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 & Prizes

🏆 The Feature Film Grant Recipient (Best Feature Script)

• $1,000.00 Direct Financial Grant (USD): Unrestrictive development capital paid securely and directly to the writer. Use it exactly where it matters most to your process, whether that means buying time to write your next script, upgrading software, or clearing personal bills.

• Exclusive Production Circulation: We bridge the gap between brilliant spec drafts and the commercial marketplace. Your winning project, logline, and bio (and script if requested by winning writer) will be fast-tracked into our private, curated industry circulation portfolio, delivered straight to active production companies, private investors, and independent genre banners seeking material.

• Official Moonrise Winner Laurel: Receive high-resolution, transparent digital laurel assets to immediately stamp your script’s title page, signaling elite industry curation to anyone you query.

• Complimentary Next Season Submission: A career isn’t built on a single draft. To support your growing body of work, you receive an automatic, free submission to our subsequent seasonal lab cycle.

🏆 The Short Film Grant Recipient (Best Short Script)

• $500.00 Direct Financial Grant (USD): A raw cash injection paid directly to the creator. This fund is explicitly designed to accelerate independent production, whether it acts as seed money for your proof-of-concept short, pays for cast and crew, or covers your camera gear rentals.

• Industry Network Logline Distribution: Build immediate industry visibility. We pack your short project’s logline and your writer profile into our targeted seasonal showcase newsletter, circulating your concept straight to a dedicated network of short-form genre producers looking for films to make.

• Official Moonrise Winner Laurel: High-resolution digital laurel assets designed to give your short script instant prestige on FilmFreeway and cover pages.

• Complimentary Next Season Submission: Maintain your artistic momentum. Your win secures an automatic, free voucher to enter our next seasonal cohort with your next short or feature-length nightmare.

Rules & Terms

1. Eligibility:
• Intellectual Property: All submissions must be the original creative work of the entering party. If a screenplay is adapted from existing source material, a book, a short story, or a living person’s life, the entrant must possess fully executed, legally binding underlying rights. Works existing entirely in the Public Domain are accepted.
• Genre Focus: Programming is strictly restricted to narrative works classified within the Horror, Thriller, Suspense, and Neo-Noir genres (including all associated sub-genres). Submissions that do not possess distinct elements of genre tension, psychological dread, or suspense will be set aside without administrative refund.
• Format & Page Architecture: Short script must not exceed 40 pages maximum. Feature screenplays must be longer than 70 pages.
• Language: All screenplays must be submitted written in English, or translated in English.
• Entrant Criteria: The lab is open to screenwriters globally, except where prohibited by local statute. Entrants must be at least 18 years of age at the time of submission, or have documented legal guardian consent.

2. Submission Guidelines:
• Digital Delivery: All PDF materials must be uploaded and submitted exclusively via the secured FilmFreeway portal. No physical hardcopies, email attachments, or external download links will be reviewed.
• Industry Standards: Screenplays must be in PDF, adhere to standard professional screenwriting typography and layout conventions (Courier 12-point typeface, standard industry margins, and formatting spacing).
• Multiple Submissions: Writers are permitted to enter multiple separate projects into the lab; however, each project requires its own separate submission track and accompanying entry fee.
• Draft Finality: In order to maintain structural equity across the review cycle, revised or updated drafts cannot replace an entry once the submission process is locked. All entries are evaluated as final.
• Disqualification: Moonrise Screenplay Labs reserves the right to disqualify any project if false/misleading data is provided, copyright or chain-of-title violations are suspected, or the structural genre guidelines are ignored. No entry fees will be refunded in the event of disqualification.

3. Grants & Evaluation Matrix:
• The Financial Grants: The $1,000.00 (USD) Feature Grant and the $500.00 (USD) Short Grant are unrestricted financial awards paid securely to the verified winners. Recipients assume full and sole responsibility for any applicable local, state, or federal taxes. Financial allocations will be distributed within a reasonable administrative window following the final announcement.
• Selection Routing: Selected, finalist, and winning screenplays will be formally notified via their registered email address and/or directly through the FilmFreeway dashboard.
• Evaluation Decisions: All reading, scoring, and placement decisions are final and rest at the absolute discretion of Moonrise Screenplay Labs. Internal scoring metrics look closely at narrative tension, structural execution, commercial concept viability, pacing, and genre-specific audience impact.

4. Rights & Ownership Protection:
• Creator Rights: The screenwriter retains 100% ownership, copyright, and intellectual property control over their material. Submission to Moonrise Screenplay Labs does not grant the platform, its partners, or its associates any ownership, option, or exclusive management rights over your work.
• Promotional License: By entering the lab, winning and finalist creators grant Moonrise Screenplay Labs a non-exclusive right to utilize their name, logline, script title, and professional likeness for institutional marketing and promotional initiatives (including website documentation, newsletters, and social media media placement).

5. Indemnity & Legal Disclaimers:
• Liability Boundaries: Moonrise Screenplay Labs, its operators, readers, and affiliates are not responsible for lost, late, or misdirected entries, technical system processing anomalies, file corruption, or third-party hosting errors (including FilmFreeway system interruptions). Entrants agree to indemnify, defend, and hold Moonrise Screenplay Labs harmless from any and all liability, claims, or damages arising out of the submission of their material.
• Refund Framework: Once a screenplay is submitted and the portal transaction clears, all entry fees are completely non-refundable for any reason.
• Schedule Fluctuations: Moonrise Screenplay Labs retains the administrative right to extend submission deadlines or calibrate the notification schedule based on incoming submission volume or processing demands.
• Minimum Threshold Contingency: In the highly improbable event that base operational submission thresholds are not met, Moonrise Screenplay Labs reserves the right to adjust cash awards to a proportional "percentage of collected fees" allocation model, or cancel the specific track entirely and issue refunds to the active pool.

6. Direct Acceptance of Terms:
By finalizing your submission through FilmFreeway, you explicitly confirm that you:
• Have thoroughly read, reviewed, and understood these Terms & Conditions.
• Consensually agree to all structural rules, timelines, and operational procedures outlined by the lab.
• Accept that all internal evaluation placement decisions are final, definitive, and not subject to legal appeal or formal dispute.

7. Contact:
For questions, please contact:
info@moonrisescreenplaylabs.com