Winners of Inaugural LMU School Of Film & Television MFA Screenwriting Competition Revealed

Loyola Marymount University School of Film and Television honored the winners of its inaugural MFA Screenwriting Competition, a contest which engages industry leaders to evaluate the best work emerging from the prestigious student body, at an invite-only awards ceremony on May 7th, 2024. 

The winning students were selected blindly by a panel of over 40 experts from industry-leading companies, including Anonymous Content, Gotham Group, Macro, Verve, Entertainment 360, Temple Hill, Scott Free, Riot Games, and more. Awards were presented by LMU SFTV graduates Melissa Blake, who has written and produced series including Based on a True Story and One Mississippi, and Evan Romanski, creator of the four-time Emmy nominee Ratched, which he wrote as an MFA thesis project.

The MFA Screenwriting Competition highlights the best feature and pilot scripts written by second- and third-year graduate students from LMU’s world-class Writing for the Screen and Writing and Producing for TV programs. It is one of numerous SFTV initiatives designed to provide students with unparalleled access to the entertainment industry. Aligning with the university’s mission to promote inclusion, the competition bestows a Social Justice Award alongside honors for the year’s best comedies and dramas.

Dean Joanne Moore said, “To rise to the top of such a strong group of graduate students is a great achievement, and we are excited to have established this initiative to give these extremely talented writers the credit and exposure they deserve. This represents just one more way we are connecting our students with industry leaders to launch successful careers.”

“I am thrilled such high caliber Hollywood companies I have long admired participated as judges in championing emerging voices,” Graduate Director of Writing for the Screen Weiko Lin says. Lin launched the competition, and mentors the students alongside Graduate Director of Writing and Producing for Television Michael F.X. Daley. 

Recent students who have graduated from LMU screenwriting programs have gone on to write blockbuster features like John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, John Wick: Chapter 4, and Rebel Moon”as well as such acclaimed episodic series as The Bear, Atlanta, The Wonder Years, and Grimsburg. Notable alums include Academy Award-winning writer-director-producer Brian Helgeland (LA Confidential, Mystic River), director Michael Jelenic (The Super Mario Bros. Movie), producer Barbara Broccoli (No Time to Die, Spectre), director Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, I am Legend), and producer Effie Brown (Dear White People, Real Women Have Curves).

Below are the honorees of the inaugural LMU School of Film and Television MFA Screenwriting Competition:

Drama Feature Award

Winner: The Larson Episode by John Norton

After exploiting a flaw in the 1980s edition of Press Your Luck, perennial loser Michael Larson becomes the biggest winner in game show history, only to find himself battling the CBS legal team as well as his personal demons to avoid losing everything.

Honorable Mention: Cyclic by Fenton Queens

A performance artist uses a journal to travel back in time to stop her grandmother’s sexual assault, her mother’s, and her own, but may end up destroying the present in the process.

Honorable Mention: Speak Easy by Chris O. Lukens

He was an alcoholic TV star until he was accused of a heinous crime. Now he’s a sober bottom-rung private eye scouring the gutters of Hollywood for a paycheck. When his daughter goes missing, the trail leads right back to the same corrupt Hollywood system that destroyed his life.

Comedy Feature Award

Feature award justice pilot awardWinner: Cherry Drive by Noemie Boucher

A scrappy 6th grader’s world comes crashing down after discovering that she’s moving away because her house is being foreclosed. But when a local fast food chain hosts a scavenger hunt across town with a big prize, she convinces her friends to embark on one last great adventure to save her house.

Winner: Necronomicops by Aaron Hluch

LA, 1987. When a Satanic cult threatens to usher in Armageddon, a manchild hotshot supercop and his crotchety partner must drive, and share their way through their toughest case yet: protecting a feral 9-year-old girl destined to be the Antichrist.

Drama Pilot Award

Winner: Bloody Barcelona by Brett Cornwell 

As Civil War tears through Spain, a gang of radicals last ditch effort to clear their debts threatens to tear Barcelona apart when instead of money, their haul is a young woman and her mysterious painting.

Honorable Mention: Rising Chief by Taylor C. McMullan

Genocide forces a young Indian boy to become the Chief leading a rebel tribe of refugees and runaway slaves.

Comedy Pilot Award 

Winner: True Chicago Dream Life by Sarah Frasco 

Emma, a normal human who dreams of having superhuman abilities like her roommates Pasta Girl and Cat Lady, struggles to adjust to adulthood while living her truest, dreamiest life.

Honorable Mention: unprofessional by Tia Kaiulani Kanaeholo

An overworked and underpaid, 30-something tries to balance her career, relationships, and sobriety under the pressure of LA’s girl boss, ‘women can have everything’, hustle culture.

Social Justice Feature Award

Winner: Between Heaven and Hell by Marisa Martinez Rodenbaugh

1874. While being hunted down by her eldest brother she thought to be dead, a determined  Arapaho woman journeys across the plains to save her younger brother, a Dog Man warrior, before the law finds him.

Social Justice Pilot Award

Winner: Rising Chief by Taylor C. McMullan

Genocide forces a young Indian boy to become the Chief leading a rebel tribe of refugees and runaway slaves.