, Andrew Pennington!
As the Grand Prize Winner of our Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest, Andrew has won $2500, guaranteed pitching to industry, and a year of free script development. If you want to follow in his footsteps, then enter our Spring 2019 Screenwriting Contest (click here!)
Here’s a summary of PROMISE OF TOMORROW:
PROMISE OF TOMORROW is a comedy feature following Owen, a slightly OCD Project Manager, who has always taken the easy roads in life.
Owen is horrified as he finds a website devoted purely to mocking him. It sends his obsessive and paranoid tendencies into overdrive, as he struggles to work out who could possibly have set up such a cruel prank. When his wife decides to leave, she becomes the clear number one suspect.
Seemingly more upset about the website than his impending divorce, Owen is guided by his family and friends to deal with his separation. His boss suggests using his considerable professional skills to aid the situation. Project manage his break-up!
Owen struggles through an investigation of clues as to the website author, whilst keeping emotional distance from his personal life. He finds that his coping mechanism can only work for so long before he’s forced to confront his difficult journey.
If you’re a producer interested in this project, email david.vogel@atalentscout.com today!
And here’s a quick bio of the writer of PROMISE OF TOMORROW, Andrew Pennington:
Andrew Pennington is a screenwriter who grew up in the North West of England and is currently based in Merseyside, with his wife and two children. He initially studied social sciences at Lougborough University and developed a career in research within academia and then the National Health Service.
An affinity for visual story-telling, initially starting with comic books as a boy, led to a love of film and T.V. Andrew went on to gain an MA in Screenwriting from Liverpool John Moores University. He writes a variety of film and T.V. screenplays, primarily in comedy and science fiction.
See if you can coax him into more social media than just retweets here: @atpennington
Today we look back at the winners of our Grand Prize from 2018 and reveal our full Wall of Fame 2018! If you’d like to see your name on next year’s Wall of Fame, enter our Winter 2019 Contest for a chance to come out on top – as well as the chance to win our Grand prize of $2500 in cash!
Here’s some more info on our Grand Prize winners from 2018. All of our winners received a year of free script development with us and we’re now working hard at polishing them to perfection!
Wish you’d been featured on our Wall of Fame 2018? If you think you’ve got a script that will take you to the top, be sure to enter our Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest! Closing on January 13th 2019, this might be the last time we run a major competition of this kind… And with an increased cash prize of $2500, this is an opportunity not to be missed!
The desert takes care of its own… A hard-bitten oil explorer and a desperate group of orphans led by two unorthodox nuns are forced into a hellish desert confrontation to escape the Nazis and help ensure an Allied victory.
From the fierce competition of our most recent contest, one script emerged victorious. We are proud to introduce the WriteMovies Spring 2018 Contest Winner: DESERT RUN by Christopher Thomas!
A wartime action-adventure script set in Egypt, 1942, DESERT RUN is a thrilling script that rejuvenates the classic era of adventure. Full of excitement and romance, it kept us on the edge of our seats from the first page to the last, and deservedly took the top spot in our contest. Chris wins a cash prize of $2000, a year of script development worth up to $3200, and more!
Here’s a summary of the WriteMovies Spring 2018 Contest winner…
Michael Quinn, a man haunted by memories of a war-scarred childhood, grows into the roughshod desert explorer who discovers the enormous oil reserves in Saudi Arabia. By 1942, his company is the most important source of oil in the world – a world that craves his product – a world at war.
As Quinn tries to keep the oilfields out of Hitler’s hands, he discovers that the lives of a young nun and her crew of streetwise orphans are pawns in a deadly deal. And as the Nazis brutalize North Africa, Quinn and the boys devise their escape.
With Nazis at their back and the Sahara desert before them, a monster sandstorm offers them refuge. It’s said that the desert takes care of its own but the price is high, and when the survivors are finally confronted with a real hell-on-earth, they find their bonds irrevocably forged and their mettle tested.
And a short bio of Chris…
As a little girl growing up in Saudi Arabia, I was aware that I was surrounded by stories of epic proportions. History was happening everywhere and it gave me a particularly urgent perspective on humans, their conditions and their resilience that continues to feed my screenwriting. When I’m not mired in some dark and dire world I’ve created, I’m a creative writing instructor and a writer/designer of educational material based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I’m also the Director and Lead Instructor for the Boulder Writing Studio’s Summer Creative Writing Camp series in Boulder, Colorado and serve on the Board of Directors. Prior to that I spent over 20 years as a senior level creative in the fields of animation, broadcast advertising, media design and film/video production. I have an MA in Educational Design E-learning from the University of Colorado Denver.
We’ve got another great script to present to you! Our Spring 2018 contest 2nd place script is KLONDIKE MIKE by Thomas Zmiarovich!
This hilarious family comedy has an unusual Alaskan setting, lovable characters, and brilliant set pieces that will have you roaring with laughter. A big congratulations to Tom for his win; he receives Development Notes, previews of our Virtual Film School, exclusive prizes from InkTip, and more! Read on to find out more about this script…
Here’s the logline for KLONDIKE MIKE:
A family start a new life in Alaska where they encounter extreme wildlife and an eccentric local prospector with a talent for finding gold…
And the writer’s summary of his script:
In this adventurous family comedy, Sam McCord inherits a gold claim and decides to put his dead-end job with a corporate mega-store chain on hold and move his dysfunctional family to Alaska for the summer in hopes to strike it rich and solve all his problems.
Virtually dragging his wife, 16-year-old son and 9-year old genius daughter to the wilds of Alaska, he soon realizes that he knows nothing about working a gold claim. At a local saloon, Sam meets Klondike Mike, a rustic, flamboyant, vagabond lady’s man prospector, who convinces Sam he’d make the perfect straw boss to run the claim. With no other options, Sam hires him, and under Klondike’s direction the claim is soon running like clockwork. So, what could go wrong?
For Sam, everything – from pesky Yellow Jacket attacks, feisty raccoon encounters, cell phone-outhouse mishaps, Magic Mushroom trips with a cookie eating Grizzly bear, and the underhanded dealings with the Bible thumping claim jumpers trying to steal Sam’s claim back. Not to mention, Sam’s worries that his children admire Klondike more than him.
Thomas Zmiarovich Bio:
Born in Seattle, in the shadow of the aerospace giant, Boeing, my love for movies began as far back as I can remember. From the age of 10, much of my paper route money found its way to the cheap, week-day, matinees in summer at the Columbia City theater, a mile walk from my home on Beacon Hill. Sci-fi, comedy, action, you name it, I could have lived there if I could.
As an adult, I never lost that love of the big screen. Even as I raised a family and worked as a Tool Design Engineer, for Boeing. I always dreamed that I had something to contribute to the craft I loved so much.
Through the years, I wrote my stories and scripts, developing and learning the craft of writing and story-telling from names like Stanley Kramer, Abby Mann, Michael Hauge, Richard Walter, and others. I’ve had scripts finish in the quarter and semi-finals at Nichol, Austin, and others; am a finalist with Script Pipeline and the Washington State Screenplay Competition; and have had numerous Top Ten finishers.
My love of story telling will never allow me to stop trying to get those stories to the big screen for all to see.