We hear a lot of stories about filmmakers struggling for years, sometimes over a decade, to get a film produced. But for Ted Melfi, co-writer and director of Hidden Figures, the planets just seemed to align.
What’s so fascinating about the success of Hidden Figures, written by Ted Melfi and Allison Schroeder, based on the book by Margot ...
The hardest thing to write and get made these days is an original script. Here are the five nominees for Best Original Screenplay and a bit about how their screenwriters got the films made.
How do you go from dreaming of being a screenwriter to one day waking up an Oscar nominee? Here are brief biographies of this year’s nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay to help answer that question.
Although the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) Awards unfolded within the glamorous Beverly Hilton Hotel, the February 19 ceremony was loaded with speeches about public service, civic action, and the responsibility of a writer to stay true to his or her unique voice.
Two high school teachers plan to fight each other after school. Add in that it’s senior prank day, budget cuts are threatening teachers’ jobs and the school’s administration is highly dysfunctional, and tensions are at all time high. Sounds like a hilarious premise for a film, right?
Writer/director Catalina Aguilar Mastretta’s new film, Everybody Loves Somebody, tackles the rom-com genre in a sweet yet cerebral way. It’s the story of Clara (Karla Souza from How to Get Away with Murder), a beautiful doctor who’s got everything together except her love life. Clara also straddles two cultures, taking frequent trips to ...
Based on the true story of Ponzi scheming polka singer Jan Lewan, the writing-directing team of Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky prove that having compassion for your characters can lead to a big emotional payoff.
What's the toughest part about trying to make it in Hollywood? Convincing someone to read your screenplay. But what if you didn't have to convince anyone and they didn't have to do any reading...? Sounds like the perfect scenario. It's called a "staged reading," and it's growing in popularity as new channels of script discovery continue to open up amid the surplus of spec scripts on the market.
WARNING: Content contains links to NSFW material
With Valentine's Day on the horizon and Fifty Shades Darker in theaters this weekend, we decided to ask ourselves a few delicate questions...
How do you approach sex scenes in your writing? Do you avoid the subject altogether? Are they necessary? When should they be used? At some point in ...
When you say the word “networking” to introverts the first thing they tend to do is cringe. Networking brings to mind impersonal business events where salesman-type guys in anonymous suits aggressively pass out their cards and collect as many phone numbers as possible. This couldn’t clash more with the inborn preference of introverts to ...
(PARK CITY, Utah) -- Sundance Film Festival 2017 was all about virtual reality. It was everywhere, so if you think VR is still a thing of the future - think again. VR is here, and it needs screenwriters.
In a condo just off Main Street in Park City, I was lucky enough to participate in the VR experience Astroids!, a 360-degree animation. ...
IRONIC WARNING: SPOILERS
Fan theories have probably been around since Shakespeare. I’m sure there was a guy in the front row of the very first run of Macbeth who bellowed, “The three witches are Lady Macbeth’s miscarriages!” and then smugly pushed up his glasses.
These days, fan theories are part of the fabric of pop culture and ...
