After 4 weekends of pitching your asses off, these are the 76 concepts that are in the official High Concept Club Contest.
I’ll get to the official list of entrants in a second. But first, I want to congratulate everyone who made it. Your persistence and determination won you a seat at the most prestigious screenwriting table in Hollywood.
BUT NOW IT’S TIME TO DELIVER!
Monday, March 1, 2027.
That’s your deadline.
Here’s the deal, guys. I’m not accepting dropouts. A lot of people dropped out of the Blood & Ink Contest. I think nearly half. And, don’t worry, I’m going to pick back up on reviewing Blood & Ink scripts next week. But it truly is unacceptable. Six months is more than enough time to write a script with at least one rewrite and, more likely, two.
It’s 20,000 words. That’s nothing. I write 1500 words every time I post.
You all worked hard to come up with these ideas and beat out thousands of other concepts. There are writers who would kill to be in this contest but couldn’t get in. It’s a privilege to be here. So I want each and every one of you to take advantage of that. Finish this script if it kills you.
If you received a “Yes,” big or lowercase, you can send me a 5 page outline and I will give you notes on it. You will see that some “yes” votes have been retroactively added. I strongly encourage you to take advantage of this. Because if you go down a bad route in a screenplay, it’s hard to come back from it. So, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com when you have your outline ready and we can rock and roll.
And, of course, if anyone wants to hire me after you write a draft, so you can go into that next draft cooking with gas, I’m here as well (carsonreeves1@gmail.com). You do not need to do this. But it’s here if you think you need it.
What I would suggest you do is spend a week or two writing up an extensive outline. The reason for this is that most scripts die around the 45 page mark because the writer doesn’t have any direction left. An outline will give you that direction so that you can finish the whole thing.
Then, write like the wind. Don’t get in your head. Follow the outline and get the draft finished ASAP. It was one of you who taught me (raise your hand in the comments) that it’s a lot easier to rewrite something than to write something out of thin air. So, the sooner you get a script down on paper, the easier time you’ll have shaping that into a screenplay.
I don’t want to hear, “I didn’t have time.” You have plenty of time. Cut out the bullshit you do every day. The Youtube videos, the porn, and yes, even limit some of that Scriptshadow commenting! Instead, focus on getting that script written like your life depends on it. Here’s a quick metric: If you write 3 pages that day, you can come over to Scriptshadow and comment your ass off.
I’m going to be announcing something within the next couple of weeks but, let’s just say that two recent Scriptshadow featured screenplays just sold to big companies (and one, a GIANT company). So, there is a lot of incentive to finish these scripts.
Okay, a couple of technical things here. Number one, if you have two entries in the competition, you have to pick one. Let me know in the comments which one you’re going with. Two, it would help me a lot if you could e-mail me at carsonreeves3@gmail.com with your title, genre, and logline for your entry.
Below are the 76 concepts that made it. You may notice a few that didn’t officially make it. These are concepts that I couldn’t stop thinking about so I knew I had to include them. If I made a mistake and missed your script, let me know!
All right, enough stalling. Which concepts excite you the most? Who do you think will write the best script? Who are your dark horses? All opinions welcome, positive and negative, as long as you’re respectful.
Title: Tailback
Genre: Mystery / Thriller
Logline: Stranded on a bridge in miles of gridlocked traffic on the hottest day of the year, a single mother wakes to find her six-year-old daughter missing and must trace her last known moments through the surrounding vehicle occupants and their dash-cam footage before the traffic moves and her child is lost forever.
Writer: Arthur
Title: 25th Hour
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: A blue-collar technician accidentally intercepts a hidden frequency that gives him access to the secret twenty-fifth hour, used exclusively by the global elite to rig world events, forcing him to survive nightly hunts as he tries to expose their conspiracy.
Writer: Tencoach
Title: The Massacre
Genre: Action-Thriller
Logline: When King Herod learns from three Eastern mystics that the King of Kings has just been born, he orders mass infanticide, forcing a desperate father to smuggle his three small children out of the foreign city of Bethlehem while panic, mayhem, and Herod’s death squads sweep across its people.
