WRITERS ON THE STORM 2012 POSTPONED. Say
it ain't so! Oh, but it is, Virginia. Why did we do this? Well, to be
honest, because putting on a contest the scale of WOTS is a huge amount
of work, and we need to be concentrating on other things in the short
term. But fear not: Writers on the Storm will return 9/24 and run
through the end of the year. And we are putting together some pretty
damn good prizes this year as well, such as: coffee with
Lynn Hendee, producer of
Ender's Game,
which stars Harrison Ford and is shooting now, and a
consultation/meeting with 2011 Nicholl Fellows (that means they won,
guys)
Tianna Langham and
Chris Bessounian (and we'll have
an interview with them next month as well.) So use this time to polish,
polish, polish and polish again. Remember: winning a contest is not like
entering the lottery. It's not random. It's about the quality of the
script. If your script is a pass when you send it in for coverage, it
ain't gonna win a contest. It's that simple. So invest in yourself and
do the heavy lifting required to really deliver on those screenplays.
 |
| Miller |
WOTS 2011 UPDATE. The new start date for Writers on the Storm 2012 is
9/24,
and it ends 12/31. That gives all of y'all time to go back and rewrite act 2! Come on, you know you need to :) Now if you are wondering what's
up with last year's winners, we only finally started sending them out a
few weeks ago and are still waiting to hear back from many companies.
Most excitingly, top management company The Arlook Group responded
positively to our runner-up script
A SHIP THROUGH FIRE by John
Winn Miller. They're reading a follow-up script from Mr. Miller now. We
also have some very exciting possibilities on our winning script
WRIGHT OR WRONG, by
Glenn Sanders and Brooks Elms, that we can't talk about yet, but if it
happens will be pretty amazing. More news as it develops! -- Portia
Jefferson, Writers on the Storm Contest Coordinator
REJECTED PITCHES = BRILLIANCE. Take five and treat yourself to some of the funniest shorts on YouTube, courtesy of the razor-sharp comic wits at
Teen Wheels
TV. To date they have posted four episodes of their "Rejected Pitches"
series, which feature top directors being shot down by a trio of moronic
executives. So far they've taken on
E.T., Back to the Future, Look Who's Talking, and best of all,
The Shining.
So the next time you have a meeting with a producer who is a pure dope,
you'll think back on these videos and smile! Check out their YouTube
page
right here.
BELOW ZERO ICES THE FESTIVAL CIRCUIT. Kudos to writer/producers
Bob Schultz and
Signe Olynyk. Their indie horror film
Below Zero (directed by Justin Thomas Ostenson) has been owning the festival circuit. Just pay a quick visit to
the film's website and check out all those laurels, including Best Horror Movie from American International Film Festival. Edward Furlong
(T2)
stars as a screenwriter who locks himself in a slaughterhouse freezer
to overcome his writer's block! When horror vet Michael Berryman
(The Hills Have Eyes) enters
the picture, you can pretty much figure out what happens next... Next
up, they're shooting Bob's zombie movie
I-15, which was one of the best
scripts Coverage Ink read last year. Exciting times for this young, hot
team! And by the way, if their names sound familiar, you've probably met
Bob and Signe at their annual
Great American Pitchfest.
Speaking of which, the Pitchfest will be back June 1-3 at the Burbank
Marriott, so get your tickets now! Stop by and visit us at the Coverage
Ink booth while you're there.
SPEC MARKET FURY! It
is smokin' hot out there right now for pitches. An astonishing 13 were
set up last month, almost double last year's number. That's indicative
of the overall health and confidence of the biz -- when people get
worried, the first thing they stop buying are pitches. So this is great
news indeed (note: don't think you can hop on that bandwagon. Selling
pitches is reserved only for name screenwriters with juice.) On the spec
side, a nice little $3 million sale always injects a jolt of life into
the marketplace. James Vanderbilt's
White House Down shook down
Sony for the big bucks, no doubt because he wrote this summer's Spidey
reboot which is getting positive buzz, despite the fact that the Spidey suit looks like it was cut from a Spalding basketball. Overall, the spec market is
slightly more voracious than last year (17 specs were sold in March,) but
WAY better than the horrifically awful 2009 and 2010. In short:
the
market is hotter than it has been in a long time. It's a freakin' great
time to be a writer! Now go get your piece.
