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Top 50 Features - 2025 JumpStart Writing Competition
Roadmap Writers is thrilled to announce the Top 50 Features from our 2025 JumpStart Writing Competition.
JumpStart leverages the reach and resources of Roadmap Writers to advocate for these exciting emerging voices. This year's judging panel includes execs and reps from companies such as Good Fear Content, Odenkirk Provissiero Entertainment, Heroes and Villians, Writ Large, and more
And now we’re pleased to announce the...
TOP 50 FEATURES
| SCRIPT TITLE | WRITER(S) | LOGLINE |
| AN AXE FOR THE FROZEN SEA | Samantha Silvay | Set in a fictionalized Soviet state, An Axe For The Frozen Sea follows a Socialist realist writer and his wife on their journey from good soldiers to revolutionaries. |
| ATTACHED | Cristina Williams | In a quaint corner of the South of France, a woman decides to help her meddling but charismatic ex-husband move on with his life by running a village competition to find him a new wife, but in the process, discovers that SHE is the one who is still attached. |
| BAD ACTOR | Sean Azze | When a struggling actress has her big break ruined by a traumatizing encounter with "America's Dad", Tom Hanks, she risks ruining her life to expose him for what he really is: a colossal asshole. |
| BAD DAD | Petra Lang | When his wife embarks on a journey to climb Mount Everest, an immature ex-rocker must raise his teen daughter alone for a year, and decide whether to keep his marriage alive or reignite the spark with his ex. |
| BEANSTALK | Aarthi Ramanathan | After a shy, neurodivergent teen from Modern-Day Chicago accidentally unearths a magical beanstalk that unleashes dangerous giants into his world, he must venture into their realm and confront his greatest fears-both the giants in the otherworld and those in his own life. COMPS: HOOK meets NARNIA. |
| BLOOD TIES | Mick Wormald | A troubled teenage girl discovers she is next in line as the high priestess of a centuries old witches coven, who gain their magic from drawing blood from male children. |
| BOOK F*CKER | Lissette Jean-Marie | A romantasy audiobook producer reeling from a break up accidentally opens up a portal that a hot knight from a magical world falls through, and now she must help him get back home while trying to keep her own life from falling apart. BOTTOMS meets ENCHANTED |
| CAT BURGLARS | Duncan Novak | In this deconstruction of neo-noir thrillers--Jude Turner, a suicidal young man living with Cerebral Palsy, embarks on a brutal quest for revenge against the people who stole his cat. |
| CHAMELEON | John Fox | A down on his luck jazz musician is seduced into taking on the life of his doppelgänger and finds out who he really is. |
| CHOKEHOLD | Mick Villhartin | An ex-con is trying to move on from his past when he becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a man who supposedly framed him. |
| DEMONS | Shiva Ramanathan | A desperate father who resorts to crime and murder to fund his fertility treatment must confront his past when the seven-year-old girl he killed is reborn as his daughter. Comps: Fargo, Prisoners and The Omen. |
| DETECTIVE CLAUS | David Zeltser | A divorced, workaholic police detective-stuck with his spirited daughter for the holidays-takes the case when a suspicious sleigh accident sidelines Santa. As they unwrap the mystery, father and daughter realize saving Christmas might mean reinventing it. Blending the comic charm of THE SANTA CLAUS with the adventure of THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES, this fresh, inventive holiday tale has the potential to become a beloved franchise. |
| DIVE BAR | Stephen Polakiewicz | Resigned to small-town life, a sharp-tongued dive bar waitress falls for a nomadic were-shark, drowning his demons one pitcher at a time. As their bond grows, she discovers saving him might be the key to saving herself. |
| DYING TO SEE YOU | Nicholas R. Zingarelli | A cop witnesses the murder of his partner and wife races to save his kidnapped daughter buried alive in a leaky grave in the rain as a trigger-happy police force chases him. |
| ENOCH | Cory David Bortnicker | At the start of COVID-19, a long-term AIDS survivor haunted by feelings of guilt must confront his past when the ghosts of his dead friends return and convince him to share his life story with a young graphic novelist. |
