What happens when a kid from Arizona devours westerns, crime novels, and comic books? If you’re Luke Paradise, you write The Prodigal, about a soldier who returns to his hometown, Tucson, for revenge against the military corporation responsible for h...

Road-trip comedy script Derby City has a strong punchline: A fugitive con artist convinces an unsuccessful Mormon missionary to split a truck rental and flee cross-country by promising to convert to Mormonism.

“For every spec you see that I have sold, I have not sold a lot of stuff. I’ve written a ton of things that weren’t that good, which was me chasing the spec market.”

Joe Ballarini has sold a lot of spec scripts. But Skyward, the spec he sold recently to Fox, may be the most consequential one yet. Every writer has that “one special story that you keep in your heart,” says Ballarini. “And this is one of them.”

Mention television shows about sociopaths, and we automatically call up Dexter, Hannibal – twisted, dramatic, even horrifying. But can a person lacking empathy and a conscience be the protagonist of a humorous show?

Most people know of Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager who chronicled her two years hiding in an attic during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. The Frank family was subsequently discovered and sent to concentration camps, where mil...

The publishing of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 represents a crucial turning point in modern U.S. history. So it’s no surprise that Pascal Pictures was eager to acquire Liz Hannah’s spec script The Post, which explores the Washington Post’s role in exp...

As if selling a TV pilot weren’t challenging enough, Stefanie Leder pitched her series Real Love while she was eight months pregnant. In the hospital. In labor.

It’s often obvious from the script if a writer has never set foot on a production set. When an aspiring screenwriter asks me how to learn the craft, my go-to advice is always, “Get yourself on a set.”