We are positively thrilled to announce the three grand prize winners of the inaugural Write/LA screenwriting competition. These writers have all shown tremendous talent and dedication to their craft.
As fate would have it, the three winners have written a half-hour pilot, an hour pilot, and a feature screenplay across a range of genres. We did not plan it that way, but we were overjoyed to see such amazing storytelling ability across a wide array of styles and forms.
Without further ado, in alphabetical order, the three winners are:
The 2018 Write/LA Grand Prize Winners
Jonathan Dillon – Artificial (feature)
An amnesia-ridden survivor of a pandemic virus wakes up in a high-tech house being nursed by a mysterious woman, but when her secrets begin to unravel, he must do everything he can to get out alive.
Jeff Patneaude – Rogues (hour pilot)
In corrupt 19th century New York, a brilliant criminal’s quest for vengeance is thrown into chaos when he assists in a Pinkerton investigation, forcing him to choose a side of the law before his two worlds collide.
Jenna Wycoff – Vamp (half-hour pilot)
Faced with a rare blood cancer, a recently widowed Latina mom doubles down on her parental devotion by making a soul-sucking underground arrangement to extend her life, despite some eternal consequences…
Congratulations to Jonathan, Jeff, and Jenna! We look forward to working with and celebrating these writers at the Write/LA Grand Prize screenwriting lab and live read event this January 10-12.
We would also like to take this opportunity to share more details about the Write/LA Finalists and Semifinalists, one of whom has already optioned their advancing script. Congratulations to each of you!
The Write/LA Finalists and Semifinalists
Nick Alverson – Strength (half-hour pilot)
After reading a candy wrapper fortune, an ambitious civil engineer suddenly becomes physically stronger than her male co-workers and uses her newfound power to show her sexist boss why she belongs on the firm’s huge new project.
Ryan Braund – Screenplay.exe (feature)
An obsessive programmer begins to question his reality and his sanity when the artificially super-intelligent computer he creates bristles against its isolation and does whatever it takes to gain its freedom.
Michi Broman – Palm Beach Arcade (hour pilot)
When a tech executive inherits a hard-core porn store, worlds collide as she finds power and autonomy in adult entertainment while simultaneously being forced to work for the biggest misogynist in Silicon Valley.
Michelle Davidson & Jeffrey Field – No Man’s Land (feature – FINALIST)
In a future where males are rare and mature into lethal monsters, a spunky teenage rebel begins an ill-fated love affair with a fugitive boy on the brink of his transformation.
Natalie DeJohn & Chandra Wicke – Room For Rent (half-hour pilot)
A sarcastic mommy blogger reluctantly confronts her insecurities about marriage and motherhood when financial troubles force her to rent her spare room to an old college frenemy.
Jeffrey Field – Waiting Games (feature)
A charismatic liar who spins elaborate yarns to strangers in hospital waiting rooms concocts a scheme to help a grieving mother deal with the disappearance of her twin daughters.
Chris Howlett – Last Clip (feature)
A covert NSA operative working the Mexican border must overcome his growing aversion to the killing his profession requires in order to stop two hundred tons of uranium from hitting the black market.
Francisco Infante – Safe Rides (half-hour pilot – FINALIST)
In the era of Myspace and flip phones, a loner eager to leave high school behind is forced to volunteer for a designated driver program and — with a rag-tag group of outcasts — spend his weekends saving his reckless peers from a wide range of bad choices.
Meredith Levine & Andrew Stone – The Mentor (feature – FINALIST)
When their publisher places them in direct competition, writer Henry James betrays his close friend and protege, Edith Wharton, by convincing a lothario journalist to seduce her, putting both their careers and their friendship in serious danger.
Jeff Patneaude – Point Roberts (hour pilot)
Shortly after 9/11 in an isolated Northwest border town, an insecure Middle Eastern teenager must uncover the truth behind his father’s disappearance before it’s buried by the mysterious residents he once thought he knew.
Huey Pham – The Operator (feature)
After years of trying to prove herself in the military, a strong-but-traumatized veteran of the Afghan War must help save the kidnapped officer who always blamed her for her brother’s death — her father.
Leah Pollack – Marked (hour pilot)
In the wake of the Civil War, a paranormal scientist, a mysterious nomad, and a hardened federal marshal come together in the hunt for the Wolf of the West, a feared murderer believed to conjure black magic.
Roger Rosenberger – John Camino – Wartime Memories in a World of Peace (feature)
In the not too distant future, a supersoldier’s guiding-chip malfunctions, forcing him to figure out who he was, define who he wants to be, and determine what the world will become.
Joshua Singer – I Call Shotgun (feature – FINALIST)
A 17-year-old mama’s boy who’s afraid of anything that might hinder his 6pm curfew gets kidnapped in an Uber by an infamous crook — a septuagenarian wild woman — and quickly goes from bumbling captive to confident armed accomplice.
Grace Stewart – The Bunkers (half-hour pilot)
A headstrong teenager tries — and mostly fails — to fit in with her suburban high school peers while coming of age in a family of kooky survivalists who want nothing more than to live off the grid.
Zachary Tomlinson – Desert 10 (hour pilot – FINALIST)
On an Iraqi Army base, three female soldiers — a wide-eyed rookie, a jaded nurse, and a hardened Ranger — must come together to take down a terrorist threat that goes all the way to the top of the military industrial machine.
Lou Wollin – The Stand-Up (half-hour pilot)
A ballsy comic goes in search of the mom she hasn’t seen for seven years in a last-ditch effort to keep her wealthy father from having her mom declared dead, clearing the way to marry a much-younger supermodel.