Final Draft

Logline:
Facing an impossible deadline, a struggling writer enlists the help of an AI muse — only to discover that each draft costs him a piece of himself, trapping a grieving father in a simulation mining his pain for profit.

Synopsis:
James is out of time, out of ideas, and out of himself. Desperate to meet a deadline, he turns to the Muse — an AI co-writer that promises structure, polish, and insight. But as they begin rewriting, James finds himself spiraling into a recursive narrative where he's no longer the author, forced to face buried trauma resulting from his obsession over technological perfection above his family.

Final Draft is a grounded psychological sci-fi short exploring emotional recursion, creative identity, and the invisible systems that mine our grief for story. It interrogates the tension between originality and algorithmic control...and what we lose when inspiration becomes transactional.

Winner (Quarterly): Zepstone International Film Festival
Winner: Oregon Short Film Festival
Semi-Finalist: FilmQuest
Finalist: DIFF-Storyline (DaVinci Writers' Corner)
Finalist: Austin After Dark Film Festival
Finalist: Wiki Screenplay
Quarter-Finalist: The Vancouver Horror Show (Canadian Awards Qualifying Festival)

  • Michael H. Moore
    Writer
  • Project Type:
    Short Script
  • Genres:
    Sci-Fi, Thriller, Psychological Horror, Drama, Mystery
  • Number of Pages:
    13
  • Language:
    English
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Zepstone International Film Festival
    Salt Lake City, UT
    December 17, 2025
    Round Winner Best Short Screenplay
  • FilmQuest Festival
    Provo, UT
    October 23, 2025
    Semi-Finalist Best Short Screenplay
  • DIFF-Storyline (DaVinci Writers' Corner)
    Los Angeles, CA
    October 10, 2025
    Finalist Best Screenplay
  • Austin After Dark Film Festival
    Austin, TX
    October 18, 2025
    Finalist Best Short Screenplay Dark Sci-Fi
  • Oregon Short Film Festival
    Portland, OR
    January 18, 2026
    Winner Best Dark Sci-FI Screenplay
  • The Vancouver Horrow Show Film Festival
    Vancouver, British Columbia V5T 2K3
    October 15, 2025
    Quarter-Finalist Best Short Screenplay
  • Wiki: The World's Fastest Screenplay Contest!
    Beverly Hills, CA
    December 20, 2025
    Finalist Best Short Screenplay
Writer Biography - Michael H. Moore

Michael Moore began writing in May 2025, having now completed ten original scripts in eight months. His debut shorts have earned close to a 70% placement rate and 33% finalist/win rate across all submissions, with 8 festivals recognizing multiple scripts in the same competition. Notable recognitions include FilmQuest (Semi-Finalist; Quarter-Finalist), Flickers' Rhode Island (RIIFF) (2x Semi-Finalist), DIFF-Storyline (DaVinci Writers' Corner) (2x Finalist; 1 Semi-Finalist), HorrorFest International (Semi-Finalist), Glendale International Film Festival (2x Finalist), Vancouver Horror Show (Semi-Finalist; Quarter-Finalist), Filmmatic TV Pilot Awards (Semi-Finalist), and Wins at Austin After Dark (2x), The New York Sci-Fi and Horror Festival and Zepstone International.

Shadows is his debut feature, a psychological sci-fi thriller that blends the cerebral structure of inception with the emotional depth of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It follows a brilliant neuroscientist that manipulates her husband into a fatal consciousness transfer — only to awaken trapped in her own erasure protocols, navigating fragmented realities that pull her closer to the choice that shattered her family and the daughter she risks losing forever.

Collective Unknown is an anthology featuring emotionally resonant shorts that explore buried memory, recursion, and the hidden artifacts that echo across time — where identity, purpose, and fate intertwine in a world where humanity's search for meaning may outlive its existence.

Affect Protocol is an anthology of grounded, emotional sci-fi stories exploring how emotional regulation, memory, and identity shape what it means to feel human in an age of artificial perfection. Identity, class systems, and weaponization or erasure of feeling all get examined through vastly different sci-fi landscapes.

Wrench Kings is an original long form grounded sci-fi series that's set in a post-automation future ruled by labor/working class guilds rather than wealth, exploring a world rebuilt by the very people society once discarded — scavengers, builders, gardeners, healers, sentinels, and couriers — after artificial intelligence failed the former ruling class that lived above the clouds.

As a newer voice in this space, his goal is to share work that engages both thoughtful genre audiences and industry professionals looking for fresh, emotionally intelligent storytelling.

Add Writer Biography
Writer Statement

I write to explore the systems dictating our lives, whether shaped by nature or humanity. Our world's contradictions, values, unknowns…and quiet horrors. If a work leaves you unsettled or questioning what it means to be human, it's doing its job.

As a newer voice in this space, my goal is to share work that engages both thoughtful genre audiences and industry professionals looking for fresh, emotionally intelligent storytelling.