Middle-of-nowhere-screenplay-224x149In an effort to keep the NFS community up-to-date with all of the latest screenplays available for legal download for awards consideration, today we offer a potpourri of scripts. You want a personal, heart-rending journey? Got it. You want a presidential biopic? Here you go. A sweeping epic musical? Got that, too. A stop-motion comedy about a resurrected wiener dog? We've got not one, but two drafts of that one. All of these screenplays have two things in common: they all hope to get that coveted nomination, and they are all available for download for your consideration.

Here's the trailer for Ava DuVernay's Middle of Nowhere, winner of the Best Director prize at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and Gotham Independent Film Award winner for Breakthrough Actor Emayatzy Corinealdi, currently in platform release in the U.S. from DuVernay's distribution company, African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement (AFFRM):

Here's Lincoln, currently in theatres in the U.S.:

And here's the trailer for Les Misérables, opening Christmas Day in the U.S.:

Finally, here's the trailer for Frankenweenie:

Three of these screenplays are adaptations, yet from very different sources, each of which gives us a unique insight into how to move a story from one medium or format to a feature-length film. Lincoln carves out its adaptation from a part of Doris Kearns Goodwin's excellent 700+ page tome Team of Rivals. Les Misérables is obviously the film adaptation of the international hit musical, itself based on Victor Hugo's novel. I was surprised to discover that its screenplay only clocked in at 130 pages given the length of the source material. Then, there's Frankenweenie, based on a short live-action film directed by Tim Burton in the mid-1980's for Disney, now resurrected and expanded for stop-motion.

Of these four screenplays, however, the original screenplay Middle of Nowhere is definitely the one I'm most interested in reading. We've recently shared the guest post about Indie Game: The Movie and its self distribution success by Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky, and DuVernay provides another example of the self-distribution route using her background in film publicity to launch Middle of Nowhere via her own distribution company AFFRM. DuVernay knew that to reach her target African-American audience, she would need to screen her film in multiplexes within major cities, not necessarily art-house cinemas, as she has mentioned in an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air. Over several months, she has platformed her Sundance award-winning film in individual theatres around the country, employing street teams to get the word out and greet moviegoers at the screenings. Now, she is promoting Middle of Nowhere for awards consideration. It may be an uphill battle against the resources of the studios and their specialty arms, but that hasn't stopped DuVernay before and it won't stop her now. The other movies listed above are easy to find. Middle of Nowhere is worth seeking out.

Here are the links to download the screenplays:

Please use these screenplays for your own educational purposes and don't wait to download them as they could go offline at anytime.

Thanks to Rope of Silicon and Go Into The Story for pointing us in the right direction for these screenplays.

Have you missed our previous posts about award-contending screenplays available for download? Get caught up with these posts:

Which of these screenplays do you find most helpful for your own writing? Let us know in the Comments.

Links:

[via Rope of Silicon and Go Into The Story]

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