Shanee Edwards graduated from UCLA Film School with an MFA in Screenwriting and is currently the film critic for SheKnows.com. She recently won the Next MacGyver television writing competition to create a TV show about a female engineer. Her pilot, Ada and the Machine, is currently in development with America Ferrera's Take Fountain Productions. You can follow her on Twitter: @ShaneeEdwards
Beloved superheroes like Black Panther, Spider-Man, the X-Men, and Dr. Strange are just a few of the brilliant comic book and film characters created by comic book legend Stan Lee. It’s with great sadness we report he passed away on Monday, November 12 at the age of 95 after being rushed to Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles. Well into his 90s, this human fountain of creativity remained full of energy, attended Comic-Con with glee and was an icon of American optimism without ever seeming naïve.
ScreenwritingU sat down with Australian filmmaker Joel Edgerton to get his take on this emotional story. He writes and directs this film based on the memoir of Garrad Conley. In his early 20s, Conley personally experienced abuse at the hands of Love in Action, the fundamental Christian program for gays. Edgerton himself plays Victor Sykes, lead counselor at the gay conversion ministry who’s clearly in over his head.
If you’re a fan of horror films from the 1970s, it’s likely you’ve seen Dario Argento’s mind-bending Suspiria from 1977. The movie is about a coven of witches operating out of a ballet academy in Germany and is a brutal examination of feminine power. Now, Amazon Studios had rebooted the strange and bloody tale, directed by Luca ...
As storytellers, many of us frame our screenplays around The Hero’s Journey architecture, where the hero goes on a dangerous quest and returns forever changed. In many ways, the new film First Man, about astronaut Neil Armstrong, is the ultimate hero’s journey – he spends years sacrificing as he prepares to go to the moon, then, despite setbacks that are both scientific and personal, he makes the perilous journey to the moon – a huge victory for himself and for humanity – and returns home triumphant.
We sat down with Goddard to find out what inspired him to make Bad Times at the El Royale and get tips on writing a screenplay with multiple protagonists.
Ethan Hawke directed Blaze from a screenplay written by both himself and Foley’s former wife, Sybil Rosen. I talked with both Hawke and Rosen to find out what the writing process was like. Hawke claims it was a near miracle the film happened at all.
With a current score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes – a rare feat for a rom/com – screenwriters Adele Lim (TV’s Lethal Weapon, Reign) and Peter Chiarelli (Now You See Me 2, The Proposal) tackled a mountain of characters from a trilogy of books to write Crazy Rich Asians. Chiarelli says the process was painstaking.
But as more summer blockbusters get made, and as audiences get more savvy, writing a screenplay that will feel satisfying on screen becomes more difficult. Luckily, I was able to sit down with all three of The Meg’s writers to talk about the challenges of both meeting and subverting the audience’s expectations.
It might surprise you to know that movies like Saturday Night Fever, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Adaptation, Boogie Nights and The Fast and the Furiouswere all based on newspaper or magazine articles. Sometimes art can imitate life and lead to big box office.
The Spy Who Dumped Me is an action/comedy film, one of the most difficult genres to get right. I sat down with writer/director Susanna Fogel to discuss the challenges of adding thrills and kills to the laughs.
“I was a student once,” says Forrester, “and I was desperate for knowledge about comedy writing and I could never find anything that was of much value. I have yet to find any textbook with usable insights into comedy writing which is a surprise because there is so much that can be conveyed. In any craft you take up you’re going to collect concrete insights and information about how to do it. I’m certainly that kind of person.”