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10 Recent Horror Movies That Weren’t Afraid To Push Their Boundaries

  • Staff Writer
  • .October 28, 2024
Horror films have been a staple of our screens since the inception of film, especially during Halloween month. It seems of late that these films have become more bold and daring in mashing up and contorting the traditional genre of scares to create a new entertainment experience.1) Alien: Romulus (2024)The Alien franchise is bui...
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Would It Kill You To Smile 2? Writer/Director Returns With A Gorier Sequel

  • Staff Writer
  • .October 25, 2024
The premise of a trauma-driven supernatural entity infecting people and causing them to violently bludgeon themselves to death began in Parker Finn’s 2020 short film Laura Hasn’t Slept. It centers on the nightmares of Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey) featuring a smiling face, eventually forcing her into state of somniphobia (fear o...
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"How JT Mollner Used 'Halloween' to Inspire Horror Film 'Strange Darling'"

  • Staff Writer
  • .October 21, 2024
“Strange Darling came to me through an initial image that I saw of a woman running through the woods in distress,” says JT Mollner of his horror film that can be described as a mix of a bloody popcorn wild ride and art.“I’ve read countless stories about serial killers which gave me some inspiration to show a different side of th...
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Follow Your Inner Compass

  • Brock Swinson
  • .September 30, 2024
“Follow Your Inner Compass” Richard Tanne on ‘Chemical Hearts’ & ‘Southside With You’:“I’m one of those lifelong film geeks,” joked writer/director Richard Tanne. “I was one of those kids with a lot of creative energy, but didn’t know it at the time, so I channeled it through misbehaving.” Tanne’s parents worked out a system wit...
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Movies Based on Moments

  • Brock Swinson
  • .September 23, 2024
“Movies Based on Moments” Mike Mills on ‘C’mon C’mon,’ ‘Beginners,’ and ‘Thumbsucker’:“I didn’t start off thinking I was going to be a director and writing really wasn’t my thing,” said Mike Mills. “I went to Art School, got into design, and kept looking for more ways to get into the public world.”He continued, “This sounds like...
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How To Write A Contained Film

Contained films are restrained stories that have traditionally been limited to the horror/ thriller genre. They are characterized by having few characters (often three to five, sometimes as few as one), no more than one or two main locations such as a haunted house, and a skeleton crew.Most importantly, they are filmed on shoest...
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It All Comes Down To Biology

  • Pen Densham
  • .August 4, 2024
Why We Watch Movies – It All Comes Down To Biology:Joseph Campbell became the patron saint of screenwriters thanks to George Lucas famously using his theories when he created Star Wars. Campbell studied thousands of myths, parables, and legends, from all time periods, religions and cultures. In his book, The Hero With a Thousand...
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Horror Screenwriting

  • Neal Marshall Stevens
  • .July 7, 2024
“Take it Back to First Principles” Neal Marshall Stevens Talks Horror Screenwriting:“I have been writing screenplays since I was 13 years old. I have been writing for a long, long time, back before there even were screenwriting books,” said Neal Marshall Stevens, who has 45 writing credits on IMDb (and many more that are unliste...
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What An Audience Really Wants From Your Script

If you’re trying to write a successful script—-a script that gets produced and seen by a large number of viewers—-you obviously want your script to be loved by your audience. So if we want people to watch our work, we need to know why they watch stories in the first place.Why do people watch television? Why do they go to the mov...
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Get To The Same Place In A Less Expectant Way

  • Joby Harold
  • .June 10, 2024
“Get to the Same Place in a Less Expectant Way” Joby Harold on ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’:“The Magnificent Seven. The Great Escape. Star Wars. Jaws. Everything that came out of that late 70s period, as a little kid in England, I loved that and started making little movies. I decided I was going to go for it,” said screenwriter Joby Harold...
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Revenge Movies Are A Dish Best Served Bold (Part 2)

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Revenge:CATHARSISThe psychological underpinnings of revenge, around for generations of storytelling, involve identification with a character’s situation (empathetic response) which then leads to catharsis. Once we bond with the main character, identify strongly with their plight, satisfyin...
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Revenge Movies Are A Dish Best Served Bold (Part 1)

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Revenge:Few themes are as relatable as revenge. We’ve all been wronged and considered various responses to that wrong. Not many of us use violence or extremes toward the wrongdoers, but there is a place we all go to where those remedies are at least internally considered. That’s what makes...
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What Make Gangster Films & TV Shows Work? (Part 2)

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Gangster Films:Characters: The CriminalsThe Godfather, perhaps the traditional gangster film most people know, features a family involved in organized crime. They were our focal points, our POV characters. Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) was outside of this world – almost. Their daily lives i...
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The Power Of Westerns (Part 2)

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Westerns:Manifest Destiny and American ExceptionalismThe idea that Americans were destined (by God) to settle the west was in many, many early westerns considered a positive. Native Americans were demonized and the white, so-called civilized culture of the eastern states was shown to be be...
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The Power Of Westerns (Part 1)

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Westerns:From the late 1930s to the mid-60s westerns as movies and television ruled the box office and ratings ranks. Legends like directors Howard Hawks, John Ford, Sam Peckinpaw, Sergio Leonie, and actors Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, and a raft of others bec...
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Writing The Perfect Hallmark Holiday Romantic Comedy Movie

  • Mark Sevi
  • .April 15, 2024
Writing The Perfect Hallmark Holiday Romantic Comedy MovieHoliday films screened during major holidays are as sure as horror films screening at Halloween. Mark Sevi spoke with mega-producer Carol Baum about how screenwriters can best position themselves to sell their screenplays into this market which consistently looks for this...
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Screenwriting Within A Budget

Screenwriting Within The Parameters Of A Film Budget - Films are very expensive to make, and very expensive to market. Even TV series on streaming networks such as Netflix, Hulu, and HBO are dealing with multi-million-dollar film budgets per episode. If you're trying to work in Hollywood, you may be under the impression that Hol...
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Writing The Genre Hybrid Romance

Audiences always love a good romance. Nowadays, most streaming services and platforms often have a “Romance” category all by itself, providing an endless scroll of date-night content for you and your partner or you and a bowl of ice cream! However, while all romance movies share a core genre, not every romance movie is exactly t...
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Stories are Trances

  • Brianne Hogan
  • .March 4, 2024
According to Steven Barnes, screenplays and stories are “like conversations with friends you have yet to meet,” which is a comforting thought to the lonely writer holed up in their apartment, banging out words.A screenwriter and sci-fi novelist himself, Barnes always wanted to be a writer.“I always told stories,” he says. At fir...
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Unconscious Levels of Funny

  • Brock Swinson
  • .January 29, 2024
“Unconscious Levels of Funny” Judd Apatow on ‘Sicker In The Head’ & Beyond: This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Judd Apatow.The 2022 book Sicker In The Head includes conversations with Cameron Crowe, David Letterman, John Mulaney, Kevin Hart, Margaret Cho, Whoopi Goldberg, and Will Ferrell, among others. By simply asking “ho...

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