2015 ScreenCraft Horror Screenplay Contest Winners Announced

After poring over more than 1,000 submissions, ScreenCraft has declared Bad Moon Rising by Scott Hamilton & PJ Hamilton the Grand Prize Winner of the 2015 ScreenCraft Horror Screenplay Contest. Smart, grisly and cinematic, the screenplay centers on a group of criminals whose already-botched small town bank robbery takes a turn for the worse when they discover that the bank manager and his family are werewolves with an uncontrollable blood lust. Trapped inside the bank and under siege by the police, they must fight to survive the night.

Taking the runner-up slot is Plague Ship by Alex Greenfield & Ben Powell. Deftly mixing big action beats with all-too-believable survival thriller tropes, the screenplay tells the story of a newly married couple whose honeymoon becomes a nightmare when a deadly plague breaks out on their luxury cruise ship. Now, husband and wife must do anything and everything to keep each other safe, both from infection and from the ship’s crew, who have decided that slaughtering passengers is the only way to keep the plague from spreading.

10/20/15 NEWS UPDATE: Congratulations to Alex Greenfield and Ben Powell who just signed with a literary manager at Zero Gravity Management!! 

Horror is a hard genre to be original in, but both Bad Moon Rising and Plague Ship stand out and impress. The writers of both projects have succeeded in devising clever iterations of classic horror tropes that deftly marry high-concept premises with clear and relatable emotional cores. They have real potential to engage hardcore horror audiences, and we’re excited to highlight them.

The following exceptional screenplays were selected as the competition finalists:

3. Reversion by Brien Kelly & Mike Green
4. The Immortal Door by Mico Montes
5. The Wretched End Of Reve Clay by David Garrett
6. The Grey Matter by Peter McCoubrey
7. Impure by Michael J. Yurinko
8. The Depths by Justin Boyd
9. The Devil’s Soldiers by Frank Ponce & Chad Law
10. Aokigahara by Ben Warner

In addition to the ScreenCraft team, the judges included: Ryan Turek, VP of Development at Blumhouse Productions (Paranormal Activity, Insidious, Sinister, Oculus, The Purge, Whiplash, Unfriended) and founder of popular horror website ShockTillYouDrop.com; Scott Henderson, Agent at Paradigm Talent Agency, representing renowned horror filmmakers James Wan and Leigh Whannell (Saw, Dead Silence, Insidious); Andrew Wilson, Manager at Zero Gravity, representing acclaimed horror writer Clive Barker (Hellraiser, Night Breed, The Midnight Meat Train); and Miles Fineburg, Development Executive at Terror Films (Trace, The Chosen).

The Grand Prize winner will receive a $2,000 cash prize and hand-picked industry consultations, the runner-up will receive $500 and a phone call with a literary manager, and the top 5 finalists will receive feedback and a lifetime license to use WriterDuet Pro real-time collaborative screenwriting software. The quarterfinalists, meanwhile, will all receive a 50% discount to WriterDuet Pro.

Congratulations to these winning writers and finalists, and thank you to our judges and to everyone who submitted projects; we read a number of remarkable screenplays. View the quarter-finalists and semi-finalists here.