by John | Oct 5, 2020 | WMC
2020 has been a tough year for a lot of people, but if there’s one thing that might help, it’s $3500 – which is the Grand Prize for our Fall Screenwriting Contest! With just one week until the final deadline, enter now for your chance to win!
WriteMovies is dedicated to helping writers, which is why we’ve upped the Grand Prize for this contest. But that’s not all that’s on offer. ALL our prizes are designed to help you out in your writing career and get your work out there!
In addition to the Grand Prize for the best script, the top three scripts all receive pitching to industry and script development from us. We want to see you succeed – and that’s exactly what our Fall Screenwriting Contest is here for. The top three receive:
- A year of free script development worth up to $3200
- Guaranteed pitching to industry
- An invitation to a lunch with an industry executive in L.A.
- Exclusive listing from InkTip
Filming on former WriteMovies winner THE LIST
Recent winners have received attention from top industry execs such as producers of GET OUT and BLACKKKLANSMAN – if you want to join their ranks, make sure you enter now.
You can also enter by buying one of script reports, getting you the expert feedback you need to take your script to the next level – and then resubmit your new draft, completely FREE of charge, up until October 30th! Click here to see the script reports we offer, with Studio Coverage for $99 and more comprehensive Development Notes for $149.
The final deadline for the Fall Screenwriting Contest is this Sunday, October 11th. Don’t miss out! CLICK HERE to find out more and enter your script!
by John | Feb 25, 2019 | Updates
Whatever you think about the Oscars, there’s always something to be learned from them. Last night was no exception: there was the usual number of sure-fire wins mixed with a few shocks that leave us scratching our heads. Here’s our take on what happened at the Oscars 2019…
- The big news of the night was the surprise win of GREEN BOOK for Best Picture. This may not have been the most competitive year for this category, but stacked up against films like BLACKKKLANSMAN and ROMA, it’s still not what we expected. Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times even went so far as to call it “the worse best Picture winner since Crash“. Ouch. But the main thing to take from this? ROMA might have been the favorite on the night (rather than THE FAVOURITE… okay, it’s a bit confusing) but the Academy isn’t ready to give highest honors to a Netflix film just yet. The big studios continue to guard their territory.
- Spike Lee finally has an Oscar, winning Best Adapted Screenplay for BLACKKKLANSMAN. When it comes to films about race, the Oscars have generally favored less hard-edged material than Lee makes, so at first glance, this looks like it could indicate a shift for film’s biggest awards ceremony. However, that’s all kind of cancelled out because…
- The winner for Best Original Screenplay also went to GREEN BOOK, which has come in for a lot of criticism for perpetuating the “white savior” trope and couldn’t be more of an opposite to BLACKKKLANSMAN if it tried. Take a look at that article from Chang and you’ll see why it’s so confusing that the two screenplay awards went to these two films. On the one hand, a film that takes an intense, no-holds barred look at racism – on the other, a film that deals with it through a feel-good story. One thing is clear – Hollywood still hasn’t figured out how it wants to deal with this kind of subject matter.
- Away from the main controversies, superhero stories are starting to gain some traction at awards ceremonies to go with their popular appeal, with BLACK PANTHER picking up three awards and SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE winning Best Animated Feature. This is where the real money is right now – and it looks like there’s even the possibility of picking up some nice shiny awards to go with it.
- On a similar note, BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY took home four awards. Even though the only big one here was for Rami Malek’s performance as Freddie Mercury, it’s a surprise to see a film that got mixed reviews from critics fare so well at the Oscars. Is the Academy really becoming more democratized to reflect popular opinion? We’ll have to wait and see how next year unfolds…
From a screenwriting perspective, the main thing here is the confusion of seeing two totally contrasting films take home the awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay. Here at WriteMovies, we’ll be keeping a close eye on this, with several of our past winners – such as BLACKOUT.COM by Ruben Bush III dealing with this kind of subject matter.
The Oscars 2019 may not have had the drama of the wrong winner being announced for Best Picture like a couple of years ago, but they’ve certainly given us a lot of food for thought…
