We got the trailer version of this screenplay in the First Page Showdown. Now, it’s grown into an entire script. People lovvvvvved this first page. But can it survive the relentless deconstruction of every single word by the Scriptshadow audience??  You would’ve thought QB1 was an actual serial killer who was best friends with Sydney Sweeney from some of those comments.  The Scriptshadow faithful does not hold back, that’s for sure.  

A quick reminder about how this contest works. This week, the top four vote-getting scripts from the Mega-Showdown last weekend will get their own featured day. Yesterday was QB1. Today is The First Horseman. I will post the first five pages of every script on their day.  I want you to read those pages because, come Friday, we’re having the second half of the showdown where you will vote for your favorite of the four finalists.

To be clear, THERE IS NO VOTING TODAY. This is strictly about reading The First Horseman’s first five pages. Also, if you like what you see in the pages, you can download the entire script. So, everybody give a big returning welcome to our first page lothario, Finn Morgan, and his script, The First Horseman!

Hey! I don’t hear you clapping!

Title: The First Horseman

Genre: Thriller

Logline: At the height of World War 2, a young Japanese-American investigator must race to prevent a terrifying Japanese plot to unleash a devastating plague on the United States. Inspired by true events.

It turns out you guys love yourselves some American Psycho! Between this and the success of the Headhunter script, it seems there’s an appetite for another one of these movies. Maybe QB1 will be that movie.

Let me explain the rules of the contest. This week, the top four vote-getting scripts from the Mega-Showdown last weekend, will get their own featured day. Today is QB1. I will post the first five pages of every script on their day.  I want you to read those pages because, come Friday, we’re having the second half of the showdown where you will vote for your favorite of the four finalists.

To be clear, THERE IS NO VOTING TODAY. This is strictly about reading QB1’s first five pages. Also, if you like what you see in the pages, you can download the entire script. So, everybody give a big warm welcome to our first finalist, Bill Lawrence, and his script, QB1!

Title: QB1
Genre: Action-thriller
Logline: A star quarterback hides a twisted secret—he’s a serial killer carving up victims between games. But when a relentless detective starts connecting the dots, his perfect season—and double life—begin to unravel. American Psycho meets Any Given Sunday.

Make sure to vote below!

As is always the case when I put these contests together, I experience the highest of highs (“Wow, where has this writer been?? This is great stuff!”) and the lowest of lows (20 entries in a row without a single compelling opening page!). But in the end, I love it because it celebrates you guys and all your hard work.

Now, I have good news if your script didn’t make the showdown. I have ten more entries that didn’t make the cut, but were close. I’m going to do an “Almost Made It Showdown” for those scripts at the end of August. So don’t get too upset if your script didn’t make it. Because there’s a chance that the best script in the entire competition is in that second tier of screenplays.

Okay, now for the rules. At the very least, read the logline and first page of every entry. I’ve also included links to the scripts themselves. If you have the time, read as much of each entry as you can. Then, in the comments section, tell us which script you’re voting for. You are not allowed to half-vote. Mega-Showdown is the big leagues. It’s once a year. So you only get full votes.

The four highest vote-getting scripts will each get their own “Show Day” next week. That means they’ll get five pages posted so that, at the very least, all voters read those first five pages. Then, next weekend, we’ll do the second half of the showdown. The four finalists will go into a final voting round and, once again, you guys will vote for your favorite. The winner gets a review the following Monday.

Something to keep in mind here is that, unlike past showdowns, I didn’t just read the logilne or the first page. I read at least five pages of everyone’s entry. Therefore, if you don’t love someone’s logline down below, I encourage you to still read as much of the script as you can because some of these entries were picked more on the writing than the concept.

VOTING CLOSES SUNDAY AUGUST 3RD AT 11:59PM PACIFIC TIME!

Okay, are we ready? The time is finally here. :)

Good luck everyone!

Title: A Woke In The Night
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Logline: When a home invasion interrupts a family gathering, rational thinking Alice takes evasive action, but her two progressive sisters ignite an evening of depravity.

Title: SNOW AND THE SEVEN
Genre: Action/Revenge Thriller
Logline: After narrowly escaping a hit on her father, a washed-up slacker is rescued by a secretive group of elite mercenaries known as The Seven, who help her recover, then teach her their ways so she can avenge his death.

Title: Worm
Genre: Horror
Logline: When Ada’s sister is brutally murdered in a Victorian London alleyway Ada begins to investigate, and slowly, as women start being murdered in the same fashion across the city, the truth begins to unveil that the killer may not be a man, but a monster.

Title: QB1
Genre: Action-thriller
Logline: A star quarterback hides a twisted secret—he’s a serial killer carving up victims between games. But when a relentless detective starts connecting the dots, his perfect season—and double life—begin to unravel. American Psycho meets Any Given Sunday.

Title: The First Horseman
Genre: Thriller
Logline: At the height of World War 2, a young Japanese-American investigator must race to prevent a terrifying Japanese plot to unleash a devastating plague on the United States. Inspired by true events.

