PREVIOUS WINNERS SCRIPTS

These are some of the Features, TV Pilots and Shorts that have previously won our screenwriting contests. If you would like to connect with any of the writers, please email, justine@shorescripts.com 

FEATURES

CATEGORY

GENRE

LOGLINE

2019

American Vice

Feature

Drama/Historical

Right wing lawyer, media genius, closeted homosexual. Aide to Joe McCarthy, mentor to Donald Trump, fiancee of Barbara Walters, blood rival of the Kennedys. This is the incredible true story of Roy Cohn, the greatest lawyer you’ve never heard of.

Land’s End

Feature

Drama/Comedy

A surly, pregnant teenager reluctantly agrees to drive an elderly widower to Cornwall, where he plans to end his life by jumping from the cliffs at Land’s End.

Model Minority

Feature

Drama

In 1970s Los Angeles, one woman finds herself stuck between the traditions of her Chinese-American family and her new found interest in the world of adult magazines.

Bad Water

Feature

Drama

A troubled biologist teams up with a grieving migrant to reveal a disturbing eco-terror plot. As the women race to stop the attack, they become targets of a racist war criminal.

Sonf of a Gun

Feature

Western

Frank Cooper is content to live a quiet life on his Texas homestead with his 10-year-old son, Sam. When a chance meeting with a bounty hunter brings troubles from his mysterious past, Frank decides to meet his problem head-on and takes Sam along on the journey of a lifetime.

2018 & BEFORE

Moonflower

Feature

Drama

In 1928 Mississippi, a white woman and black woman have an affair while battling the racial tensions of a small town.

Niki Sweet Talks Movies

Feature

Thriller

NIKI SWEET TALK MOVES tells the political, panoramic and profoundly personal story of a cynical investigative reporter, down on her luck, who heads into the Arctic wilds to meet the requirements of her father’s will…and instead, inadvertently uncovers a deadly environmental scandal. Along the way, Wyn Baker finds not only true love, but a reawakened sense of purpose…and a profound connection to her roots.

Lost Cause

Feature

Action

Medically retired Naval explosive expert, Peter Gerstenberger, sets sail on his salvage ship, the Ozymandias, for the Windward Passage, between the Dominican Republic and Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, to salvage a 600′ Roll-On/Roll-Off Venezuelan freighter, under the eyes of a ‘spectator fleet’ and Commander of Guantanamo Bay. On board the freighter, Berger discovers a lost thermonuclear bomb and a Black-Ops plan to destabilize world politics.

Lost and Found

Feature

Drama

Dog is man’s best friend. Mess with the dog of an ex-marine, and you can expect a world of trouble.

Hungry Man

Feature

Horror

Leon Greene and his manipulative tapeworm have tasted every forbidden food on earth, but when Leon falls for the enigmatic hotelier Jennifer Feathers, the worm coaxes him into hunting down the one delicacy they have yet to sample – human flesh.

Jimmy the Freak

Feature

Thriller

An ex-con and his mentally handicapped but supernaturally blessed friend must go on the run in order to save themselves from a ruthless megachurch pastor and his hired thugs.

Fuck You, John

Feature

Comedy

It’s a disaster movie’s sequel… if they had chickened out in the first one. When John refuses to sacrifice his life to stop an asteroid from hitting the planet, he becomes the most hated man in the world. That is, until the world needs him to save it… again.

Those Who Hear

Feature

Drama

A small-town cop facing her own personal tragedy, becomes entangled in an unsettling series of reports that a sourceless ‘humming’ sound is haunting her once non-eventful town, but only a percentage of residents can hear it.

Black Creek

Feature

Horror/Western

A part-time sheriff, a dying gunslinger, a local Native American and a Railroad Investigator have to protect a small Alaskan frontier town from strange, murderous creatures.

Get Me This William Shakespeare

Feature

Historical Crime / Thriller

When a PI discovers a movie mogul thinks William Shakespeare is still alive, he disguises himself as the Bard in a bid to land a $1M writers contract.

TV PILOTS

2019

Pipeline

TV Pilot – 1 Hour

Drama

In California’s drought-stricken Central Valley, three Mexican-American siblings are forced to confront their complicated history when a controversial public works project pits them on opposite sides of the law.

Sons & Mothers

TV Pilot – 1 Hour

Thriller

Fearing an arrest for historic war crimes in Afghanistan, an ex-military interrogator travels back to her seaside home town of Margate, to mend her relationship with her long-estranged son.

Living Memory

TV Pilot – 1 Hour

Thriller

A trauma psychotherapist turns memory detective when she suffers a vicious, mysterious attack she cannot remember, and encounters a patient whose trauma resembles her own. With the attacker still out there, and clues deep in the memory of this fellow victim – and others – she sets out on a dangerous quest for justice.

Blue Giant

TV Pilot – 1/2 Hour

Comedy

After suffering a nervous breakdown, self-destructive 28-year-old Abby Horne embarks on a hilarious and heartbreaking quest to become the first person on Mars.

Staged

TV Pilot – 1/2 Hour

Drama

Desperate to stop the network from cancelling their once-wildly popular real estate reality show, STAGED, TV’s most famous real-life couple, Ree and Billy Sanders, take matters into their own hands, devising a desperate, twisted scheme to save their TV empire, and bring their show back to its original glory.

