Screenwriting : Production House Contests? by Stacy Gentile

I'd offer that they have their own cadres of writers with proven track records. They also have their own ideas for the movies they are interested in financing as an investment, in hopes of a profitable return on that investment. I don't think there is anyone working in the movie industry who does not have dozens upon dozens of their own ideas for scripts and movies they would like to make. Sorting through the thousands upon thousands of crappy manuscripts you would receive from the endless masses of aspiring screenwriters would prove a daunting task in and of itself. Then there would be all the legal complications of screening so many scripts. No matter what movie they made, some kook would come screaming out of the woodwork to sue sue sue. As the saying goes, "The Wall is there for a reason."

Yeah these guys make loads of money with what they're already putting out. I don't think they care about the handful of film connoisseurs who think their films are crap.

Adding to the above comments, with HBO's Project Greenlight (the newest movie is in post as we speak), Starz's The Chair, and Fox's On the Lot, there is an important unscripted TV series component, which gives financiers a reason to finance a contest film. However, not all the shows drew strong ratings. I also believe that studios don't want to blatantly copycat Project Greenlight and these other shows. Brand sponsorship can help too. http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20031014005496/en/Winner-Chrysler-... These contests have helped launch several careers, including Sera Gamble's and Marcus Dunstan & Patrick Melton's, but the movies have under-performed at the box office and some of the TV shows have not soared in the ratings, thus dis-incentivizing brands and studios to put finite overhead and man-hours into this particular pot. But I believe these types of movies/shows will continue to crop up from time to time.

Many of the studios do have fellowship programs that you can apply to, but most are diversity programs. The reason they don't have contests is 2-Fold. 1. They don't need to. Why do they need to find 1 in 7000 amateur screenplays when they already get 1000 submissions from A-List writers? and 2. Lawsuits!!! 7000 submitted scripts means 6999 pissed off writers who see an idea kinda sorta like theirs produced by the studio 4 years later and they all sue! so, there's really no upside for a company yo do this.

Totally agree with, Regina. Also they keep recycling old stories, sequels, prequels, you name it. STORY is lost, except in Indies, but the '80s and '90s are gone and STORY went with it. Ask William Friedkin and he'll tell you. Hello Marvel and Comics. Sad, that we walk out of a Cinema without feeling nothing or learned nothing. "that's all I'm going to say about that." Love that movie, if you can guess.

They don't really need a contest, they can hire whoever they want... and that includes winners of the Nicholl and other contests. The fallacy here: you can't judge a script by its movie. By the time a script reaches the screen it often bears no resemblance to the screenplay they bought. The example I always use is Robert Roy Poole's script PREMONITION about a government employee whose job is to write a report that sums up all other government reports for the higher ups just below the President. He reads paperwork for a living. He notices connections between a bunch of different reports that may add up to a disaster: from an astronomy report about an asteroid which will pass close to Earth to an Indian Tribe that wants to move off the reservation because their Shaman has predicted that a stone will fall from the sky and kill their tribe. He does some research and finds out that that asteroid might strike Earth... and that Reservation is the potential strike point. This would be the end of the Earth as we know it. He goes to his government superiors and tells them about this, and they say: forget about it. If it happens, what can we do? If it doesn't happen, the President will look like an idiot for warning the country about it. Well, our hero wonders what can be done, and he contacts all of the experts whose reports he reads... and discovers there are deep caves where humans could survive, but the problem is food. You need a ton of food to survive. So our hero starts hijacking trucks full of groceries at gun point and take them to the caves. Then he kidnaps his ex wife and estranged son at gunpoint and takes them and a handful of friends into the caves to wait out the end of the world. A story about a quiet man who goes just a little bit crazy to save the lives of those he loves. This was a hot screenplay, bidding war, a big drama, and everyone thought it was Oscar material... That screenplay became ARMAGEDDON. So what you see on the screen is nothing like the screenplay they bought. Here's how that happens... http://www.scriptsecrets.net/tips/tip215.htm

Danny, you so right about lawsuits. I know a writer who sued , I won't mention the Studio, but the lawyer proof her idea was stolen (which she had copyright) and she won a multi milliondollar award.

@William, that story was so freaking intense. It's unfortunate what happened...

That's normal. Almost every film you see went through that. I have films that don't even have the same concept as the screenplay I wrote. My joke is, when the producer says they won't change a word, after the film is made they will point to the one word in the screenplay they didn't change. So you can't judge a script by the resulting film... often they are so radically different that the great script they bought is nothing like the crappy film you just paid to see... even though the writer's name is on screen.