Genre: ComedyPremise: 24 year old Ronnie Epstein wakes up after a night of drinking to learn he drunk dialed 200 people. He’ll spend the next 24 hours dealing with the consequences. About: Drunk Dialing was one of the ten finalists for the 2010 Nicholl Screenwriting Competition. Writer: Sebastian DavisDetails: 101 pages – 4/08/10 draft (This [...]
Here we are, only three days away from the 2011 Academy Awards. I’m so excited! Yeah, I know, I know. The Oscars are worthless. It’s a popularity and “Who You know” Contest. Blah blah blah. But every time I begin to think that way, I look at the candidates, and you know what? They’re pretty [...]
Genre: ActionPremise: A convict and a construction crew inadvertently spark a gun battle when they rescue a woman on the run from her violent husband and his dangerous associates. Trapped on a mile-long bridge and cut off from the outside world, they have to band together to survive a 5 hour siege. About: Usually, every [...]
Genre: Sci-Fi/ComedyPremise: An eccentric inventor invents a crude time travel device which allows him to send messages back to his earlier self. Although his intentions are initially noble, he soon begins to use the device for his own selfish needs.About: Many of you might recognize this script from the first (or was it second) season [...]
Genre: Noir/Fantasy/Serial KillerPremise: A recently retired police captain, Hook, is called back in to action when a boy goes missing under mysterious circumstances. He enlists the help of a woman named Wendy who, since her own kidnapping as a child, has been diagnosed as clinically insane. About: Ben Magid is a writer who’s been earning [...]
Genre: Sci-Fi/ComedyPremise: One of the top villains in the world is pushed out of the villain coalition when it’s suspected that he has too much compassion for others and might actually be – gasp – good.About: Villain is one of the first two Amazon Screenwriting Contest $20,000 winners. The writer, Richard Stern, tried to push [...]
I’m not going to pretend like I’m first on the boat here. The “Dead Island” video game trailer went viral a couple of days ago and has been burning up the internet ever since. Within a day, all the big studios were clamoring for a movie deal with the producers (who’d actually secured the film [...]
Amateur Friday is back! I didn’t like the sound of last week’s “New Writer Friday” but I can’t think of anything better at the moment so back to Amateur Friday we go. Who knows though? Next week it could be something else. We’ll see. The drama continues! :) Genre: Drama/Sci-fiPremise: A book appraiser working at [...]
Genre: Crime/Noir Premise: A private detective investigating an adultery case stumbles onto a larger conspiracy involving the Los Angeles water system. About: Chinatown has been called one of the greatest films ever made. It was nominated for eleven Academy Awards in 1974, winning for Best Original Screenplay. In 1971, producer and all around kook Robert [...]
Genre: Thriller/Mystery Premise: An investigator tries to solve a murder case on a ship that involves a handyman, a young stock broker and the stock broker’s girlfriend. About: Nautica was originally written and sold back in 2001 and was going to be directed by Tarsem Singh. As so often is the case in Hollywood though, [...]
Genre: Dark ComedyPremise: Three siblings deal with the fallout of their father’s successful children’s book series that based its lead character on their baby brother.About: Bobby Blue Sky was purchased last year and will star Paul Rudd, Topher Grace and Kristin Wiig. The writer, Emily Kapnek, has been working in TV as both a writer [...]
Genre: Period/GangsterPremise: A cop rolls into the corrupt 1920s town of Personville, only to find that the man who hired him has been murdered. He must now navigate the town’s seedy underside to solve the murder and clean the town up.About: Dashiell Hammett’s book Red Harvest was the material that inspired Sergio Leone’s For a [...]
Genre: ActionPremise: Eight hostages are held inside a city bank. Their only hope is a man who has called the wrong number and is told that if he hangs up the phone, the hostages will die. Phone Booth meets Die Hard.About: Every Friday, I review a script from the readers of the site. If you’re [...]
Last week, we looked at one of the greatest action movies ever made, a little indie flick called “Die Hard,” and discussed the numerous solid screenwriting choices that made it great. Today, we’re doing…well…the opposite. We’re discussing Die Hard 2, one of the worst (at least as far as the 90s were concerned) action movies [...]
Genre: Cop-DramaPremise: An unorthodox Irish policeman with a confrontational personality is teamed up with an uptight FBI agent to investigate an international drug-smuggling ring.About: The Guard was written and directed by John Michael McDonagh. This is his first directing effort. McDonagh’s one other credit is for writing 2003’s “Ned Kelly.” The Guard stars Don Cheadle [...]
Genre: Comedy/DramaPremise: A once-prominent public school teacher tries to get three students into college in order to win over a hot new teacher. About: Was on the ’06 Black List with six votes. While the script is still stuck in development, Eric Gravning, the writer, used it to get assignment work on the Halle Barry [...]
As frequent readers of the site know, one of the more insightful commenters on Scriptshadow is Filmwonk (now Bohdicat). I don’t always have time to read through every comment, but he’s one commenter I always check in on, as he often points out stuff that I either didn’t have the time to get into or [...]
Die Hard. Some people say Jaws changed the way movies were made. Others say Star Wars. But an argument can be made that Die Hard had just as much of an influence on movies as both of those films, maybe not so much culturally, but definitely in how studios approached the tent pole film. The [...]
Genre: Comedy/Sci-FiPremise: A pair of Beatles fans stumble upon a time machine and seize the opportunity to go back in time and prevent Yoko Ono from meeting John Lennon.About: Chris McCoy hasn’t broken into the “produced credit” category just yet, but he’s been pretty busy since he debuted on the 2007 Black List with this [...]
Genre: DramaPremise: A young boy goes on a journey through New York City to find the truth about how his father, who disappeared in 9/11, died. About: Based on the book by Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was adapted by Eric Roth, who won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Forrest [...]