2018 & BEFORE

Lyre

TV Pilot

Period Drama

A post-WWII housewife desperate to escape her abusive marriage spins an ever-growing web of deceit when she realizes her only chance for freedom is to frame her husband for a murder she commits.

Quarry

TV Pilot

Drama

Returning home after her parent’s breakup, a young woman is forced to face the reasons she left, when a local construction crew drain a quarry, uncovering a skeleton and exposing secrets from her past.

Looking Glass

TV Pilot

Sci-Fi

Trapped in the last three days of his life living and dying a hundred different possible stories and choices, a man searches for a way out.

Mount Pleasant

TV Pilot

Period Drama

In 1889 Oklahoma, Native American children are mandated to attend the Mount Pleasant Indian School by the US Government, but when Lola’s older brother does not return from school, she risks her life by leaving the reservation to find out what happened to him.

Crooked River

TV Pilot

True Crime Drama/Limited Series

A Cleveland cop teams with a Federal Agent to hunt a notorious killer–the infamous Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run–only to discover that their politically connected prime suspect is hiding behind powerful and influential people with their own secrets to protect.

Washed

TV Pilot

Comedy

A make-shift family hunts down corrupt charismatic leaders bringing justice vigilante style.

The Blanked

TV Pilot

Sci-Fi

A criminal and a woman he abducted both have their memories erased in the aftermath of their incident so that they can resume their lives with fresh starts, but through the perfect storm of events life brings them back together.

The Unwanted

TV Pilot

Drama

MARIA, a hard-working immigrant and single mother to a precocious eleven-year-old LOUISE, has been told that she has only ninety days left before they are deported from the UK. She is desperate to stay in London with her pseudo family; JANIEL, a black gay drag queen, and Jimmy, newly diagnosed with HIV hotel manager of the Philbeach hotel, one of the most infamous gay hotels in Europe, where even the most unwanted or abandoned are made to feel welcome. Maria will stop at nothing to stay and protect her daughter, even if that means contacting Louise’s unreliable estranged alcoholic British father, JACK, who she hasn’t spoken to in years.

Let’s Kill D.B Cooper

TV Pilot

Heist/Drama

Unknown to the public, legendary skyjacker D.B. Cooper lost all the money from the jump that made him famous. Now, decades later, he gets a once in a lifetime chance to take it all back with a bold, impossible new heist.

Long Island

TV Pilot

Drama

When a shy teenage boy reluctantly moves with his family from Brooklyn, New York, to the Long Island suburbs in 1970, he encounters a world of sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll and music icon Janis Joplin.

Fits the Crime

TV Pilot

Drama

When a serial killer targets London’s gay community in the 1980s, Kev Harris, a young rookie police detective working in a vehemently homophobic police force, pieces together clues from his own internal struggle with sexuality in order to solve the crimes. His sole help, his sole confidant, an older German drag queen dealing with her own painful past triggered by the ritual style of the killings.

Los Ninos Sicarios

TV Pilot

Action

Inspired by real events, the series explores the lives of Mexican-American teenage boys working as professional hitmen for Los Zetas drug cartel.

Ink Stains

TV Pilot

Drama

A group of clueless students struggle to navigate the pitfalls of college life whilst also trying to keep a failing student-run newspaper alive.

SHORTS

2019

Blank

Short

Comedy

Blank, a nondescript animated character is determined to do what it takes to find its identity.

Dunked

Short

Drama

A closeted teen takes swimming lessons to prepare for his full-immersion baptism.

That Sister Thang

Short

Drama

Two chalk ‘n cheese South African sisters struggling to fit into weird Austin life must overcome the revelation that they have different mothers, one dead and one white, in order to save the thing they hold most dear – their sisterhood.

The Biffy

Short

Comedy

A comedy that shows the unthinkable lengths some people will go to to make friends.

Spade

Short

Drama

ACE, a homeless youth, gets paired with a new volunteer at his drop-in center, TAVI, who, surprising them both, is a woman he connected with in the neighbourhood the previous evening.

2018 & BEFORE

Armstrong’s Last Bell

Short

Drama

Near the Scottish-English border in the early 1600s, a farm girl helps a member of the notorious Armstrong clan die with a clear conscience.

The Priest

Short

Horror

An unfaithful woman takes the train ride from hell.

Street Hassle

Short

Drama

Two co-dependent heroin addicts find their daily routine thrown into murderous chaos after they are given a fake £20 note in exchange for drugs…

Go Crazy

Short

Drama

When going crazy is the only way out.

Buried

Short

Drama

After a girl is killed in a single car accident, a police chief’s attempt to protect the teen’s mother from a terrible realization becomes a social media nightmare when the woman turns to an ambitious reporter for assistance.

I Wish

Short

Drama

Set in 1968, in outback Western Australia, this is a story of a young Aboriginal boy’s betrayal and a nation’s shame.

Do Unto Others

Short

Drama

A grieving father confronts his child’s killer on live television and must decide if the revenge he seeks is worth his soul.

Reggie Fonders

Short

Magical Realism

A metaphysical evening featuring an elderly man, the televangelist, a software engineer and his Rubik’s Cube.

Drink Recipes For Foolish People

Short

Drama

A young gay couple’s world turns upside down, after one of them finds out that he is HIV positive. Now they must decide whether to endure the physical and emotional consequences of continuing their relationship. Will they make it through?