Title: HARD LABOR
Genre: Real-time action thriller
Logline: A heavily pregnant woman is found by criminals she’s been hiding from and the shock makes her go into labor. Now she must awaken old skills to survive this night – because killers are coming…but so is the baby.

Title: UNDISCLOSED
Genre: Contained Thriller
Logline: At the height of the Cold War, a combat radar operator working at a remote US military outpost near the Russian border, discovers what they believe to be a rogue UFO, and must find a way to stop it without triggering World War 3.

Title: War’s Last Day
Genre: War/Thriller
Logline: As the last US troops withdraw from Afghanistan, a brash CIA field agent ropes a stray recon team into a hasty, off-the-books rescue mission, taking them high into the impassable Hindu Kush mountains with no way out, no backup, and the Taliban closing in behind them.

Title: The Ballad of the Ember Knight
Genre: Medieval Epic Adventure
Logline: In war-torn 14th century France, a disgraced knight—Roland Chandos, once the legendary Ember Knight—must confront his betrayals, protect the last heir to the throne, and redeem his honor in a final duel against the man who orchestrated his downfall.

Title: SMOKESCREEN
Genre: War-action.
Logline: Shot down by the Red Baron, a Nurse with a photographic memory must navigate the perils of no-man’s land to transport critical intelligence to the Allies that will save countless lives and shorten the Great War.

Accepting entries until 10pm Pacific time!

Good news!  I survived the 2025 West Coast Tsunami!  Which means the contest is still on!!!

As a reminder, this is THE greatest online screenwriting contest ever. I pick the 10 best entries, post their titles and loglines here on the site, along with their first page. You, the readers of the site, will then vote, over the weekend, which entries you like best. The top 4 vote-getters will then each get their own day next week where I post their first five pages. The following weekend, we have a second round of voting for that Top 4. Whoever gets the most votes wins, and receives a review that Monday! Last year’s winner, the writer of Bedford, got a manager out of it and his script was sent around town. You could be that person this year. Just follow the instructions below!

HOW TO SUBMIT
What: Mega Showdown
When: Friday, August 1
Deadline: TONIGHT by 10pm Pacific Time
Send me your: Script title, genre, logline, and a PDF of the script
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com

Submissions for The Scriptshadow Mega-Showdown Screenplay Contest are due THURSDAY! – Here’s how to submit!

Genre: Comedy
Premise: When there’s a death in the family and his daughter, who’s a very talented ballerina, needs money to get into the top ballet school, hardcore alcoholic Happy Gilmore pulls out the clubs again to go back on the tour.
About: For thirty years, Christopher McDonald (the actor who played Happy’s arch nemesis Shooter McGavin in the original film) pestered Adam Sandler to make a sequel to Happy Gilmore. So dedicated to the cause McDonald was, that he actually started a now successful Twitter account where he tweets as Shooter McGavin. Finally, a couple of years ago, Sandler said… maybe. With the door ajar, McDonald shoved his way in, and a couple of years later, a new Happy Gilmore movie has arrived. The film debuted on Netflix this past weekend.
Writers: Tim Herlihy & Adam Sandler
Details: 115 minutes

The thing I liked best about Happy Gilmore 2 is that it made me appreciate just how great the original movie was. I actually watched the original right before the sequel, which, in retrospect, was a mistake, as the original is truly a laugh-a-minute experience, whereas the sequel is more of a “laugh every half hour” sorta deal.

Now, I had heard Adam Sandler start chirping about how amazing the script was (the best script he had ever worked on!) a year ago. And it’s funny because, after watching the movie, I see exactly why he thought that way. And how the co-writer of the film, Tim Herlihy, thought so as well. There was clearly a lot of thought put into this story and this character.

But the reality is, Happy Gilmore 2 ends up being the kind of script a bad screenwriter would think is a good script. Let me explain.

Happy Gilmore 2 is, at its core, a deep character exploration. It is about an alcoholic man grieving the loss of his wife and, no matter what he does, he seems to be consumed by that loss and cannot move forward.

It is also a real-world commentary on the complex political machinations of what has happened to professional golf over the last several years. For those who don’t know, the professional golf tour was rocked when a rival tour, backed by Saudi Arabia, poached a bunch of its players and began a competing tour. It threw everything about golf into disarray.

It is a movie about family, about a father’s undying love for his daughter and his fear that, unless he sends her off to ballet school, she will be stuck in this dirty shanty sad town that his family has been forced to live in for the rest of her life.

It is a movie that takes the villain of the previous film, explores the complex psychopathy of what happens when you are exposed to the world as a cheater, a fraud, and a loser, then subverts expectations by turning him into an ally of Happy Gilmore.

And finally, it is a movie about a man who’s fallen from grace – who once had everything and now has nothing – and how do you navigate life when the best years of it are behind you?

Do you see what I mean? If you are a screenwriter writing that script, you are thinking, “We’ve got a winner here!”

There’s only one problem.

THIIIIIISSSSS ISSSSS A FUCKIIIIIIINNNNG COMMMMMEDDDDYYYYYYYY

It’s not Manchester By The Fucking Sea!!!!!!

