Get It Together by Matthew Ryan has been selected as the Grand Prize Winner of the 2017 ScreenCraft Action & Thriller Screenplay Contest. A clever, endlessly entertaining and surprisingly funny bank robbery thriller, Get It Together centers on a "charming no-hoper" who, flat broke and desperate to buy a home, uses all the skills he’s learned from his robbery expert cop ex-girlfriend to rob a bank – only to have his robbery interrupted by a bigger, more professional band of thieves.
Milwaukee by Barry P. Ambrose & Christopher Stapleton has been awarded the Runner-Up prize. Ambitious, evocative and narratively complex, the script is a neo-noir set in the 1950s that tells the story of a hard-as-nails cop who finds himself protecting the widow of a recently slain officer, and in the process uncovering a far-reaching conspiracy involving the mob, the police department and the local government.
Ryan will receive $1,500 and hand-picked industry introductions. Ambrose & Stapleton will receive $500 and will have their script circulated to ScreenCraft's network of agents, managers, producers and studio execs, as will the following finalist scripts:
- Bury Your Dead by Richard McGovern
- Danger Close by Adam Skelter
- The Iron Horse of Lucy Steele by Paul Zeidman
- A Word In A Glass Mind by Miranda Fennimore
- 17 Bullets by Van Jensen
- The Caretaker by Hussain Pirani & Sam Cooke
- Pawns by Erik Lowe
- Running Dark by John Lau
In addition to the ScreenCraft reading team, judges this year included: Tanner Mobley, creative executive at Millenium/Nu Image; Michael Doven, CEO of United Pictures Group and producer of such celebrated films as MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, VANILLA SKY, MINORITY REPORT, A FEW GOOD MEN and THE LAST SAMURAI; Ryan Wickers, Director of Development at Luc Besson’s company EuropaCorp; Jonathan Wu, development executive at 20th Century Fox, the studio behind AVATAR, X-MEN, ANOTHER EARTH, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, PROMETHEUS, PREDATORS and more; and Miles Chapman, the screenwriter of ESCAPE PLAN (starring Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger), as well as ESCAPE PLAN 2, and ESCAPE PLAN 3.
Congratulations to the winning writers and finalists, and thank you to our judges and to everyone who submitted projects. View the quarter-finalists and semifinalists here.