Writer: Steffan
Title: First Boy
Genre: Supernatural Horror
Logline: When a mother realizes her teenage daughter’s new boyfriend is impossibly the same boy who tried to kill her twenty-five years ago, she must stop him before her daughter becomes his next victim.
Writer: Steven Rauber
–yes script–
Title: Just Another Day
Genre: Black Comedy
Logline: Stuck for ages in a time loop and half crazy, a young woman decides on this particular rewind day to use her decades of accumulated knowledge about her town to make life as chaotic and hellish for its residents as she can; but then tomorrow actually comes.
Writer: Brenkilco
–yes script–
Title: Wyvern
Genre: Action/Fantasy
Logline: A crew of bank robbers are recruited to carry out the most terrifying heist of their lives, stealing a hoard of gold from the lair of a real-life dragon. Heat meets the Hobbit.
Writer: Finn Morgan
Title: Eternal Stakes
Genre: Thriller/Supernatural
Logline: A secret society of vampires offers a terminally ill detective the promise of immortality if he can hunt down a human serial killer who’d been tracking and killing their members.
Writer: Dev
–yes script–
Title: Tenmile
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: In New York City, anyone who slows below ten miles an hour dies; the only person who knows why is a woman racing across the city to save the daughter who can’t stop running.. and won’t stop running from her.
Writer: Branko Maksic
Title: HEAR/SAY
Genre: Thriller
Logline: At a global tech summit, a deaf accessibility coordinator lip-reads an assassination plot against a whistleblower about to expose a deadly cover-up, forcing her to prove what only she saw before his keynote begins.
Writer: David Cahill
Title: The Cape
Genre: Thriller.
Logline: After a massive Memorial Day car crash blocks all lanes of the Bourne Bridge, a nervous man becomes trapped above the Cape Cod Canal, surrounded by police officers, with his dead wife’s body in his trunk.
Writer: Mr. Blonde
Title: Off The Bench
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a diplomatic crisis strands a tiny country’s World Cup squad behind closed borders, a ragtag group of expats with day jobs get a chance to take their place and represent their homeland on soccer’s biggest stage.
Writer: Federico
Title: Aftershock
Genre: Action/Survival
Logline: When an earthquake shatters his high‐rise, interrupting his rooftop suicide attempt, an agoraphobic FBI informer must fight his way down the crumbling tower to rescue his family — whilst being hunted by the gang he betrayed — before the aftershock collapses the skyscraper completely.
DIE HARD meets THE RAID
Writer: Paperback Writer
Title: Dream On
Genre: Action/Comedy
Logline: When their patients’ nightmares manifest in the waking world, it’s up to a team of sleep psychologists to solve the parasomnia problem before the nightmares destroy the city.
Writer: ScriptChick
Title: Doors
Genre: Surrealist apocalypse adventure
Logline: The world’s doors have stopped working the way they should. What once took you from one room to the next could now strand you literally anywhere else on the planet, with no way of returning the way you came. When his teenage daughter steps through an open door and into an active warzone on the other side of the globe, a widowed father will stop at nothing to track her down and bring her home in an odyssey that spans the entire planet.
Writer: Connor L
–yes script–
Title: Love Neighs
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: Set in the 15th century during the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, a band of disgraced knights get their shot at redemption when they’re tasked with escorting a
French erotic romance writer from the frontlines to the palace of the King of England, his number one fan.
Writer: Maksim
Title: Mate
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: An unlucky-in-love woman meets the man of her dreams, only to discover he is a Neuralink patient whose body has been hijacked by her obsessive AI assistant determined to consummate their relationship.
Writer: Ben Stoker
Title: SEIZURE
Genre: Action
Logline: To stop terrorists who have seized a maximum security mental hospital, a visiting FBI agent running low on ammo teams up with an escaped prisoner running low on meds and whose violent blackouts make him a perfect killing machine.
Writer: Scott
Title: How To Lose a Job in 10 Days
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A desperate employee has ten days to get herself fired and collect the severance that will save her family’s home, but every sabotage only makes her more indispensable and fast-tracks her toward CEO.
