You may remember Blumhouse — the production company of filmmaker Jason Blum — from such horrors as Paranormal Activity, Insidious, Get Out, the Halloween reboot and, most recently, the frankly unmissable M3GAN. Blumhouse has earned a reputation for creating blockbuster horrors over the past 20 years. So, it’s exciting that your idea could be their next hit. The company’s Screamwriting fellowship — in partnership with K Period Media and the Sundance Institute — is looking to put underrepresented writers’ work in front of established TV and filmmakers working in the genre.
This week (7 March), the first selectees gathered in Los Angeles to meet with leading writers, directors and producers, to discuss the scripts each of them submitted to the programme. Amongst the mentors is Ryan Murphy, the mad-hatter Netflix genius behind American Horror Story, as well as his co-writer on the show, Crystal Liu. Mike Flanagan is also taking part, another Netflix staple known for slow-burn scares like The Haunting of Hill House and Hush.
“I have always loved horror and recognized that there was an opportunity to create a new pipeline of support for creatives working within the genre,” Kimberly Steward, founder of K Period Media, said in a statement. “I couldn’t imagine a more prolific and additive partner for a horror program than Jason and Blumhouse and was honored when he agreed to join us in building this fellowship.”
The scripts include queer Canadian screenwriter Geo Bradley’s Rot, the story of an anti-social man with OCD who becomes a crime scene cleaner, but falls into a terrifying mental state. Meg Swertlow was accepted for No Overnight Parking, a stalker-horror about a reformed bad girl who gets trapped in a car park with a murderer. Lunaria is an in-development script by Myung Joh Wesner about a ghost haunting a lunar base. But perhaps the most intriguing addition to the line-up is Chelsea Gonzalez, an actor-writer who starred in Blumhouse’s own project Ouija: Origin of Evil. Her film, Women in Jeopardy, follows a nameless woman stuck in an endless murder loop of Groundhog Day proportions, desperate to find a way out. She enlists two fellow victims she encounters, and joins forces with them to escape.
This is the first of hopefully many years of the Screamwriting fellowship, so polish up your script and keep an eye out on the Sundance Institute website for applications in 2024.