WSF Announces From Concept to Script Final Five!
The WSF is proud to announce the Final Five finalists of the WSF From Concept to Script Competition!
This unique screenplay competition focuses on developing high concepts for the film industry, with the goal of producing five high concept spec scripts that will be put into the hands of major studio affiliates, production companies, that have partnered with the WSF to offer newcomers what they covet most… a chance.
Beyond that, we tried to give participants a taste of the expectations of the film industry. Concept sells. There’s a market for everything to be sure, but a high concept only increases a writer’s odds of breaking through, and members know that this is exactly what the WSF is about, doing all it can to help writers break through and have a shot at their dream.
We received over 400 loglines. Working with our development contact (A request was made for the company to remain anonymous in any press. It is a major production company signed with a major studio), we chose the loglines with the most potential, narrowing it down to the Lucky 13 participants that advanced to the next round.
The writers were given development notes on where our development contact would like to see each concept go, mirroring the development process often found in the film industry today.
After reviewing those Lucky 13 first ten pages submissions, our development contact has narrowed it down to the Final Five below. Those final five will receive notes on those ten pages and are expected to implement them into the eventual scripts.
The Final Five will have until November 14th to hand in a final draft, which will be submitted to our development contacts for studio consideration.
In December, the WSF will hold mock industry meetings with each of the writers of the Final Five in Madison, WI, mirroring the development meetings a writer can expect to take part in during a career as a screenwriter. We will then pick the official “WSF Pick” of the bunch and forward it to additional contacts.
The WSF and our development contact would like to thank the Lucky 13 for their submissions.
So without further ado, the WSF From Concept to Script Competition’s Final Five are…
- MY OWN TIME MACHINE
Mourning the death of his grandfather, an eight-year-old enlists his parents’ help to build a time machine.
Brooke Miller Hall and Amy Gangl
- THE HUNTING SHACK
Hunters become the hunted when friends take their annual hunting trip to Northern Wisconsin and learn one of their number is hunting them.
Rob Dippel
- WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT
Creatures produced by outlawed genetic experiments terrorize university researchers trapped with them in the campuses underground tunnel system.
Tom Dunn
- PERSONA
A secret agent programmed with multiple personalities must stop her organization from killing the one man who can restore her original personality.
Jeff Burns
- BLACK FRIDAY
A workaholic father bonds with his estranged family on a hectic shopping holiday –- Black Friday.
Daniel Crisp
WSF Member a Finalist in Hoboken Film Festival Competition
WSF Member Neil Graves, with his script “Chez Noir”, placed as one of five finalists in the Hoboken International Film Festival unproduced screenplay competition.
WSF VP Publishes Novel
Little Creek Books is pleased to announce the release of Sarah Jane is a Pain. This book is the first in “The Tale of Two Sisters” series of fictional young adult books about the many differences between sisters, written by the mother – daughter writing team of Rebecca Williams Spindler and Madelyn Spindler. Sara Jane is a Pain is already receiving high praise from acclaimed fiction writers such as Jessica Hayworth, author of the “Forever Marty” series, including Marty Matters and Marty Mayhem .
Sara Jane is a Pain is written for middle grade readers and depicts what life is like as experienced through eleven-year-old Liz McCormick. Liz is a tomboy who enjoys spending time on her family’s farm in the rolling hills of Wisconsin . Meanwhile, her big sister Sara Jane is a seventeen-year-old who is wrapped up in fashionable clothes, makeup, and texting her boyfriend. The siblings differ greatly but come to find out that they share one common bond; sisterly love.
This book will strike a note with anyone who has ever experienced sibling rivalry, the challenges of living with a teenager, and the anguish of becoming a middle schooler.
Rebecca Williams Spindler has published several short stories, achieved finalist rank for national screenplay competitions, and currently serves as Vice President for the Wisconsin Screenwriters Forum. Please visit their website: www.spindlerwriting.com for more details, or view updates on their Facebook page: Fans of Spindler Writing .