THE SAD, SAD STATE OF THE TV MOVIE. Have
you ever wondered why there are, like, no MOWs and TV movies at all
anymore, versus ten years ago? We sure as hell did, so we put that
question to TV movie producer
Steve Kennedy (Saving Jessica Lynch)
from Daniel Paulson Prods. According to Steve, several factors have
conspired to more or less crush the venerable Movie of the Week. The
first is, the networks decided that it's more profitable to have a
smaller audience that returns week after week for a show, than
it is to have a big audience that only turns out once. Never mind that
original television movies can be resold as DVDs and so forth; they're
just not that interested. Secondly, TV movies cost way more money to
produce than, say, a 3-hour
The Bachelorette pile of vapidity. Even cable, once a bastion of original movies, has
greatly reduced their output. Showtime used to make 30 movies a year.
But then they realized they could create successful original series like
Dexter instead. Nowadays your chances of
getting HBO or Showtime to greenlight your original movie are pretty
much nil. That leaves Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, Lifetime and
Hallmark, who are doing quite well, thank you very much, making flicks
for their niche audiences. But the days of the MOW as we know it...
gone.
SCRIPT PIPELINE EXTENDED DEADLINE 5/4!
Our pals at Script Pipeline put on one hell of a contest. In fact, it's
one of only five that we at Coverage Ink recommend as well worth the
entry fee. Their winners have had some amazing success in the past. And
now, the 10th Annual
Script Pipeline Screenwriting and TV Writing Competition 2012
is ending imminently (like, Friday May 4th!) If you haven't entered
yet, what are you waiting for? These guys are the only contest to our
knowledge, other than the Nicholl Fellowship, who have had a previous
winner (2008's Evan Dougherty) go A-list. Dougherty's 2008 script
Snow White and the Huntsman was huge
major studio spec sale ($3 million!) and is now a major motion picture
starring Chris Hemsworth, Kristin Stewart and Charlize Theron. Will you
be next? Cruise on down the Pipeline and
enter that script now. Hurry, time is almost up!
THE SAD, SAD SAGA OF MEL GIBSON. This one is almost painful to write. If you're a subscriber to
TheWrap.com, you no doubt have heard/read
the transcription of actor/director Mel Gibson's latest rant. (If you do not subscribe to TheWrap, you may have no idea, since
Variety
ignored it, not wanting to acknowledge they'd been scooped -- even after the story had been picked up by the US corporate
media.) The short version is, Gibson went on a tear at his Costa
Rica home, railing out guest
Joe Eszterhas (Showgirls) and screaming like a freakin' maniac about anything and
everything, including losing his looks, in front of all his guests and
their families (including
Braveheart screenwriter
Randall Wallace.)
Gibson made some particularly vitriolic comments about his ex and
generally just frickin' lost it. Now we've all been watching Gibson self-destruct
publicly for years, of course, so this is no surprise. What is amazing
however is that
through it all,
he continues to do great work. He was sublime in
The Beaver, about a dad with mental issues who can only communicate through a puppet; his new movie
Get the Gringo was passed over for US release despite universal superlative reviews.
Ezsterhas said that he released the recordings his son made of Gibson's
rant so that hopefully Mel would get the professional help he needs.
Amen to that.
NOT TO "B" OUTDONE: TRACKING B CONTEST BEGINS 6/1. You
didn't think we'd mention the five contests Coverage Ink recommends as
worth the entry fee without telling you the others, did ya? Here they
are, in no particular order:
The Nicholl Fellowship, Scriptapalooza, Script Pipeline, Writers on the Storm, and...
Tracking B.
Who, what? Amazingly, after years of unparalleled success stories, many
screenwriters still have no idea who these guys are. The Tracking B
contest is an "insider" contest run by, well,
The Insider, the
mysterious industry figure behind
TrackingB.com, the real-life industry
tracking board subscribed to by every major producer, agent and manager.
To tell you about all the writers who have been signed, sold and gotten
work after winning or placing in Tracking B would take the entire
length of this column (you can just buzz over to their site and check it
out for yourself.) Their annual feature screenwriting contest opens
6/1, so calendar it now and enter early before the prices rise. Trust us
on this, this is a must-enter contest! Not to mention
every writer who enters two scripts gets a free subscription to TrackingB.com, which is an invaluable source of critical intelligence for writers.
Head on over to TrackingB.com and discover for yourself just what you're missing!
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