We came here to watch Happy Gilmore thrust pretend penises in the air and beat everyone up. Not spend 90% of the running time moping around and complaining about how sad he is. Jesus H. Christ.

In Adam Sander’s defense, I used to think the same thing about comedy. I read a lot of screenwriting books and they all said the same thing – that if you want people to laugh, you first must ground your story in deep compelling characters that we care about. Then, and only then, can you layer jokes on top of that that people will laugh at.

While there is, of course, some truth to that, it’s not the priority nor should it ever be the priority in a comedy. 90% of your efforts should be devoted to making the reader/audience laugh. That’s it.

I would think that the people in the Happy Gilmore 2 camp would argue that they’ve done that. It’s not like there are no jokes here. Pretty much everybody besides Happy Gilmore is a goofy outrageous joke machine.

But that’s the problem. We didn’t come here to watch everyone else try and be funny. We came here to watch Adam Sandler be funny. And for some odd reason, he seems to have no desire to do so. Even when he delivers some of his famous lines (“Somebody hit it farttherrrrrrrrr”), he seems to do so reluctantly, as if it might ruin his Casey Affleck adjacent performance.

But the real issue here is one that critically injures Happy Gilmore 2. It is the knife that cut the artery and bled this movie out before it even hit its second act. You see, Adam Sandler seems to have forgotten why the first movie was this juggernaut of a comedy. It’s because it had this dynamite of an ironic setup. A violent hockey player with anger issues is placed inside the quiet polite country club world of golf. I mean, you don’t even have to think to write funny scenes for that setup. They write themselves!

Look at what Adam Sandler replaced that genius setup with. He replaced anger with alcohol addiction and depression. I mean, not exactly a setup where the jokes write themselves anymore, huh?

But even if the irony wasn’t perfect, it’s a tough setup to create laugh-out-loud moments with. I suppose movies like Bad Santa did it well but usually when alcoholics are the centerpiece of your story, nobody’s howling with laughter.

The other critical mistake Happy Gilmore 2 made was that it took one of the greatest single villains of all time and it made him… an ally? Nooooooooooooooooooo. Shooter McGavin is Happy Gilmore’s arch nemesis. We wanted to see what that furious conflict looked like 30 years later. I didn’t want Shooter washed up. I wanted him as cocky as ever. Shooter’s funniest moments are when he’s being a jerk. He wasn’t a jerk once in this film. They TLJ’d Shooter McGavin!

I want to conclude this analysis by highlighting one of the many things that made Happy Gilmore such a classic. And it’s a great screenwriting tip to boot. I read a lot of comedies and one of the main things you have to figure out is what your main character’s motivation is going to be. Why are they doing what they’re doing? If it doesn’t feel important, then the main character’s journey will feel weak.

The majority of the time, this motivation comes down to money. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The world operates on money. It’s a great motivator. But what most writers do is they throw in a lip service dollar amount that our main character has to achieve – say, they have a mortgage payment or they lose the house – and then we just… never hear about that motivation again. It is a paper thin thing that pushes our character into the second act and then, thank god, the writer says, I never have to mention it again.

Happy Gilmore not only comes up with this deeper more thoughtful motivation of Happy’s grandmother losing her house because she can’t pay the mortgage and owes back taxes (totaling 270k), but he deeply integrates it into the storyline. There’s this whole subplot of the grandma having to go to a crappy living home with an evil administrator. The writers even write in fun twists and turns to the subplot, such as the house going up for auction and Shooter MacGaving buying it!

What this did was it kept the motivation present throughout the movie. I don’t see that level of dedication and thought put into the smaller parts of comedy scripts ever. And boy does it make a difference. We’re more invested in Happy winning and taking down Shooter because we’re never more than four scenes removed from an update on his grandmother’s situation.

Believe it or not, I understand the logic behind why all these creative decisions were made. Creative people don’t like to repeat themselves. They like to evolve. They like to try new things. There was clearly a strong resistance on Sandler’s end to repeat an old version of Happy Gilmore. He wanted to do something different. I can imagine him beaming when the writer said to him, “What if Shooter wasn’t his enemy anymore! What if we have them team up instead!?” Bingo, Sandler thought. That’s different!

But I think any screenwriter would be stupid not to ask himself, “What does the audience want?” Sure, sometimes the audience doesn’t know what they want until you give it to them. But, ultimately, especially with comedy, you want to lean into what works about your idea. And there were so many things that worked well in the first movie that they abandoned here.

Happy Gilmore 2 is a weird golf movie about depression. Which means I’m still waiting for my Happy Gilmore sequel. The one where Happy continues to beat people up and takes on Shooter for the Masters title.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If your jokes aren’t coming from your premise, where are they going to come from?  If you go into a script like Happy Gilmore 2, where the very premise you are building your story on is not built around a funny situation, you are asking for trouble, my dear.  This is what the original Happy Gilmore did so well.  An angry violent hockey player is placed inside the polite well-mannered world of golf.  Boom.  You can build a million jokes around that without trying.  Why they went away from that goldmine, I will never know!