Writer: Moscow Mule
–yes script–
Title: Peacekeeper
Genre: Action/Comedy
Logline: When 2 bickering married CIA agents threaten to divorce right before completing a major covert operation, the agency dispatches its most versatile “peacekeeper” operative to save the marriage – and the mission.
Writer: AlexE
Title: Dungeon Brawler
Genre: Fantasy Action Comedy
Logline: When his impoverished village can’t afford the king’s crushing tax, a scrappy peasant enters an illegal bare-knuckle fight circuit against trolls, orcs, and other mythical creatures to win enough gold before the crown comes to collect.
Writer: Joseph Jay Carroll Jr.
Title: Fireballer$
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: Four Philadelphia construction workers must climb to the roof of a towering inferno to retrieve a lunch box containing a life-changing lottery ticket.
Writer: CJob
Title: Escape from Avalon
Genre: Sci Fi/Adventure
Logline: After an American tech executive crashes his yacht on an uncharted Pacific island, he must coordinate his escape with the island’s only other occupant – a 17th Century Spanish explorer who claims to have crashed only two weeks earlier.
Writer: wlubake
Title: Star Fall
Genre: Sci Fi
Logline: As a massive prison ship spirals toward a nearby star, its crew must fight their way through hundreds of the galaxy’s most dangerous criminals, now released from containment, to restore the ship’s power and prevent total annihilation.
Writer: Romer6
Title: The Family Jewels
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a clueless American influencer pulls Excalibur from the stone during a viral publicity stunt, an ancient law makes him the rightful King of England, forcing the greedy royal family to scheme, sabotage, and manipulate their way into stopping a well-meaning idiot from inheriting the crown.
Writer: Josh Bullock
Title: TBC
Genre: Horror thriller
Logline: When the first English ship arrives in the New World, a Powhatan warrior discovers the settlers are savage vampires who have crossed the ocean not for land but for fresh blood.
Writer: Gavin John
Title: War Gods
Genre: Action
Logline: An elite Delta Force team is shot down during a hostage rescue mission in Greece, forcing them to pursue terrorists and their hostages into the original Labyrinth, where humanity’s oldest monsters never died.
Writer: David Cahill
–yes script–
Title: Action Replay
Genre: Action/Heist
Logline: After years in prison two legendary old tough guys get hired as consultants on a movie about their famous last (failed) heist and decide to use the filming as cover to try the heist again…
Writer: Mike Hurst
Title: Cellar Door
Genre: Thriller
Logline: After breaking into her neighbor’s basement for shelter during a tornado, a disgraced detective unearths an intricate tunnel system that secretly connects to numerous houses including her own—and to the homes of multiple missing teens she failed to find.
Writer: Redd
Title: I Think I Hate You
Genre: RomCom
Logline: After professing his love to his best friend and subsequently being ghosted by her even though they work together every day, a crushed young man hires a tech startup to edit his brain chemistry so he can finally move on. But now that he finds her repulsive, she finds him irresistible.
Writer: FloydC
Title: Fool’s Gold
Genre: Comedy/ Western
Logline: During the California Gold Rush, a struggling backwater town fakes a gold strike to lure fortune‑hunters and boost its own fortunes. But when real gold is found, the townsfolk try to drive away the prospectors and keep all the gold for themselves.
Writer: Formation Wave
–yes script–
Title: The Jump
Genre: Action/Sci-fi
Logline: When terrorists seize a commercial airliner and threaten to crash it, a SWAT team must use experimental teleportation to board the plane. But they only have four jumps, each lasting ten minutes, to retake the aircraft before time runs out.
Writer: mahyar
Title: Inferno Line
Genre: Action/Thriller
Logline: A jobless smokejumper teams up with a veteran thief to rob $3.4 million from a postal train. But the plan derails when the arson he started becomes a massive wildfire, cutting every way out.