WSF Member Nabs Honorable Mentions In AAA Screenplay Contest
WSF Member Larry Sommers’ two scripts “Quest for the Platinum Throne” and “Shiloh” received honorable mentions in the AAA Screenplay Contest sponsored by Creative Screenwriting.
Congrats to Larry for the honorable mentions!
Fox Hires Rapoport to Adapt “29″
Ellen Rapoport (”Desperados,” “Three Moons Over Milford”) has been hired to pen a film adaptation of Adena Halpern’s book “29: A Novel” for 20th Century Fox says Variety.
The romantic comedy centers on a 75-year-old woman whose wish to be 29 again comes true. John Davis will produce but no director has yet been selected.
WB Hires Cozad and Brewer to Scribe Tarzan
According to Deadline, Warner Brothers is making another push to get their “Tarzan” franchise going.
Two separate scripts will be written simultaneously, each having a different take on the character’s revival, which is sometimes the approach studios take.
Adam Cozad, a rising screenwriter who has written a Jack Ryan reboot, as well as “Archangel”, will write one script while Craig Brewer will be writing the other. Cozad is repped by ICM and Gotham group. Brewer is repped by WME.
WSF Announces Lucky 13 “From Concept to Script” Semi-Finalists!
The WSF is proud to announce the “From Concept to Script” Competition’s Lucky 13 semi-finalists !
This unique screenplay competition focuses on developing high concepts for the film industry, with the goal of producing five high concept spec scripts that will be put into the hands of major studio affiliates, production companies, that have partnered with the WSF to offer newcomers what they covet most… a chance.
Beyond that, we tried to give participants a taste of the expectations of the film industry. Concept sells. There’s a market for everything to be sure, but a high concept only increases a writer’s odds of breaking through, and members know that this is exactly what the WSF is about, doing all it can to help writers break through and have a shot at their dream.
We received over 400 loglines. Working with our development contact (A request was made for the company to remain anonymous in any press. It is a major production company signed with a major studio), we chose the loglines with the most potential and now we’re asking them to take it to the next level and offer the first ten pages of those scripts.
The writers were given development notes on where our development contact would like to see each concept go, mirroring the development process often found in the film industry today. Writers will be working under a deadline of June 1st, where we will then review the 10-page submissions and pick the Final Five. Those five will then be given until November 14th to hand in a final draft, which will be submitted to our development contacts for studio consideration.
In December, the WSF will hold mock industry meetings with each of the writers of the Final Five in Madison, WI, mirroring the development meetings a writer can expect to take part in during a career as a screenwriter. We will then pick the official “WSF Pick” of the bunch and forward it to additional contacts.
So without further ado, here are the Lucky 13 loglines* that have advanced to the next round…
- MY OWN TIME MACHINE
Mourning the death of his grandfather, an eight-year-old enlists his parents’ help to build a time machine.
Brooke Miller Hall and Amy Gangl
- A SHOT TO THE HEART
A hit man’s life is changed as he becomes the sole guardian to three little kids.
Randy Clark
- DEATH SLEEP
To rescue his dying wife, a sleep disorders researcher unearths a technique to rescue people from fatal comas by entering their dreams – a dark world governed by even darker gods.
Ren Patterson
- THE HUNTING SHACK
Hunters become the hunted when friends take their annual hunting trip to Northern Wisconsin and learn one of their number is hunting them.
Rob Dippel
- WISCONSIN
Instead of a trip to Italy with their frat brothers, a joke lands the new pledges in Rome, Wisconsin for the time of their lives.
Paul Eisenbacher
- WHAT GOD HATH WROUGHT
Creatures produced by outlawed genetic experiments terrorize university researchers trapped with them in the campuses underground tunnel system.
Tom Dunn
- PERSONA
A secret agent programmed with multiple personalities must stop her organization from killing the one man who can restore her original personality.
Jeff Burns
- YOU’VE BEEN SERVED
After two office workers fall in love against all company rules, the romance goes sour and they turn to making each other’s lives miserable. And they can do it better than any other spurned lovers – they’re IRS agents.
