I hope everybody enjoyed their Thanksgiving / Columbus Day / Indigenous Peoples Day holiday weekend. Whether you’re back to work or still enjoying the long weekend in one of the states that gives you a day off for it, catch up on this week’s Fast Five industry report. It’s heavy on news for and about writers, from showcasing new writing initiatives, to stories about writers who took their careers into their own hands in order to break out of the mold they were cast in and jump into new genres.

CANADIAN CULT HIT LETTERKENNY HITS THE WORLD STAGE

What’s the Danish equivalent of hockey players and hicks in small-town Canada? We may just find out as the Canadian cult-hit that airs on CraveTV in its native country, and on Hulu in the United States, will begin selling format rights to a variety of countries around the world. While the premise may seem niche—different social groups feud in the small town of Letterkenny—the international rollout proves that a strong concept can be adapted to any country. Creator and star Jared Keeso originally launched the show as a YouTube web series, serving as a proof of concept for Bell Media to order as its streaming service’s first original production. The show’s success demonstrates the different paths available to creators today. Are you having trouble getting people interested in hearing your pitch? Make it yourself and let the quality of the writing speak for you. If you have an original concept like Keeso had in Letterkenny, there’s a chance your material will stand out from the crowd and you’ll have a piece of IP you can use to help get interest in your project.

COMEDY WRITERS PROVE THEY ARE MORE THAN THEIR LAST PROJECT BY SUCCESSFULLY PIVOTING TO DRAMA

It’s the first warning most aspiring writers receive: “Choose your genre carefully, because once you sell a project, that’s all you’ll be allowed to write.” Sell a horror spec? Fantastic, but I hope you like horror because no studio or production company will ever put you on their list for period drama writers. This happens to everybody. Not only do actors and directors get typecast, but you’ll often hear executives worry that if they take that great job at Freeform, they’ll be working in Young Adult their entire life.

A recent trend however may make people look at writers as more than their last job, with life-long comedy writers breaking into drama. Bad Teacher creator Hilary Winston just sold the drama Wildfire to NBC, following in the footsteps of other recent transitions. A quick glance at Craig Mazin’s resume wouldn’t lead anybody to believe the Scary Movie and Superhero Movie spoof writer had a prestige HBO series in him. But Mazin was more than eager to prove us all wrong as Chernobyl quickly became the highest rated TV show on IMDb and won him an Emmy®. Maybe taking a cue from his Hangover Part II & Part III co-writer Mazin, writer-director Todd Phillips also jumped into drama in incredible fashion by writing and directing Joker to a $96 million opening weekend on a $55 million budget.

 In 2017, when Growing Up Fisher and Truth Be Told creator D.J. Nash sold a drama to ABC, reporting on the show was around whether a comedy writer could make the transition. Well, Nash’s A Million Little Things is in its second season on ABC, so it’s safe to say the experiment was successful. Hopefully, with these examples, not to mention Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Killing Eve and Fleabag winning Emmys in both the comedy and drama categories at the same ceremony, people will be more willing to accept that talented writers are capable of working in multiple genres.

DISCOVER.FILM LAUNCHES A STREAMING SERVICE FOR SHORT FILMS

Short films have a long history in the entertainment industry. Technically, all the films made in the first generation of the medium were short films. Since then, they’re used more as a calling card, as a way to gain experience or, as Jared Keeso showed with Letterkenny, a proof of concept to help pitch a project. Short films can also be used to create intellectual property and help build a brand or create a loyal following. The problem is, outside of film festivals and YouTube, there isn’t much you can do with your short. Well, a new streaming service from one of the world’s leading film festivals has become a new buyer for shorts. Discover.film is out of the Beta stage and will be available worldwide to an audience that wants access to all the great films that happen to come in under feature length. The service also signed deals with airlines to make a curated selection available as in-flight entertainment.

SUBMISSIONS ARE OPEN FOR THE BLACK LIST’S SECOND GLAAD LIST

Earlier this year, GLAAD partnered with The Black List to create a list of unproduced screenplays that were LGBTQ-inclusive by passing The Vito Russo Test. The test’s three rules basically state that the project has to have an LGBTQ character who is not defined by being LGBTQ, and who cannot be removed from the script without significantly altering the story. The scripts, comprised of a mixture of professional screenplays from the annual Black List and paid uploads to The Black List’s script hosting website, will be judged by GLAAD employees.

While I’m usually skeptical of schemes that use a mixture of paid submissions and screenplays written by professionals, I did some digging into last year’s list and discovered that only three of the ten featured screenplays came from professional writers on the year-end Black List. This year’s list is now open to submissions and is available to anybody who has a script on The Black List’s website and opts in. A disclaimer for aspiring writers: This is not free. You have to pay a monthly fee to host your script and then, if nobody chooses to read and review it, pay to have your script rated. The highest rated scripts will then be sent to GLAAD for consideration. However, if you already have a well-reviewed script on the service that meets the requirements, there's no reason not to enter.

THE SUNDANCE EPISODIC LAB NAMES ITS ADVISORS

From Quentin Tarantino’s 1991 work on Reservoir Dogs and Wes Anderson’s 1993 workshop for Bottle Rocket, to Ryan Coogler’s 2013 stint for Fruitvale Station, The Sundance Institute has long been a way for writers and directors to work on their craft in a safe and supportive environment. The next round of Episodic Labs will give fourteen new Sundance Fellows the opportunity to workshop their material under some of television’s best, including Justified creator Graham Yost and Oz creator Tom Fontana. In total, 11 professional television writers will be working side-by-side with the young writers and 11 television executives have also been recruited to serve as mentors. While that may seem like an odd choice, one of the most important things a writer can do is understand the industry from the perspective of the people who are buying and developing material. It’s an entirely different perspective, and learning what traits executives look for in a writer is important information if you want to be the person executives are eager to develop with.