New: Open Writing Assignment at Amazon Studios

Original Soldiers

Amazon Studios is offering writers a chance to pitch their ideas and get hired to create a full-length movie script. This open writing assignment — which will pay up to $75,000 — is based on a project called Original Soldiers, a short created by the Amazon Studios team.

“This is a wide-open opportunity for writers from around the world and we’re excited to see what people come up with,” said Amazon Studios Director Roy Price.

Here’s how this open writing assignment will work: Writers may submit pitches of about 1,500 words detailing the script they’d like to write based on the premise for Original Soldiers — the story of an old-school strike force that has to save the day when the humans’ droid army is disabled.

The pitch can be in “beat sheet,” outline, or narrative format, as long as it fully details the story from beginning to end, including the plot, characters, and tone. Writers of the top five pitches will get $10,000 each to produce a 10-page treatment — a more detailed version of the story. The writer of the best treatment will get a chance to write a first draft (which pays $40,000) and a second draft (which pays another $25,000). Throughout the process, the selected writers will get feedback and advice from the Amazon Studios Story Department.

Pitch submissions are due by Dec. 14, 2011. Proposals will be evaluated by the Amazon Studios development staff for quality and creativity. We will request feature writing samples from selected writers by December 21, 2011, and based on the pitch and writing sample, we will evaluate and notify selected writers by mid-January 2012. Click here for more details.

Amazon Studios launched in November 2010 and has attracted more than 6,000 scripts and more than 600 test movies from writers and filmmakers around the world.