Amazon Studios
Stumbled on Amazon Studios a few weeks back and have been exploring this. I recently submitted my script Shadow Machine to this process, despite dire warnings from other writers (who are more knowledgable than I) that it’s a bad deal.
I’m currently participating in a contest at Amazon Studios where I’m writing a treatment regarding how I would make one of the scripts more marketable (from Amazon’s perspective). The prize is $33K, which isn’t much compared to what you’d get if it were a studio re-write with proper WGA credit and residuals, but at this point in my writing career $33K is a pretty good deal for me and I’d have leverage to boast about the project. I’m thinking like one commenter on Craig post, that a bad deal might be better than no deal at all, especially for a script that’s in a figurative “drawer” right now.
Amazon Studios is also soliciting ideas for web series comedies, so if you’ve always wanted to write that television comedy pilot and see whether it would work, now might be the time. But as a PS, do read the contracts and rules and some of the blogs out there commenting on what Amazon is doing, it may be worth your while if you think your project has the legs to run elsewhere in the television/hollywood world.
