Our new Elite Consultant, multi-produced screenwriter Bobby Lee Darby, shares his pitching tips on how you should approach pitching to Hollywood, how to plan for it, and how to ace it! (more…)
As we’ve done with our book entries, creating the award for “Book with the Best Screen Potential”, we are doing the same for our television script entries to the Summer 2017 Contest.
The “Best Teleplay or Pilot” award will be given out to the best television script submission we receive. The winner of this award will receive free Development Notes to help make their teleplay or pilot break through. With on-demand bringing the best shows into our homes whenever we want them, the appetite for scripted TV shows is massive and so are the range of new ways to get them made – we want to give you the best chance possible. We will even pitch your script ourselves to the top of the industry if you finish in our top 3 for the main contest.
We support all writers, of all scripted formats, and we want them all to flourish. We’ve opened up these specific prizes for books and television script to reward these writers and their scripts, just as much as we would for a feature length screenplay.
You can win these new special “Best Teleplay or Pilot” or “Book with the Best Screen Potential” awards by entering the Summer 2017 Contest now.
Why Hollywood loves book adaptations… and how we can help with yours!
A recent article from The Verge earlier in the year caught our eye. It’s an excellent piece on why Hollywood are so into book adaptations right now. Here’s our summary on the article and our own thoughts on it…
“Why Hollywood is turning to books for its biggest productions” by Andrew Liptak. https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/26/14326356/hollywood-movie-book-adaptations-2017-expanse-game-of-thrones
“The book is better than the movie!” – it’s a complaint we’ve all heard from audiences. So, why does Hollywood keep the faith with adaptations? In recent times, adaptations have taken off dramatically, all starting with Peter Jackson’s THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, and the best current example being GAME OF THRONES – the biggest TV show in the world right now.
Some reasons why book adaptations work so well for Hollywood:
1. There’s already a plot and a story for them – there’s less risk of them creating a bad story if a good one already exists.
2. There’s a positive knock-on effect to book publishers. A successful film release probably means increased sales of the book itself.
We definitely agree with the first point. Low risk, high-yield when it comes to book adaptations. But good books have more than just a good story. They already have a fanbase. Studios see this fanbase as a guaranteed audience, guaranteed cash in the bank. Then they’ll try to appeal to as many other people as possible, too.
Here at WriteMovies, we’ve always championed books with great screen potential, and generated the first novel commission for acclaimed author Cornelia Kempf. Enter our Summer competition with YOUR book to have the chance of winning our contest itself, and ALSO of our award for ‘Book with the Best Screen Potential’ which could be the breakthrough your book is waiting for as you seek adaptation to the screen. The ‘Best Screen Potential’ winner gains free Development Notes to help you adapt it yourself or attract a leading screenwriter to the project.
Read the full article by Andrew Liptak at The Verge here: https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/26/14326356/hollywood-movie-book-adaptations-2017-expanse-game-of-thrones
Exclusive to WriteMovies – To syndicate this content for your own publication, contact ian (at) writemovies dot-com.
© WriteMovies 2017
Book your place in the industry with our Summer writing contest, for a special prize!
Our Summer 2017 Writing Contest isn’t just the place for your feature scripts, shorts, and pilots.
We also accept entries from all of you novelists – and we’re creating a special category in our Summer writing contest, for the “Book with the Best Screen Potential”. The winner will get FREE Development Notes to help them adapt it to a screenplay or documentary, or to help them find a screenwriter who can. This could be a great breakthrough for you.
We love comparing our book entries to the screenplays to find new angles and stories that the world’s gonna be looking for. So we thought we’d dedicate our social media this week to books!
So, book your place in our Summer Writing Contest with your book, or novel, or novella. We love receiving book entries just as much as scripts and assess their screen potential exactly like we do the screenplays and teleplays we receive.
Our pick of the web for July 2017 – From the @WriteMovies Twitter Feed!
Our @WriteMovies Twitter feed has been sharing lots of exciting things giving our tips of the best new articles, insights and offers for screenwriters and producers on the web. And in case you’ve missed anything there, here is our pick for July 2017…
We are proud to be able to announce QUEEN OF HEARTS by Ethan Westgate as the winner of our Featured Script of the Month for scripts submitted in June and July 2017.
With our Summer Contest only opening late in June, we decided to combine our free monthly contest for all submissions from its opening period this time around.
We’re delighted to reward the most interesting script from those submissions, with a free Judging Feedback and re-entry! As ever, this is just a bonus prize and has no effect on any of our other contest results, but we love rewarding writers who are prepared to take risks to achieve distinctive scripts, and help them progress their scripts to the next level.
Honorable Mentions:
A FRIEND LIKE FILBY by Mark Wakely.
FACSIMILE by Gary Makin.
ÁNH SÁNG by Barry Brennessel.
Here is a short biography on Ethan…
Here’s a short introduction to the script written by Ethan:
In a world where everyone is united by a global thought-network, a small minority of people are unable to access this network. Molly Dark must lead others of her kind in a race to survive as the Network turns violently against those Unconnected.
Enter into the Featured Script of the Month contest for free. Just enter the Summer 2017 Contest or order a Consultancy and you’ll gain your free entry.
Meet our Spring 2017 Screenwriting Contest Grand Prize Winner: CHOKE JOB by David Dell Johnson! Check out David’s short bio and logline for the script.
A strong commercial appeal, an enticing story, and compelling characters. Many elements to David’s script, CHOKE JOB, stood out to us. One of our judges even said “I couldn’t stop reading it! It was so captivating.” Below you can read a synopsis for this “captivating” script.
Here’s what David wins…
Here is a short bio on David:
David Dell Johnson is a retired Air Force officer and screenwriter from Alexandria, Virginia. Besides winning the WriteMovies Spring 2017 Screenwriting Competition his screenplay “Choke Job” took 3rd Place/Special Mention honors in the 2017 International Screenwriters Association (ISA) Screenplay Competition. His screenplay “Undertakings” was a finalist in the 2016 Roadmap Writers/Route One Entertainment Screenplay Competition. His screenplay “Dead Man’s Money” took first place honors in the Thriller category of the 2015 Fade In Awards Screenplay Competition.
And here is David’s short introduction to the script:
A slick defense attorney with a penchant for getting guilty clients acquitted has his life methodically destroyed by a mysterious stranger and must embark on a desperate race to clear his name of murder.
Congratulations to David on being named our Grand Prize winner!
You could be our next winner and success story with our current main international contest, the Summer 2017 Screenwriting Contest – enter HERE.