Tech Company Offers New Standard
For How Scripts Travel In Hollywood
ScriptHop introduces an online tool for Hollywood that allows writers to share their screenplays more securely and promises a new kind of dynamic, interactive, and navigable experience that excites people to read. It also offers writers more influence on the distillation process used by Hollywood to make decisions about projects.
From the minds behind ScriptHop comes something that founders Brian Austin and Scott Foster, a 12 year veteran and former head of UTA’s Story Department, believe will change the way scripts travel in Hollywood and beyond, while making the job of industry readers more streamlined so story analysts can focus on the most important part of their job, critiquing the script. ScriptHop’s “Packet” bundles everything a writer needs to market their script in one simple link.
“The Packet makes a writer’s vision resonate beyond any bland distillation, adding dimension to a process that’s tended to make both writers and decision makers suffer,” Foster explains. “It’s also a transposable source industry readers can transfer into their coverage, while maintaining the writer’s version of the logline and synopsis. It presents these distillations in a much more engaging form and enables readers to focus on really reading the script and giving the writing its due when they evaluate it, rather than waste their own time abridging it.”
“ScriptHop is easy and intuitive; it sparks creativity and streamlines the whole business of getting stories green-lit. As Hollywood seeks a new normal, innovators at ScriptHop are cutting the path. I see huge success for this amazing script platform,” says Joe Jarvis, Senior VP of Final Draft who champions the Packet along with other partners and top screenwriters like Shane Black, David Hayter, and Ed Solomon, who joined ScriptHop’s Advisory Board. The growing list of partners also include Film Independent, Untitled Entertainment, and The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.
“The Packet is easy to email or text,” explains Austin, who designed the system. “It includes the script along with documents like lookbooks and bibles, and information about the project such as the logline, synopsis, character breakdowns, attachments, writer bio, and more. It’s easy for the recipient to access and no special software is required. Users simply click a link.”
Austin says The Packet is also heading off insidious forms of tech at the pass. “The need to digest content is so great that many are pursuing AI to read and choose which scripts will be successes,” he explains. “Seeing this trend caused us to make a major pivot from focusing on AI to focusing on empowering the creators. It’s utilizing technology in the right way, while keeping the human and artist element in place.”
The Packet is available by invitation only to start. For more information visit scripthop.com.
