Genre: Sci-Fi Premise: Told in real-time, a man who recently broke into Area 51 stops at a motel and begins to execute his plan to send the incredible footage he took to the five biggest news sources in the country. About: This script finished Top 15 on the newest iteration of the Black List, a […]

The short story sale only took 45 years to happen Genre: Dystopian/Sci-Fi Adjacent Premise: 100 teen boys participate in an annual event that forces them to do a death walk until there is only one left. About: Okay, I’m cheating a little. This isn’t technically a short story. But it’s a short story in Stephen […]

I tell you how The Beekeeper script sold for a million bucks and share with you some screenwriting lessons from Anatomy of a Fall and Self-Reliance January is always a funky month in the box office schedule. It used to be a dumping ground for studio movies that tested terribly but, these days, if you […]

Learning the difference between Type 0, Type 1, and Type 2 Concepts One question I constantly go back and forth on is, “Is concept the most important part of screenwriting?” It’s a challenging question to answer because the other aspects – character, plot, dialogue – take so much more time to construct and integrate into […]

Genre: Comedy Premise: In the early 2000s, two totally opposite best friends, Mike (an uptight lawyer) and BJ (a stoner slacker), awake one morning to find that they have swapped bodies, are stuck in a time loop, and are afflicted with many other high-concept comedy premises of that era. Drawing upon their knowledge of those […]