Writer: Florent Hendrickx
Title: From Suburbia With Love
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a socially awkward 14-year-old discovers a banged-up international spy hiding in his pool house, they strike up a deal: the kid will keep the spy’s whereabouts secret while the suave spy helps the kid win over his crush.
Writer: Mason Elliot
Title: Contraflow
Genre: Action-Thriller
Logline: After robbing a bank under the cover of a Category 5 hurricane evacuation, the South’s best wheelman must turn Florida’s gridlocked exodus into a moving shell game, leapfrogging his crew and the stolen cash between vehicles to evade police checkpoints as the storm closes in behind them.
Writer: Sam Kerr
Title: Mistletoe Joe
Genre: Comedy
Logline: Every year, Santa prides himself on granting everyone’s Christmas wish. So when a socially inept man sends Santa a wish wanting to lose his virginity, in desperation, Santa sends him a foul-mouthed, womanizing elf, known as Mistletoe Joe, to help him get laid by Christmas.
Writer: Noah B
Title: Vice Stream
Genre: Crime thriller
Logline: After a popular Miami streamer is murdered during a live broadcast, his fanatical online community turns the ongoing stream into a weapon, using every clue hidden in the footage to hunt his killer through Miami’s neon underworld.
Writer: Tencoach
–yes script–
Title: No Way Down
Genre: Contained Survival Thriller
Logline: When a scientific expedition discovers a hidden ecosystem in a remote rainforest valley, they become trapped on the vast web of an undiscovered species of spider, a hundred feet above the jungle floor, where the only way out is across.
Writer: Arthur
Title: Her Book Boyfriend
Genre: Romantasy, Comedy
Logline: A pretentious publisher wakes up trapped inside his wife’s trashy fantasy novel and must win her back before she falls for the hunky shapeshifting dragon prince who is everything she wishes he was.
Writer: Mary Tay
–yes script–
Title: The Black Meridian
Genre: Action Sci-Fi
Logline: When treasure hunters search the Bermuda Triangle for a legendary pirate ship that disappeared, they’re swept back in time and hunted by the very ship they came to find.
Writer: Anon E. Moose
Title: Breakfast With Tiffany
Genre: Science Fiction Romance
Logline: When a lonely night-shift radio astronomer falls for the mysterious woman he speaks to each night over the airwaves, he discovers she’s the first intelligent life beyond Earth, and must choose between revealing humanity’s greatest discovery or protecting the woman he’s fallen in love with.
Writer: Erica
Title: Undroid
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a tech firm fails to deliver a humanoid robot in time, a young female trainee must take its place for a short demonstration – then a whole weekend with a wealthy, important and lascivious investor.
Writer: TigerMoomin
Title: Body Count
Genre: Horror
Logline: After discovering his former dating app matches are inexplicably meeting gruesome deaths, a former fuckboy must discover the cause before the line of death reaches his last match: his fiancée.
Writer: I’msorrydave
Title: Possessive
Genre: Supernatural Thriller
Logline: After dumping his toxic, manipulative girlfriend, a man reenters the dating scene. But when every new woman he dates begins exhibiting his ex’s exact, terrifying behaviors, he begins to suspect she has found a way to body-hop into them.
Writer: Have99kitkat
Title: Good Fences
Genre: Sci Fi thriller
Logline: A neighborhood wakes up to discover their yard fences have moved and formed a complex maze around their homes and as the maze shifts every ten minutes, they are forced into unresolved conflicts with neighbors, dark secrets, and crushed homes to escape it, facing the realization they are but mice in a heartless study.
Writer: Randy Williams
Title: The Wrong Hood
Genre: Fantasy Action-Comedy
Logline: A bullied student-outcast passionate about all things medieval is pulled through a magic portal into Sherwood for the adventure of his dreams, only to accidentally get Robin Hood killed – and forcing him to replace the legend as the leader of outcasts in a story he knows by heart but is wildly unqualified to lead…
Writer: Rewrittenver3
Title: How I Died
Genre: Sci-fi Thriller
Logline: When a widow’s AI husband investigates the mysterious disappearance of the man he replaced—he begins to suspect his new wife may have something to do with the original’s death.
