Category Archives: Movies and scripts

VRYKOLAX folk-horror script wins Special Prize at Tallinn

My folk-horror screenplay VRYKOLAX was selected for development by the European Genre Forum. After workshops in Zagreb, Amsterdam and Tallinn, it was pitched at the Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn, where it won the Special Mention Prize. It’s now being pitched further afield.

VRYKOLAX tells the story of a troubled British artist who tries to find the truth about his family on a remote Mediterranean island, where the locals are in fear of a Vrykolax, a revenant from Greek folklore which returns from the dead to wreak havoc on its relatives. The Vrykolax or Vrykolakis is in some ways similar to the more familiar vampire, although reports predate the Slavic vampire by several centuries.

The script is co-written with the film’s director, Achilleas Gatsopoulos. The producers are Minos Nikolakakis and Vassilis Economou.

If you are a potential investor and would like to know more, a pitchdeck is available. Please get in touch here.

In which the Writer adapts a bestseller for the screen – and can’t tell anyone.

You may sometimes stumble across descriptions of movie projects that state “story kept under wraps”. They may even just call the project “Untitled”. I’ve always found such posts annoying.

And now I’m doing that very thing myself. Ah, irony. Right now I’m under contract to adapt a bestselling novel for a producer in the UK. A producer who can walk the project into a major US production company. A production company that has links to two major directors.

Which is why I can’t say anything other than “story kept under wraps” and the project is “Untitled”. All I can say is, it’s a wonderful, epic story, and working on it has been a pleasure.

Will the project get greenlit? Who knows? But I’d really, really like to see this get to the screen: audiences will be wowed.

DARK SENSE gets its world premiere at Boston Sci-Fi Festival


If you happen to be in the Boston, Massachusetts area… DARK SENSE, a paranormal thriller feature I co-wrote, is getting its world premiere at the opening of the Boston Sci-Fi Festival on 8 February.
 
Simon has premonitions of a serial killer’s dark deeds. He knows he must try to stop the killer, but in doing so, he dooms himself.
 
It was filmed in Edinburgh, Scotland, and based on the bestselling novel First and Only by Peter A. Flannery. @BostonSciFi @darksensemovie

In which the Writer gets a showreel

My first showreel of completed, in-development and available projects has been hatched. Check it out here.

If you’d like to know more about the available screenplays are here, or there’s one of those contact forms here.

 

Many thanks to Magnus Wake of Encaptivate! for the edit.

Further thanks to the copyright holders for permission to use their material.

Sitges Fantastic Film Festival

I’ll be attending the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival in Spain from 4th to 8th October, meeting with producers looking for genre screenwriters (horror, sci-fi, action, thriller). If you’re going, drop me a line and let’s see if we can link up.