It’s finally here. If you don’t know what’s happening, let’s catch you up. The Scriptshadow Showdown Series is a screenplay competition where anyone can send in their script to compete. I go through all the loglines and pick my favorite five. I then post those five, along with the scripts, for you, the readers, to judge.
Yes, that’s where you come in. You read as much of each entry as you can and vote for your favorite in the comments section (just write the title of your favorite script and your vote is counted). Feel free to add commentary on why you picked the script and also why you didn’t pick the others. Showdowns double as an opportunity for the competing screenwriters to get feedback and improve.
Today’s showdown is for sci-fi scripts only. Whoever gets the most votes will get a script review next Friday, so you can check back to see how the winning script fared. In the best case scenario, I’ll flip for the script and we can try and get it produced. A friendly reminder that voting closes Sunday at 11:59pm. So make sure to get your votes in before then!
Finally, a big thank you to everyone who submitted. If you didn’t get picked, it could be for any number of reasons. The idea wasn’t interesting/big enough. It wasn’t marketable enough. The logline didn’t convey a clear story with a beginning, middle, and end. It wasn’t my cup of tea. I’ve seen too many similar projects out there. The idea wasn’t good enough to justify the huge budget. As is the case with all showdowns, if you feel like your idea is better than these five, pitch it in the comments. If a bunch of people say, “You missed out on a good one, Carson,” I’ll make it an official entry. Time permitting, I’ll respond and let you know why your logline wasn’t picked.
Now…
ARE YOU REAAAAADDDYYYYYYY FORRRRRR SOME SCREENPLAAAAAAYS!!??
I’ve read the first page of all five entries and two of those entries, in my opinion, are head and shoulders better than the rest. Excited to see if you agree.
Welcome to Sci-Fi Showdown 2021
Good luck!
Title: Shardworld
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: In a future where Earth has been shattered to pieces, a young tribeswoman must stop a war that will destroy the last remaining records of human history.
Why You Should Read: The post-apocalyptic story to end all post-apocalyptic stories! Earth has literally been blown to pieces, one of them large enough to just barely sustain human life. The new center of gravity is so close to the surface that the remaining air and water bunch up and form a mile-high mountain that moves due to the tidal effect of the other shards from the shattered Earth. 99.999% of all species are gone, leaving algae, floating reeds, a few fishes, and humans – a tiny group of scavengers that has survived 800 years by religiously limiting their population to what their environment can sustain. And suddenly, a new and much larger group emerges…
Title: FIVE MINUTES DEAD
Genre: Sci-fi/Horror
Logline: When a lonely man finds a button that enables him to travel back in time five minutes once a day, he uses it to win the love of a troubled waitress, then starts exploring darker possibilities.
Why You Should Read: Imagine coming across a device offering great power. A time machine! But what if that time machine is very specific? You can only go back in time five minutes once a day. You can’t kill Hitler, but you can ask the same woman out over and over until you get it right. You can punch the jerk you’ve always wanted to punch, then take it back. Power is intoxicating, even a very specific power like the Button. With FIVE MINUTES DEAD I wanted to put a unique spin on the time travel story. There are no fancy special effects (budget-wise, very doable). There’s only a man who loses himself to the power, and a woman with big dreams who discovers his secret and must either stop him, or fall victim to his descent into darkness. You should want to read FIVE MINUTES DEAD because it’s thrilling, dark, and different.
Title: Turnpike Jackknife
Genre: Sci-fi
Logline: In the future, a loner soldier-for-hire riding shotgun on a driverless truck must get her secret cargo past pirate drones, rogue farmers and a corporate countdown, aided by a ragtag team she picks up along the way.
Why You Should Read: This screenplay is chock-full of osmotic influences from ’70s/‘80s B-movie sci-fi and road movies, things I probably watched after midnight when there was such a thing as a late show, with a big nod to trucker movies such as Jonathan Kaplan’s “White Line Fever” and Sam Penckinpah’s “Convoy,” This is a simple and propulsive tale that speculates on some of the less-considered aspects of future tech on our workaday lives: for instance, if the highway of tomorrow is all robotically driven, what happens to the romance of the road for those left to travel it? Such speculative notions are weaved in and around action set pieces that take full advantage of a mid-21st century road setting, with drones, airships, and AI-controlled truck convoys all coming into play.
Title: MAXIMUS
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: After an apocalyptic event, a washed-up bounty hunter must escort a sixteen year old girl to safety – the key to the survival of a species – before the launch of a full scale alien invasion.
Why You Should Read: I’ve been obsessed with mind control type movies for a long time. Probably since watching the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers in film school, as it related to the Communist Red Scare paranoia of the 1950’s. I’m even a fan of the late 90’s movie Disturbing Behavior starring Katie Holmes. This obsession led me to the idea that maybe an alien species does not need to be organic in nature. Why not a gas? Or a liquid, perhaps? Turning over such an idea led me to write Maximus, which my brother feels is my own Terminator, though I prefer to think of it as Logan meets War of the Worlds. It was written to be a low budget sci-fi feature and it was purposely set in locales that could take advantage of current U.S. film tax incentives. I was thinking like a producer during the entire writing phase! Lately, I’ve been feeling that Covid-19 and world pandemics may have played a part in influencing this story (how could they not!) – just the way a deadly mysterious new disease influenced John Carpenter’s The Thing, and 9-11 may have brought on The Walking Dead and a slew of zombie films (as they represent a world in chaos). So with that, I bring you MAXIMUS, a low budget sci-fi movie that will scare the hell out of you, keep you wearing an N-95 mask over your face until your dying breath, and will make you wary of every living thing… because, after all, you could be next! Enjoy!
Title: Black Sky
Genre: Sci-fi/Horror
Logline: When a photosensitive alien force blacks out the sun, a dysfunctional family must survive together in a perpetually dark world full of predatory creatures, while trying not to lose the only thing that can protect them: the light.
Why You Should Read: Black Sky is my first sci-fi screenplay, though it’s as much a horror/thriller and family drama as it is sci-fi. Definitely a sci-fi concept though. I see Black Sky as a possible franchise, and/or a TV series. It’s in the vein of A Quiet Place, Signs, Bird Box, and The Walking Dead. I wrote it to be produced on a low-budget, but ironically a couple of people who’ve read it compared it to War of The Worlds. I’m not sure about that but I was pleased by the comparison and in any case I believe it can be produced low-budget regardless of that comparison. My last two screenplays, both set in a car and written to be made for a micro-budget, were recently #1 and #3 on the black list paid platform top list and consequently I have a shopping agreement with a great company in LA for one of the scripts, and I’m in negotiations with a producer who’s made more than a dozen movies on the other script, so being high on the black list really made a difference and hopefully I’m on a bit of a roll and can get representation now. In the meantime, it’d be great to get feedback from Scriptshadowers and possibly Carson if it were selected for Sci-fi Showdown.