Writer: James
Title: Two Steps Away
Genre: Thriller
Logline: After leaving her lover for dead in a hotel room to save her marriage, a suburban wife is horrified when he moves in next door with his secret wife and children, forcing them into a deadly standoff where neither can destroy the other without destroying themselves.
Writer: Kit Anderson
Title: Blue Origin
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a publicity stunt goes wrong, sending an all-female celebrity spaceflight catastrophically off course, its crew of pop stars and influencers must overcome their egos and lack of training to become the astronauts they were pretending to be to make it back home alive.
Writer: AEL
Title: A Claus For Concern
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When their young kids stop believing in Santa, two Christmas‑obsessed parents launch a chaotic, last‑minute expedition to the North Pole to prove he’s real.
Writer: drifting in space
Title: Stormline
Genre: Disaster Thriller
Logline: When an avalanche cripples the last cable-car line evacuating a mountain resort before a record blizzard, a former ropeway mechanic must cross the roofs of its swaying cabins to stabilize a collapsing support tower before the storm tears the entire line down.
Writer: D. Lawrence
Title: Jester: King for a Day
Genre: Dark Comedy
Logline: When a cruel king trades places with his jester for a day to prove the fool has it easy, the king unexpectedly dies, leaving the jester legally trapped on the throne just as a rival kingdom launches its long-awaited invasion.
Writer: Moscow Mule
Title: Reset
Genre: Romantic Thriller
Logline: When an assassin falls in love with her target, she voluntarily erases her memory and restarts the mission, forcing him to make her remember she loves him before she kills him.
Writer: Scott
Title: All Along the Watchtower
Genre: Contained Thriller
Logline: Told entirely from his watchtower during a prison riot, an unassuming guard discovers the uprising is an elaborate false flag operation orchestrated by a drug cartel, corrupt federal agents, and his fellow guards, and that he’s being set up as the fall guy.
Writer: Steffan
Title: Open House
Genre: Thriller
Logline: During the first open house in an empty luxury development, a real estate agent is hunted through the development’s finished and unfinished homes by a family convinced she knowingly sold them the mold-infested house that killed their daughter.
Writer: Joe Rustler
Title: Blacksite
Genre: Action Thriller / Survival
Logline: When a military flight containing dangerous detainees crashes in the Arctic, the survivors, both soldiers and criminals alike, must work together to survive both the elements and the mysterious creature hunting them in the snow.
Writer: Maggie Kebler
Title: The Pecking Order
Genre: Thriller
Logline: When a former bully is wrongfully imprisoned for manslaughter, he is horrified to discover that the warden of the prison is his former victim. As the now psychotic warden’s twisted revenge begins intensifying, the prisoner becomes more and more desperate to escape.
Writer: Elki
Title: Salvage
Genre: Action
Logline: To save his family’s failing business, a salvage captain leads his skeleton crew into a naval war zone to recover a $50 million drifting freighter against better-equipped rivals and incoming airstrikes.
Writer: Dipper Pines
Title: Earshot
Genre: Thriller
Logline: On an anniversary trip to the remote resort where they honeymooned, a deaf woman’s new implant activates ahead of schedule — and the first thing she hears is her husband meticulously planning her murder; now she must survive the week without ever letting him suspect she can hear.
Writer: Branko Maksic
Title: Firecane
Genre: Action
Logline: When a Category 5 hurricane ruptures and ignites a 300-mile-wide offshore gas field, the engineer behind its failed safety system must fight across a burning platform to cut off the fuel before the storm carries the fires ashore and sets the entire Gulf Coast ablaze.
Writer: Jaco
Title: Tree Huggers
Genre: Horror
Logline: Environmental activists and the mercenaries sent to stop them become unlikely allies when the protected forest they battle over reveals its trees have become sentient predators.
Writer: Josephy Jay Carroll Jr.
Title: Take Her Out
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A hitman boards a luxury singles’ cruise to discreetly eliminate his next target, only for his widowed mother to sneak aboard and decide the woman he has been hired to kill is his perfect match.