| ESCAPE | Marc H Stevens | The true story of a selfish German-Jewish refugee living in London who commits identity theft to become an RAF bomber pilot, is shot down and captured by the Nazis, and must escape before they realize his true identity. |
| FOREVER MY CHILD | Wesley Du | An aging Chinese man suffering from dementia struggles to care for his disabled adult son and doesn't want to let go of his responsibility, frustrating his wife who doesn't want to be stuck taking care of the both of them |
| GENG GENG & JIN-HO | Shannon Ko | Set in Covid Era NYC where an Asian hate group is exterminating Asian Americans... Two estranged Asian brothers reunite and struggle to stay alive. Their coming of age will heal themselves and the world of Asian Hate. |
| HAUNTED HEART | Mike Bencivenga | When a struggling ghostwriter for motivational speakers is haunted emotionally (then literally) by a lost love, she must find the closure and optimism to move on so that her ghost lover can do the same. |
| HEAVY | Collette Legault | Set in the 1970s, Heavy is based on the true story of a smart, but poverty-stricken white boy, whose family is abandoned by his drug addicted father, until a five hundred pound black man named Heavy, moves in and redefines what makes a family and helps break his self-destructive patterns in his journey to adulthood. |
| HERON | Michael Lloyd | A quiet trip out on Lake Huron turns nightmarish when ALEX and EMILY encounter a grim FISHERMAN, who knows the lake holds dark secrets. Together, they discover something terribly wonderful down in the deep. |
| I DREAMED YOU | Sam Spoll | A married couple who run a prestigious London film festival are rattled when a controversial auteur requests a last-minute screening of her new film, starring an American actress from the couple's past. |
| Insomnia Café | Jill Underhill | Five insomniacs and a narcoleptic meet at an all-night Manhattan diner and find the family and romance they didn't know they were missing. But when the cold case of one member's missing daughter heats up, they use their mismatched backgrounds to solve the crime. |
| INWARD | Jolan Bastien | After unleashing a seething evil while exploring an abandoned asylum, a filmmaker with a tragic past is drawn into a living nightmare where she must confront buried family secrets and her own inner demons to survive. |
| JOSEFINA | Kevin Walsh | A gay Iraqi-American man confronts his traumatic past while embarking on a frantic search for his mysterious, missing lover. |
| KALEIDOSCOPE | Erik Howard | When a grieving teenage girl uses a mystical kaleidoscope to uncover clues about her brother's murder, she risks her own life to rescue another missing child from the same killer. |
| KARMA | Elaine Purnell | The soul of Irving Alderton lives four consecutive lives under the instruction of his spiritual guide. Will his desire to experience great wealth and the perfect partner bring him happiness? |
| KIRBY IN LIMBO | Jamie Campbell | A retiree's perfect life is shattered when a car crash takes the lives of his wife and daughter. After an insurance settlement leaves him the world's most miserable millionaire, he attempts to pick up the pieces and find a reason to keep going. |
| LIKE AN ANIMAL | David Page | When a passionate animal rights crusader is suspected of killing people in the ways they abused animals, she's forced to help the FBI find the killer-without becoming a victim herself. [NOTE: We never see animals harmed.] |
| LIL HOLMIES | Delaina M. Waldron | Two little Black boys from broken homes will try to solve a mysterious murder in their neighborhood for a good price - Candy and Cakes. |
| LITTLE BIRD | Christopher Dole | After refusing to throw a match, a female MMA fighter with a dark past has to fight her way out through a series of brutal, weapons-allowed underground fights to clear her debt and save her loved ones. |
| MADRID AFFAIR | Jeffrey van Davis | In a smoky jazz club in 1960s Madrid, a disillusioned American drummer (24)falls for a sultry Spanish singer (44) - only to discover that beneath her intoxicating voice lies a world of underground resistance, heartbreaking secrets, and a love that will change him forever. |
| MAGLIOCCO | Jim Wurst | When a cynical hostage negotiator in Rome is hired to free a small-town Sicilian mayor from a kidnapper demanding the closure of a US nuclear base, everyone's a suspect-including the intriguing woman working as his intermediary. THE GODFATHER meets MICHAEL CLAYTON |
