“When Roy Price, the founding director of the studio, rolled out Amazon Studios in November 2010, he positioned it as the "movie studio of the future," a sort of anti-Hollywood shop that helps aspiring movie makers and empowers them with Amazon's reach.”
~CNET NOVEMBER 14, 2013
Today, many of my fellow forum dwellers received this email stating:
“As we have grown and evolved over the last several years, we are making changes to our website and closing our open call for script and concept submissions. As of April 13, 2018, we are no longer accepting submissions. Submissions received will continue to be reviewed and evaluated by Amazon Studios and will be available on our website until June 30, 2018. Thank you all for your contributions.”
Allow me to offer some perspective.
Amazon hasn’t really signed many unproduced writers. In fact, the only deal I know of for a lesser known scribe is one I’ve posted in this forum several times. It was a screenplay by written Dwain Worrell called The Wall that was optioned by AS in 2015 and made into a film released in early 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_(2017_film). Worrell went on to be a staff writer for The Iron Fist television show. Beyond that, I challenge anyone to identify an unproduced writer that wrote a script that was made into a film by Amazon Studios. I’m quite sure there are plenty of produced writers who have also had work rejected by Amazon Studios.
Hey, I completely understand why Amazon Studios would make a business decision not to take on anymore unsolicited script submissions. It takes time, people and money to review screenplays; particularly when you have a huge backlog of them left to read.
As Amazon Studios advised in today’s email. You may do better by signing up at IMDbPro to connect and share your work with other professionals.
Adios Amazon. It was nice having the illusion there was ever a possibility of selling you a script. And thanks for trying to be “the "movie studio of the future," a sort of anti-Hollywood shop that helps aspiring movie makers and empowers them with Amazon's reach.”
It was a lofty goal!
I received this email today and I must say that I was slightly disappointed, but not surprised. As you've stated, they have only once made a film based on an unproduced writer. and the chances were that was probably going to be it anyway.
It was indeed a loft goal, and I submitted a few things to them. Even got a good rating on Harold Godwinson. But alas, that time has passed. The best coarse of action would probably be create more, get an agent who can get it out there and work, work, work, lol. But it did give people hope for a while. So it goes.
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Sad..I was in the process of submitting a script there.
MaxXxy
Well it all makes perfect sense then. The new boss probably came in and looked at their cost versus return on investment and that's why the open submission policy is being nixed. Which is exactly what I thought must have happened.
A sad day indeed. I never had anything to do with that site, except when I submitted my very first screenplay a few years ago. They didn't option it.
Truthfully, it was a real mess, a crappy first attempt, so...:) What a loss. What other good ways are there for a writer to get noticed(who won't "close" at some point)?
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While it's true that everyone has that reinvention plan, it's just sort of too bad because it seems like more doors are closing than opening. Then again, I guess the goal for a writer is to make your own door or find a side door or something. It just seems like it shouldn't be like you have to be a master thief unlocking one of those unbreakable safes.
Oh well, they did their little trick and now everybody knows who they are.
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I got an email from them informing me of the retiring of the "open submission" policy. No great loss. In my mind, "their little trick" was how they treated submissions. If you read the fine print, simply by sending them a script you lost all rights to that script - until such time as they decided to option or not (mostly not). Also, anyone else in the community could edit/rewrite your material and submit it as a co-writer, and you had no say in it!
Dan MaxXx, , With "who they are" I mean that now Amazon Studios are a well known company. It seems they wanted to give unproduced writers a chance. A quadrillion script on Amazon Studios. Only one feature script made in to a movie -and this guy was already produced. All our discussions on Stage32, other platforms and word of mouth (advertising), made Amazon Studios well known. As a company first you have to be known before you can become (more) successful. But thats just my opinion.
John Ellis:
Amazon Studios always allowed you to submit a screenplay under private mode, which prevented any other writers from rewriting or editing your screenplay. Also they initially had a 90-day "first right of refusal policy" and after that you could withdraw your screenplay, which I did each time material was rejected. I'm sure they did this to allow them time to read your work without having to worry about someone else getting it first after they invested time reading the material. They eliminated that policy about two years ago. And, I've never heard of Amazon stealing anyone's screenplay.
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Agreed. Amazon Studios got attention because they're Amazon, if anything. I won't say they didn't make good on their offer. They accepted screenplay submissions from amateurs and at least let them have that chance. That was kind of revolutionary. On the other hand, only the one film, a few shows I think and some kids stuff got produced by the amateurs.
In some ways that's just the way it goes. I think their intent was to make the offer, but to pretty much be like every other production company and only produce people who had a track record. IDK though. I could be wrong. Just have to keep on grinding like an online RPG player who doesn't want to pay for upgrades...or what you have to do for just about every Final Fantasy game. They're all about the grinding, haha.
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Shara:
Absolutely agreed. I've told this story in the forum on a few other occasions. In the earlier days, Amazon had a few contests to rewrite scripts they thought had potential (see PDF File for Leon screenplay contest) http://freepdfhosting.com/29cf80452f.pdf. I entered this contest but I'm not sure what became of the winning treatment or if Amazon ever paid out on this assignment. However, it was definitely a fun opportunity worth checking out.
Additionally, Amazon used to have logline battles for uploaded scripts to allow other screenwriters and readers to pick loglines they liked. I believe Amazon used this as a marketing tool to evaluate what loglines were resonating with their AS member base. Again, another good idea in theory. I'm not sure how it worked out in practice.
Amazon Studios is in business to make money and is entitled to experiment and is under no obligation to work with writers with little or no track records. As several others have said, this is how is goes throughout the industry. I bear no malice against AS and would love to work with them at a future time. The name of the game is making as many contacts as you can, continuing to write and looking for anyone reputable who has an open door submission policy like Amazon did for nearly 8 years. For example, Madhouse Entertainment has an open door submission policy. Again, probably a long shot but always worth a go. http://www.madhouseent.net/contact
Best of luck
Good luck to you as well!!