On February 24, 2013, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented its annual Academy Awards (known as the Oscars) to honor the best films of 2012 in the United States. The ceremony was held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California with Seth MacFarlane hosting for the first time. The nominees included several established talents as well as some filmmakers and talents that had not as yet made their mark on the industry. Among the various categories, the Academy honors the Best Picture, and Best Animated Feature as well as offering two categories related to screenwriting: Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay.

In the category of Best Animated Feature, the film Brave won the Oscar. Written and directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman, Brave is set in the Scottish highlands and centers on Merida, the daughter of King Fergus of Clan Dunbroch. While Merida is practicing with the bow she receives from her father for her birthday, she encounters a will-o’-the-wisp. Years later, at 16, Merida is informed that she is to be betrothed to one of her father’s allied clans; her mother warns her that her failure to marry could harm Dunbroch, but Merida is dissatisfied with the arrangement. Merida defeats each of her suitors in an archery contest; she and her mother argue, and Merida slashes the family tapestry between the images of herself and her mother Elinor, while Elinor burns Merida’s bow. Merida runs into a witch, who offers to give her a spell to change her mother. Oblivious to her mother’s regret, Merida gives her mother the spell-cake, which transforms her mother (much to Merida’s surprise) into a large brown bear. The two find the witch, who informs them that Merida must “mend the bond torn by pride.” Merida and Elinor reconcile, with Merida figuring out that mending the tapestry will reverse the spell. Elinor is slowly losing her human personality, and Merida’s triplet brothers have turned into bear cubs as a result of the spell; Elinor attacks her husband before regaining human consciousness and fleeing. Merida intervenes before her mother is killed, and Elinor saves Merida from Mor’du. The spell is reversed and the peace is restored, both in the family and among the clans.

Brave was announced in April 2008, and is production company Pixar’s first fairy tale film. Merida is the first female lead protagonist in a Pixar film, and has received a positive critical response. It is the thirteenth highest-grossing film of 2012, earning a total of $535,383,207 as of the Oscars. In addition to the Academy Award, Brave has won the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film.

If you have a screenplay idea that you think would make a good movie or TV show, New Show Studios can help. Don’t find yourself living in regret that you never pursued the film or TV idea you have; New Show Studios has all the resources that it takes to help real people develop a screenplay idea into a concept package and present it to entertainment companies. New Show Studios works through its licensing agent, SFM Entertainment, a company with over 40 years of experience in the entertainment industry.

Remember that even with the best presentation materials new entertainment development is high risk and there is very little likelihood that your idea will be successfully licensed or result in profit to you.

Each year, there are two Academy Awards given out for screenplays.  One is for the best adapted screenplay, which is a screenplay that interprets another source (a novel, short story, a play, a television show or sometimes even another film).  The other is for the best original screenplay, which is a screenplay that is not based upon previously published material.  It starts as just a screenplay idea in the writer’s mind, and is developed from there.

Learning to write your own original screenplay takes a good amount of research, practice and repetition.  Watching movies and studying successful screenplays and writers are some things that you can do to help yourself learn.  The following are some of the best original screenplay ideas of the 1940s that are worth checking out.

In 1947, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer won the Academy Award for the Best Original Screenplay.  The film was written by Sidney Sheldon and starred Cary Grant, Shirley Temple, and Myrna Loy in a comedy surrounding a seventeen-year-old girl named Susan Turner and her crush on a sophisticated bachelor, Richard Nugent, who gives a lecture about art at her high school. Richard is persuaded to use subterfuge to try and shake the young girl off, eventually falling in love with her older sister Margaret, while Susan happily returns to her high school sweetheart. The film was later adapted to radio in a production starring Cary Grant and Shirley Temple which aired in June of 1949, and was also dramatized as a half-hour radio play with the same cast as the film. Notably, some of the dialogue from the film was slightly modified and used by David Bowie in the song “Magic Dance” from Labyrinth. The line beginning “You remind me of the babe,” is the part in question, with the original, from The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer first using “You remind me of the man,” and following with much the same formula. The patter was also used by the Atomic Fireballs in their biggest hit, “Man With the Hex.”

The film was critically acclaimed in its time, with The New York Times calling it “most agreeable,” and remains a classic today, available in multiple formats for home viewing. 

Another original screenplay to win an Academy Award in the 1940s was Woman of the Year, a 1942 film starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. The film follows Tess Harding, an accomplished and well-educated daughter of a diplomat who works as a political affairs columnist. She falls in love with Sam Craig, an average Joe sports writer after a feud between their columns, and the two eventually marry. As they adjust to married life together, Tess is coerced to take on the care of a Greek refugee child, Chris; initially, Sam is unconvinced about taking on an orphan, but he warms to the child. Tess earns the “Woman of the Year” award, and Sam, concerned about leaving Chris alone, decides to stay home with the boy. After Tess leaves, disappointed that Sam will not be with her, he takes Chris back to the refugee home and walks out on the marriage. Tess learns of it only after she has returned from the ceremony to change for photographers; she attempts to reclaim Chris, but he refuses. The next day, she receives an invitation to her father’s home. Since Sam is covering a championship boxing match, he tells her he cannot go. Tess arrives alone, only to find out that her father and her aunt are to be married that night. Their story inspires Tess to attempt reconciliation, and she sneaks into his new home and attempts to prepare breakfast, failing miserably due to her inability to cook. She proclaims a new intention of being nothing more than his wife; Sam tells her that this is the first time he is disappointed in her, because she is going to extremes. The two reconcile when Tess agrees to find the middle ground between being Tess Harding and “little Mrs. Craig.”