| MARLINSPIKE | Stephanie Moore | While living a life of quiet anonymity with her family in a small Alaskan town, the lone survivor of a serial killer is pulled back into her nightmare when the killer resurfaces and the FBI comes to her for help in catching him. Now, she is faced with an impossible choice: risk losing everything-her family, her freedom-by revealing what she did to survive or hunt down the killer first and bury him along with their deadly secret. |
| MEMORY IS A FISH | Jenna Dorian | A woman flirting with sobriety returns home for her practically-catatonic-from-Alzheimer's mother's final birthday, but when a hurricane hits, her plan to come clean about her life to her father, a washed up musician turned full-time caregiver, fades into the background of his regret, grief, and denial. |
| METEOR | Alec Whittle | A faded musician must set his pride aside and escort his ex-wife to the screening of her latest film at an elite mountain festival-while desperately hiding the fact that she's dead. |
| MEXICO CITY | Alec Guttas | A broker who hates his job goes on a road trip with his high-school friends to help save the twin brother of a dead friend he'd neglected. |
| Most Likely To Be Remembered | Jesse Randall | A gay outcast in a dying farm town seeks retribution at his high school reunion on a conservative classmate turned aspiring LGBTQIA+ politician who derailed his life when they were both teenagers. |
| On The Wrong Foot | Eleanor Jackson | In the wake of her recent cancer remission, a disabled artist strives to move forward with her life but is held back by family obligations and heartache, until she meets a fun-loving nurse with a secret of his own. |
| ORION'S BELT | Giovanna Umpierrez | Burdened with his mother's hospital bills, a sheepish accountant confidentially replaces the lead singer of a world-famous 1970s glam-rock band after his unexpected death. |
| 600 STEPS | Sylvia-Anne Parker | When a young woman forced into domestic slavery in London discovers her long-lost sister is being held by a gang of human traffickers, she must race against time and her own captors to mount a rescue. |
| STRING LIGHTS | VP Boyle | As a brutal snowstorm grinds the country to a halt, a group of wildly imperfect strangers collide in unexpected ways-confronting reinvention, purpose, grief, and fate itself-until they realize that what feels like the end of the road may be the beginning of someone else. |
| THE HEISENBERG EFFECT | Marshall Peterson | Traumatized as a child, an awkward yet brilliant designer of surveillance equipment obsessively chronicles his life using his own inventions - but when he unwittingly records something he shouldn't, he becomes the target of a deadly conspiracy. |
| THE LAST STUNTMAN | Michael Gonzalez | Some men are born to ride. Others refuse to be broken. |
| THE LAST WORDS SHE EVER SPOKE | Alicia McClendon | A woman loses her mother, but before she does, her mother leaves her with words she can never take back. That's when the woman learns that her mother underwent a memory saving procedure to preserved her memories. |
| THE MOONSET MISTAKE | Michael Sarrow | Alex Talleyrand, the commanding CEO of a private spaceflight company, and her team at Mission Control scramble to save a billionaire's life when they mistakenly lose him in outer space. |
| TOUCHWOOD | Amy Charlesworth | She's surrounded by hot bodies. He's surrounded by cold ones... A promiscuous sex therapist and a virgin mortician challenge each other to confront their insecurities and issues with intimacy. |
| UNREST | Hadj Gill | A man, haunted by a classmate's murder twenty years ago, is trapped in a nightmarish version of his old school, forced to relive the tragic day. To save the victim, he must choose: sacrifice himself or endure eternal torment. |
| WHAT WE INHERIT | Darci Dunnagan | The wealthy Henry Fletcher's sudden death is a shock to his niece who had been reconnecting with him. Together with her estranged cousins, those who loved him must complete a list of tasks and learn what Henry wanted to pass down. |
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Congratulations again to these incredible storytellers! We can't wait to champion your voices in the coming months.