Neil Graves
- BLACK FRIDAY
A workaholic father bonds with his estranged family on a hectic shopping holiday –- Black Friday.
Daniel Crisp
- PRINCIPAL OCTAVEC LOVES TO PARTY
After a near death experience with the gymnasium bleachers, a repentant principal struggles to become popular with the kids he has terrorized for years.
Craig Moorhead
- DADDY ROCKS
A rock band drummer has a stoned blast on tour, until his ex-wife deposits their five kids backstage during a show.
Pat Fitzgerald
- LONG TIME COMING
The Devil gives a supremely confident playboy immortality contingent upon his having consensual sex with a new partner every 24 hours.
Philip Heckman
- MASTERS OF THE GAME
Four teens go undercover for a cop and discover they’re actually targets in his deadly game to train sharpshooters.
Christine DeSmet and Peggy Williams
Congrats to the Lucky 13 and best of luck!
*Details of loglines and concepts may change slightly during the developing and writing process.
WSF Member Wins Script Doctor Contest
“I Love Lucy” Scribe Madelyn Pugh Davis Has Passed Away
Madelyn Pugh Davis, who with her writing partner Bob Carroll Jr. made television history in the 1950s writing Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s landmark situation comedy “I Love Lucy,” has died, according to the Los Angeles Times. She was 90.
Davis, a pioneering female radio and TV comedy writer whose work with the red-haired queen of TV comedy spanned four decades, died Wednesday at her home in Bel-Air after a brief illness.
The Emmy Award-winning series about a wacky New York City housewife and her Cuban bandleader husband ran on CBS from 1951 to 1957. It was ranked No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings for four of its six seasons and was never out of the top three.
When interviewers asked Ball, who died in 1989, what she thought was the secret of her show’s enduring popularity, she had a stock answer: “My writers.”
“My mother never accepted an award where she didn’t immediately say, ‘I could not have done this without my writers.’ She always put them first,” Lucie Arnaz told The Times on Thursday.
“Madelyn was such a class act,” Arnaz said. “She was a very private person, very soft-spoken, genteel, feminine — all those lovely words you associate with great ladies. And yet she had the ability to write this wacky, insane comedy for my mother.
“She and Bob together were just such a wonderful team, a great match-up. They complemented each other’s zaniness.”
Davis and Carroll, who were along for the “I Love Lucy” show’s entire ride, wrote a string of classic episodes such as the ones in which Lucy and Ethel are chocolate candy dippers trying to contend with a fast-moving conveyor belt, Lucy stomps grapes in Italy, and she gets increasingly drunk doing a TV commercial for the health tonic Vitameatavegamin.
In 1992, Carroll and Davis received the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for achievement in television writing from the Writers Guild of America. And in 2001, the UCLA Film School honored them for lifetime achievement in television writing.
Davis, whose first marriage to producer Quinn Martin ended in divorce, married Dr. Richard Davis, her former college sweetheart, in 1964. He died in 2009.
In addition to her son, Davis is survived by four stepchildren, Brian Davis, Charlotte Davis, Lisa Davis and Ned Davis; nine grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
Written by dennis.mclellan@latimes.com
Screenwriter Kevin Jarre Has Passed Away
Screenwriter Kevin Jarre (”Glory”, “Tombstone”) has died. He was 56, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Jarre died unexpectedly of heart failure on April 3 at his Santa Monica home.
Jarre was a history buff who was entranced by the Civil War since childhood, when he’d received toy soldiers for Christmas. His research on a black regiment led him to write the 1989 movie “Glory,” which won three Academy Awards, including one for actor Denzel Washington.
A majority of Jarre’s scripts were drastically rewritten, including the likes of “Rambo: First Blood Part II”, and especially both “The Devil’s Own”, “The Mummy”, and “Tombstone”.
He was the adopted son of Oscar-winning composer Maurice Jarre.
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