Woman of the Year was the first of nine films Katharine Hepburn made with Spencer Tracy; they met for the first time on the shoot. It was during the shoot for the film that Hepburn and Tracy became romantically involved, a relationship that lasted until Tracy’s death in the 1960s. The film was originally shot with a different ending, but it proved unpopular at test screenings.  In 1981, the movie was successfully adapted into a Broadway musical of the same name, and it has been honored by the American Film Institute on two of their top 100 lists.

Do you have a screenplay idea that you think would make a great movie or TV show? If you would like to take action and pursue your screenplay idea, New Show Studios can help.

New Show Studios is a company that’s designed specifically for everyday people with ideas for screens big and small.  It has all the resources under one roof to develop your screenplay idea into a concept package and present it to an entertainment company through its exclusive licensing agent, SFM Entertainment.  SFM Entertainment has over 40 years of experience in the entertainment industry. 

Remember that even with the best presentation materials new entertainment development is high risk and there is very little likelihood that your idea will be successfully licensed or result in profit to you.

A screenplay, also called a script, is a written work by screenwriters for a film or television show. Learning how to write a solid screenplay takes a good amount of research, practice and repetition.  Watching movies and television shows and studying successful screenplays and writers are some things that you can do to help yourself learn.  Listed below are two of the best screenplays to come out in 2005 that are worth checking out.

In 2005, Brokeback Mountain won the Academy Award for the Best Adapted Screenplay. The film courted controversy for its depiction of a homosexual relationship, and among the film’s fans, for being “snubbed” in the Academy Awards category of Best Picture. The story follows Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, who are hired by Joe Aguirre to herd his sheep through the summer. After a night of heavy drinking, Jack makes a pass at Ennis, who is initially apprehensive but eventually succumbs. He informs Jack that it was a one-time incident; however, they develop an intense romantic relationship. After learning their summer together is to be shortened, they get into a fight, with each ending up bloodied. Ennis marries his longtime fiancée and Jack eventually meets and marries a rodeo rider named Lureen Newsome. After four years, Jack visits Ennis, and Ennis’s wife witnesses the two kissing passionately. The marriages of both men deteriorate as they meet for infrequent fishing trips. Ennis divorces his wife, and after refusing Jack’s offer to live together, Jack gets involved in increasingly dangerous trysts. At the end of a fishing trip, Ennis tries to push back their next meeting, and the two fight again. Sometime later, a postcard Ennis sends to Jack is returned “Deceased.” Ennis offers to scatter Jack’s ashes on Brokeback Mountain, but Jack’s family declines. Jack’s mother allows Ennis to keep two shirts which Jack had taken, the shirts both men were wearing when they fought.

In addition to the Academy Awards, Brokeback Mountain earned the BAFTA awards for Best Adapted Screenplay, and was also honored in the Golden Globes awards for Best Screenplay and Best Motion Picture. The film earned over $178 million at box offices and received widespread critical acclaim.

That same year, Crash won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. This film won the Best Picture award at the Academy Awards, attracting controversy from those who preferred Brokeback Mountain to win. The script interweaves the stories of several characters over a course of two days in Los Angeles, showing the unwitting way their lives impact each other: a black detective who is estranged from his mother and his younger brother, who is a criminal and a gang associate; the white District Attorney and his pampered wife, a racist white police officer and his younger partner, an African American Hollywood director and his wife, a Persian immigrant and his daughter, and a Hispanic locksmith. The film is noteworthy in that its portrayal shows the fact that many of these victims of racism are capable of being racist themselves in different context. The complicated plot ends with the Persian man being saved from his attempt to kill the Hispanic locksmith by the fact that his daughter, with whom he had been fighting before, chose blank bullets for his gun; a gang member sets a group of illegal Asian immigrants who were victims of human trafficking free, and the detective discovering his brother has been killed over a misunderstanding. The complex plot and ensemble cast, mixing well-known actors with veritably unknown talent, was released in 2004 in some countries, though not until 2005 in the United States.

Crash earned the BAFTA award for Best Original Screenplay, and earned over $98 million at the box office, several times over its $7 million budget. The film received generally positive views, although many critics took exception to its portrayal of racial issues.

Do you have a screenplay idea that you think would make a great movie or TV show? New Show Studios can help you take action and pursue your screenplay idea. It is a company based in Pittsburgh that’s designed specifically for everyday people with ideas for screens big and small.  New Show Studios has all the resources under one roof to develop your screenplay idea into a concept package and present it to an entertainment company through its exclusive licensing agent, SFM Entertainment.  SFM Entertainment has over 40 years of experience in the entertainment industry. 

Remember that even with the best presentation materials new entertainment development is high risk and there is very little likelihood that your idea will be successfully licensed or result in profit to you.