Michael Cotter – About Our Winner
At WriteMovies, we don’t just award writers who come through our contests – we celebrate them, developing their winning scripts to prepare them for pitching to the industry.
Meet More of Our 2025 Winners
Meet More of Our 2025 Winners – Over the past few weeks, we’ve been sharing a selection of writers who have come through our contests – highlighting how their projects are now being developed and prepared for industry.
Today, we’re pleased to introduce:
Michael A Elliott
Teleah Moore
Don Stroud
Each of these writers was selected as a contest winner in 2025, and their projects are now progressing through the next stage of development.
Celebrating Our Recent Winners
Last week, we launched the WriteMovies Spring 2026 Screenwriting Contest. To highlight the occasion, over the next few weeks, we’re celebrating our recent winners and success stories – highlighting how WriteMovies contests have helped writers move their projects forward.
Today, we would like to introduce you to Paul Bayford, John Mazzullo and Mahmoud Boukhriss, who were all contest winners in 2025.
Hindi rights to CURVEBALL sold!
The Hindi rights to Curveball have already been optioned to Exceed Entertainment in Mumbai for a Hindi-language adaptation of this uniquely high-concept thriller! The potential is for the sale to result in a Bollywood-style version that gives a fascinating new twist to this story without impacting the English-language audience, who can expect a grittier style and different kind of sport (and stadium) as its backdrop. English-language rights are still available – and industry producers and established talent can get in touch with us today to find out more and request the script and our vivid One-Page Pitch. (more…)
Success Story: WriteMovies winner hired for script rewrite!
Earlier this week we reported how recent Grand Prize Winner Vanisha Renée Pierce earned multiple industry partnerships thanks to her win with WriteMovies, but she’s not alone: Elizabeth Savage Sullivan has also found success since her win!
Elizabeth was our Grand Prize Winner in Summer 2020 with her script THE BOY ON COVER, a powerful screenplay telling the story of photojournalists working in the war-torn Congo – and how their actions can change the course of both their own lives and the lives of their subjects.
Now, she’s also being rewarded for her work thanks to the prizes she received from WriteMovies for her win:
Elizabeth says:
“Since winning the WriteMovies Summer 2020 Screenwriting Contest, I was hired by Dimlight Pictures to rewrite an exciting screenplay for a director-producer who found me on Inktip. This was one of the great prizes I received from WriteMovies for my Grand Prize win with The Boy on the Cover!
I also recently become a quarter finalist in Nicholl, 2021.”
Congratulations to Elizabeth Savage Sullivan for her continued successes, things are really shaping up for her! Contact talent@atalentscout.com today if you’d like to work with Elizabeth yourself or are interested in THE BOY ON THE COVER.
There’s more news to come about what our WriteMovies winners have been up to, not to mention our pitching work which we’ll report in our Industry Diary. Stay tuned for more updates!
Pitch meetings, success stories, and more VFX-driven scripts wanted for a 2x Oscar nominated director!
We’ve been hard at work lately having pitching scripts to industry, having pitch meetings with producers and distributors about our many projects! Alex and Ian had a productive meeting at BAFTA recently, discussing the slate and future opportunities. So, what have we been up to? Let’s take a look…
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Ian Kennedy, our Director of Worldwide Development, at BAFTA
Following on from Alex and Habib’s successful tour of Hollywood, we’re still looking for more great VFX-driven scripts for Habib to direct. We’re in discussion with many studios to confirm the next wave of projects and welcome more submissions through our Winter 2019 Contest.
- The movie we made in 2007, THE LIST, is now back in our hands after ten years in a distribution deal with Warner Bros. This charming romantic comedy stars Wayne Brady (WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY?) and Sidney Tamiia Poitier (DEATH PROOF), and includes a breakout role for Jane Lynch as a TV dating guru which helped lead to her iconic role in GLEE. We’ve had several meetings and enquiries with distributors and sales companies keen to take this project further.
- THE LIST is a great example of our work as a full circle: script agency and production house. With our contests and consultancy services including elite mentoring, we offer entry to the market from just $39 and can carry your project all the way through production, distribution, and “the long tail”. Enter now with your VFX driven or any other genre of script to take it to the next level and break through to success.
We’ve also recently had pitch meetings with many companies including Film4 and several of our winners’ projects have been going from strength to strength!
- Evan Cooper, who placed third in our Summer 2017 Contest with his script BALLERINA GIRL, has turned writer-director with his new project THE WILL O WISP.
- REMOTELY WORKING by Bill Baber, which took the Best Short Pilot award in our most recent contest, is currently in post-production having been filmed in September!
- The second placed script from our Spring 2017 Contest, THE FACTION by Kevin Karp, is currently in development with Lone Pine Productions.
We guarantee pitching to industry for the top three scripts from our competition – so enter our Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest today from just $44, and you can follow in the footsteps of our past winners and get your script out there!
Former winning writer is writer-director of a new feature film!
The Third Placed Winning writer to our Summer 2017 Screenwriting Contest, Evan Cooper, is making waves in the industry with his upcoming film THE WILL O WISP.
Evan, who came third with his script BALLERINA GIRL, is both directing and writing the psychological horror-thriller that has been described as SIGNS meets MISERY. Actor Chrissy Metz (THIS IS US, AMERICAN HORROR STORY: FREAKSHOW) is attached to the film to play a nurse with a chequered past… Evan tells us he hopes to head home to Canada for the shoot which would be great for him.
While it’s been exciting times for Evan, we’ve been deferring our usual free year of script development for BALLERINA GIRL, which he can resume with us anytime in the future. We’re keen to see that script progress as we believe it’s got strong potential too, and any success for THE WILL O THE WISP can only help that.
Click here for a reminder about Evan’s script BALLERINA GIRL and a little bit on the man himself…
You can check out Evan’s IMDB page here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3442948/?ref_=nmnw_hd
Check out the headlines Evan’s project is making here: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/is-us-star-chrissy-metz-joins-horror-movie-will-o-wisp-1053916