moonrise
Screenplay
Labs
Moonrise Screenplay Labs is an independent development platform dedicated exclusively to dark, high-concept cinema.
We are a boutique industry accelerator built for one purpose: to discover, refine, and champion the next generation of Horror, Thriller, and Suspense screenplays. While typical contests hand out digital badges and vanity trophies, our focus is entirely on the tangible infrastructure an emerging genre writer needs to transition from a spec draft to a production-ready asset.
We operate on an annual cycle to identify exceptional creative voices writing across all sub-genres of dark cinema, from psychological tension and visceral survival horror to elevated supernatural suspense.
Our mission is to bridge the gap between brilliant independent scripts and the commercial marketplace. We do this by injecting direct development capital into winning projects, providing multi-platform network circulation, and guaranteeing an immediate return to Moonrise Screenplay Labs for our fellows’ subsequent slates.
The industry is built on tension. Bring us yours.
Awards and Prizes
Best Feature Script
$1,000
✓ 1,000.00 Cash Award (USD)
✓ Exclusive Production Circulation
✓ Official Winner Laurel
✓ Free entry to next season
Best Short Script
$500
✓ 500 Cash Award (USD)
✓ Industry Network Logline Distribution
✓ Official Winner Laurel
✓ Free entry to next season
We don’t trade in hollow trophies or corporate networking gimmicks. Moonrise Screenplay Labs is built to inject real resources into dark cinema. Our laureled winners receive direct financial grants alongside exclusive industry circulation to push their projects forward on their own terms, whether funding a physical production, securing gear, or buying the time to write the next nightmare.
