Announcing the 2017 WeScreenplay Feature Contest Winners!

Thank you to the nearly one thousand writers who entered The 2017 WeScreenplay Feature Contest. Your hard work, talent, and dedication to storytelling shine through in the entries we received.

This year’s winners survived five reads and were sent on to the industry jury that includes Director Dave Green, Executive Juliet Berman, Literary Manager Le’Ander Nicholson, and Executive Melissa Azizi.

Crafting a script that impacts five readers is extremely impressive, and the top 6 are on the path toward amazing mentorships with our incredible panel of judges. We are also giving away over $20,000 in cash, prizes, coverage and more. See the winners below and make sure to say congrats to them on Facebook and Twitter!

However, there are excellent scripts that didn’t advance. The Finalist round was the most competitive. Just because your script isn’t on this list doesn’t at all mean that our judges didn’t enjoy the read – in fact, we’re certain that many scripts not advancing will bring their writer success in the very near future. Thank you for entering your script and never give up.

And now, the 2017 WeScreenplay Feature Contest Winners:

Honorable Mentions

The Heart of a Tiger by SreyRam Kuy

The Heart of a Tiger is the searing true story about the incredible courage, resilience and strength of a woman who survived one of the worst atrocities inflicted upon mankind, the Cambodian Genocide — in which over a four-year-period over two million Cambodians were murdered and dumped in mass grave sites. It is also the story of three generations of women, struggling against the boundaries placed upon them, each ultimately emerging triumphant to achieve their dreams.

Valentyne by Dashiell Finley

This story is about a street-smart teenage orphan who is taken in by her wealthy half-brother, and so she repays the favor by helping him cover up the brutal murder of a dangerous drug kingpin. It is complex and heartwarming, with a standout voice from the writer.

Honey Boy by Shia Labeouf and Otis Lort

A child actor and his law-breaking, alcohol-abusing father attempt to mend their contentious relationship over the course of a decade.

***We added this extra honorable mention because Honey Boy is no longer technically eligible since it has gone into production – check it out. However, we still wanted to recognize a very powerful story, with two heart-wrenching leads. The five judges, who read anonymously, all gave this script standout scores.

3rd Place

Snowblind by Dan Maurer

A journalist, haunted by repressed memories, investigates a murder that may uncover the truth about his traumatic childhood, but he quickly discovers he shares a decades-old secret with a killer eager to bury the past. The mystery and how it unfolds is one of the most compelling we’ve ever read. This is a fantastic story about how our pasts can shape us.

2nd Place

Scattering Jake by Erica Tachoir

A young widow dumps her deceitful husband’s ashes down the sink the night before a trip to scatter those ashes with his family and the woman who has his transplanted heart. This is a moving and often hilarious script about death and more importantly life. It is such a human approach to grief that it moved all of our judges.

Grand Prize Winner

Cavalier by Chris Dennis

Following a brutal war between aliens and humans, a hardened veteran must rely on a member of the occupying race to rescue his daughter from the clutches of a ruthless alien warlord. This is a powerful sci-fi script that at its core is about family. The judges and jury fell in love with this project because of the visual and visceral writing to create a new world that is filled with honest, living characters.

Congrats to all these phenomenal writers. We want to take one moment to recognize everyone who entered. It takes a lot of work, energy, and courage to finish a script and put it out into the world. Thank you for letting us read your work and we hope to see more of it in the coming seasons.

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