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Our First Screenplay Options Sep 5 2000 4:28PM It's official: Zoetrope has optioned two screenplays from our website.REAL SCRIPTS OPTIONED OFF VIRTUAL STUDIO August 28, 2000, San Francisco, CA: Francis Coppola announced that two scripts have been optioned from his virtual studio website, www.zoetrope.com. The five-time Oscar winner launched the virtual studio site in June 2000, fulfilling a 20-year ambition by reopening his legendary Zoetrope Studios on the web. Over the past two years, Coppola has built three literary sites on the Web for short stories, novellas and screenplays. "We have always believed in the priority of finding new and excellent writers and stories. The advent of Zoetrope: All-Story magazine, and our new Zoetrope Studios virtual studio site is beginning to give us a real advantage, as well as helping writers whose work might not otherwise be seen," said Coppola. The two scripts, "Brave New Word" by Steven Blair and "Christiana Claus" by Betsy Morris are being optioned by Alliance Atlantis for American Zoetrope Television. "I'm extremely excited about the innovative way we found these first two scripts," said Tara McCann, Senior Vice President, Head of Television at American Zoetrope. "Without a doubt, the quality of material I have read has consistently been worthy of cinematic consideration, and even if the concept isn't one that we would currently buy, I have now come to learn of several talented writers that I would have never known about, had it not been for the screenplay site." "Brave New Word" is the story of a young boy dealing with the loss of his grandfather. He creates a new word to explain his feelings, then tries to get the new word into the dictionary. Author Steve Blair also writes and hosts a cooking show in Baltimore and Philadelphia called Pulp Kitchen. The screenplay site uses auto-evaluation--writers critiquing other writers and rating their work. It is a virtual writer's workshop that inspires lively discussion. Blair says, "Writers-on-writers is an invaluable process. I truly appreciate everyone taking the time to read and review my story." "Christiana Claus" centers around an eleven year-old girl who hates Christmas because her father is Santa. The story centers around her adventures when she leaves the North Pole and travels to the shopping mall. She makes new friends and learns the real meaning of Christmas in this heartwarming story that will bring smiles to the whole family. Author Betsy Morris writes computer manuals and online help systems for a financial software company by day and pursues her screen writing at night. "Christiana Claus" is Morris' fourth screenplay. "New Hope" was a Moondance finalist and "Access Denied" was a 1999 finalist at Austin. Her latest script is titled "Urban Renewal." In addition to accepting screenplays, the virtual studio lot is open to other artists. Within the artists buildings are creative departments (ie., Writing contains short stories, novellas, screenplays; Music & Sound contains songwriting, film scoring, sound design etc.). Within the more complex Producers' Bungalows are secure tools for file sharing, scheduling and private collaborative discussions. A Producer's Bungalow also has a window on the creative buildings that allows a producer access to information about the creative works the artists are doing. Producers can search for stories or screenplays with certain ratings, or that are in certain genres, or event that contain certain words. They can find actors to fit certain parts and can see how each actor is rated by his or her fellow actors. The common area contains the cafe (where all members of the site can hang out and participate in chats or discussions), the preview theater, the calendar of events, the private discussion sections, and the in-site private messaging system, Z-mail. The Board of Directors for the Virtual Studio include Rob Glaser of Real Networks; Brett Bullington, formerly of Excite@home.com; Jerry Fiddler of Wind River; and Mitch Kertzman of Liberate technologies. Francis Coppola founded American Zoetrope in 1969 with the notion that the future of cinema was electronic. The introduction of zoetrope.com, an entirely web-based and electronic film studio, takes Coppolaís vision of Electronic Cinema into reality. |
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