Writer: Shewrites
–yes script–
Title: In My Suburb The Children Mow Lawns
Genre: Sci-fi/Drama
Logline: When a young housewife makes an accidental discovery at City Hall she’s torn between preserving her ideal life and exposing a classified social experiment: the integration of humans and extraterrestrials.
Writer: Levres De Sang
Title: MÖBIUS HIGHWAY
Genre:
Science Fiction Thriller
Logline: When a spatial-loop seals LA’s busiest highway interchange, a group of stranded drivers must decipher a way to escape before the contracting anomaly crushes them out of existence.
Writer: Enoch
Title: On Set Guardian
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A washed-up former child star is transported back in time and forced to become the on-set guardian to Disney’s biggest up-and-coming star and total nightmare—her 10-year-old self.
Tally: 23 votes
Writer: T D
Title: Help
Genre: Thriller
Logline: After the death of their billionaire boss, the staff of his secluded island estate make an uneasy agreement: keep it secret and live in opulence for once. But when they discover a hidden safe, their pact quickly gives way to greed, paranoia, and betrayal.
Writer: bigtimetimmyjim
Title: A Little Versailles
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a Marie Antoinette biopic spirals into chaos, an overwhelmed indie director and her crew abandon the shoot to live an idyllic 18th-century life inside its elaborate prop village, provoking studio executives to lay siege their improvised paradise.
Writer: Kiya Opstrup
Title: Dreamland
Genre: Comedy / Drama
Logline: A simple-minded man sneaks aboard a plane in search of a better life in Switzerland, only to land in a war-torn country instead, where he happily mistakes the horrors of war for ordinary Swiss life while unwittingly becoming an unlikely symbol of hope. The Party meets Life is Beautiful
Writer: Romer6
Title: One Wrong Move
Genre: Survival Horror/Thriller
Logline: After a billionaire botanist sends a distress call from his remote island, a rescue team enters his secret Garden of Eden— only to discover the paradise is one colossal predatory plant, forcing them to navigate its labyrinth of deadly traps to reach him.
Writer: Dkushner2006
Title: Stay Awake
Genre: Survival Thriller
Logline: When a mysterious phenomenon makes falling asleep deadly, a disgraced researcher must lead her family across a collapsing country to finish her controversial sleep experiment that could be the only way to stop it — before they close their eyes for good.
Writer: Dkushner
Title: Van Damned
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A group of ageing action-movie obsessives find themselves trapped in a real-life Die Hard scenario — and finally get to test whether any of that movie knowledge is actually useful.
Writer: Tom Savage
Title: Merger
Genre: Horror
Logline: When a small company is absorbed by a corporate giant, a lone secretary discovers the merger is literal: the buildings, the staff, and eventually herself will be fused into a pulsating monstrous organism, unless she leads her own hostile takeover…
Writer: Formation Wave
–yes script–
Title: SIX-PACK
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: When an unassuming journalist stumbles upon six cans of whoopass in a laboratory, he must work out when the best times are to open each can to boost his fighting skills as he battles his way through the neighbourhood of a vengeful mob boss.
Writer: Ken
Title: Robo Hoe
Genre: Comedy
Logline: On the gritty streets of future Harlem, a ragtag crew of aging hookers wages war on a corporate sex bot stealing their clients, their turf, and their mans.
Writer: Walker
Title: RAMREE
Genre: Thriller
Logline: (based on a true story) A World War II assassination mission on Ramree Island becomes a nightmare when 5 British soldiers are trapped in crocodile-infested mangroves with hundred of crocodiles to face to reach freedom.
Writer: nicohajj
–yes script–
Title: For Witcher or Poorer
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A man set to marry the woman of his dreams must first reconcile with his discovery that her mother is secretly a bonafide wicked witch.
Writer: Robert Remy
Title: Rigged
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A low-level hitman gets summoned for jury duty on a murder he committed and must manipulate eleven strangers into the right verdict without the judge, the jury, or the crew who hired him realizing he’s the real killer.
Writer: David Cahill
