by John | Feb 3, 2020 | Updates
It seems like just yesterday that we were announcing the third WriteMovies genre prize: the Romance and Comedy Award 2020. But the final deadline is already here – you’ve got until the end of this Sunday, February 9th, to submit your scripts!
If you’re feeling in a funny mood or a romantic one with Valentine’s Day coming up – or even a bit of both – then this is the contest for you. We’ll be accepting scripts in the romance, comedy, and rom-com genres – so if you think you’ve got what we’re looking for, make sure you submit by the deadline!
There are great prizes to be won, too. Our winner will receive two sets of Development Notes from our expert script analysts, further advice to fine-tune their work, and guaranteed pitching to industry. Plus, all submissions receive FREE, automatic entry to the Winter 2020 Screenwriting Contest!
The winner of our last genre prize, the Horror Award 2019, was MONGER by David Axe, and he also walked away with the Grand Prize in the Fall 2019 Screenwriting Contest: $2000! If you’d like to follow in his footsteps, then this is your chance.
WriteMovies has been helping writers succeed since 1999, and we’d love to help you, too. Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to get your script out there. Click here to submit to the Romance and Comedy Award 2020 by this Sunday, February 9th!
by John | Dec 2, 2019 | Rom-Com award
Our celebration of great writing continues with our latest genre prize. After the great success of our Sci-Fi and Fantasy and Horror awards, we are proud to announce the first ever WriteMovies Romance and Comedy Award!
Do you like to make people laugh with great comedy? Are you a fan of stories about enduring love and relationships? Or do you like to blend the two into that most classic of genres, the rom-com? Then this is the contest for you!
The WriteMovies Romance and Comedy Award is here to celebrate scripts that lift our spirits through laughter or inspire us with passionate love – or a bit of both! We’ll be accepting scripts in the genres of both comedy and romance, plus the crossover genre of the romantic-comedy.
The winner of this prize will receive:
- Guaranteed pitching to industry
- Two sets of Development Notes to help take their script to the next level
- Further advice to fine tune their script from our experts
Plus, every entry to this award will receive free, automatic entry to the WriteMovies Winter 2020 Screenwriting Contest!
So it’s time to get writing. Standard entry to this award lasts until Sunday 5th January, with the final deadline on Sunday February 9th! Click here to visit the main contest page and submit your script!
by John | Apr 6, 2019 | Our Winners
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
by John | Sep 1, 2017 | Industry News, Updates
Summer Box-Office flopbusters – Notice the trends of Summer flops to avoid the same pitfalls.
A Summer to forget for Hollywood… the worst grossing Summer in the last ten years, but just why has this happened?
The content has been there. WONDER WOMAN, SPIDERMAN: HOMECOMING, BABY DRIVER, THE DARK TOWER, DUNKIRK, WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES. Of course, they’re different in quality and appeal, but these belong to some big franchises and film companies. But, this Summer has not been so hot.
It’s hard to remember many other films beyond these. If I asked you to name 15 films released since the start of June you’d probably struggle – hell, we’d struggle!
One of the issues is the ease which moviegoers can check a review and decide on whether it’s worth going to see and spend their hard-earned cash on. It takes less than 30 seconds to open up the IMDB app on my phone to check the Dunkirk rating (8.4/10, not bad, Nolan). And this is no doubt how a lot of people are choosing to see films now.
And so many of those low scoring films will just be forgotten. Remember how the BAYWATCH movie was released this Summer, or PIRATES 5 at the end of May? No, me neither. It seems that Hollywood films are becoming more polarizing each year – we’re losing middle ground and average, yet enjoyable, rom-coms and now receiving either complete trash or filmmaking brilliance. We think that script development professionals deserve a bigger voice in the studios’ choice of projects and scriptwriting – and our founder Alex is compiling the research that’ll prove it, we’ve already had a look!
The lack of comedy seems apparent this Summer. Summer action films are always likely going to be a hit, but there’s very little engaging or original comedies or rom-coms out there. Which is just sad for the Summer. Now, we have to settle for things like THE EMOJI MOVIE… We used to get much better quality and ideas…
Maybe this represents a need for better and more original comedies, but there’s also a sign that Winter is becoming the time to release films. The Oscar bait is usually released around Autumn and Winter time, plus the STAR WARS franchise (and before it THE HOBBIT trilogy) was released around Christmas to increase revenue… and it worked.
It’s worth looking more deeply into what films have flopped and why. Try and spot any trends that occur in the failures and do your best to avoid them.
Read more on Hollywood’s horrible Summer here; https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-11/hollywood-s-summer-from-hell
You can also see what sort of scripts are selling recently with Script Pipeline: https://scriptpipeline.com/category/script-sales
Exclusive to WriteMovies – To syndicate this content for your own publication, contact ian (at) writemovies dot-com.
© WriteMovies 2017
by WriteMovies | Jun 16, 2016 | Trainees' Examples
“ It is definitely a title that will stand out to audiences…” Extracts from a script report by our trainee Jamie White, based on a reading of the script WEDDING CRASHERS found on The Daily Script website: CLICK HERE (more…)
by WriteMovies | Mar 25, 2016 | Studio Consulting, Trainees' Examples
“’What-if’ questions often generate very enjoyable writing, especially in the romantic comedy genre, for which we’re more happy to suspend our disbelief than usual…” Comments by us and Extracts from a script report by our trainee Daniela Piper-Vegh, based on a reading of the script 17 AGAIN: CLICK HERE (more…)
by WriteMovies | Mar 13, 2016 | Trainees' Examples
“The script is built upon the interesting and unusual concept of a couple choosing to erase all traces of each other from their respective memories when their relationship ends…” Extracts from a script report by our trainee Daniela Piper-Vegh, based on a reading of the ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND script: CLICK HERE to read the script. (more…)
