Shine Pictures Announces 'BIG IDEA' Winners
Shine Pictures Announces 'BIG IDEA' Winners
Production Company announces two winners of its national screenwriting competition
Winners will each receive a 25,000 feature film development deal
11 January 2011: Shine Pictures, the joint film venture between the UK's Kudos Pictures and leading Hollywood producer-distributor New Regency has announced two winners of its 'Big Idea' screenwriting competition.
The two winning 'Big Ideas' are: Three Nights in Fiction by Nic Alderton & Sam Callis and
Youngstown by Stephen Keyworth.
The two 'Big Idea' winners will work to develop their projects with the Shine Pictures development team to create a treatment followed by a draft script and one set of revisions. Each winning project will receive a 25,000 feature film development deal.
The 'Big Idea' competition, launched in September last year saw over 700 entries with global appeal from experienced writers throughout the UK. Sci-fi and Fantasy concepts were the most popular submissions accounting for 35% of entries, followed by Romantic Comedies (28%), Action Adventure (22%) and Family Comedies (15%).
These entries were shortlisted down to seven concepts and their respective writers were then interviewed by the UK development staff at Shine Pictures including Executive Chairman Stephen Garrett, Head of Film Paul Webster, Head of Development Ed Clarke and Big Idea Project Manager Melanie Coombs.
In a joint statement, Webster and Garrett said: "We are genuinely delighted to have found these two exciting Big Ideas which clearly have global audiences in their sights. Nic and Sam's Three Nights in Fiction is a charming Romantic Comedy concept, and Stephen's Youngstown is an unsettling Sci-Fi proposal that is elevated genre at its best. We very much look forward to working with these writers to develop these terrific notions into compelling screenplays and then films. It's also been exciting and thought-provoking to meet writers who weren't previously on our radar and to see how much enthusiasm there is in the UK writing community for ambitious commercial filmmaking."
Shine Pictures develops and produces broad-based distinctive films for the global marketplace from Kudos' Eastern Promises with Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts and Vincent Cassel to Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams. Next month on February 4, it releases Brighton Rock with Optimum Releasing in the UK, starring Sam Riley, Andrea Riseborough and Helen Mirren. Also coming soon is Salmon Fishing in the Yemen directed by Lasse Hallstrom and written by Simon Beaufoy starring Ewan MacGregor and Emily Blunt.
Added On Tuesday, 11 January 2011