I want to thank everyone who submitted their screenplays this year. Thank you for trusting us to read and analyze your material. Every year I struggle with how best to help the writers who aren’t selected. Trying to grade something as subjective as screenwriting is not an easy task. I acknowledge that no contest’s processes, including our own, are perfect. If you didn’t place as highly as you had hoped in our contest, please get another opinion from someone else whom you trust. It’s always possible we’ve overlooked a great screenplay.
Now with that said, below is a list of all the screenplays that made it into the second round of SYS’s Six Figure Screenplay Contest 2026.
We will be announcing the quarter finalists on October 14th, 2026.
So without further ado here are the screenplays that have progressed to the second round of SYS’s Six-Figure Screenplay Contest 2026 (listed alphabetically by screenplay title):
Feature Film Screenplays:
A Grave Obssession (horror) by James Bandsuh
Log Line: When paranormal investigators discover the grave of an infamous witch, one of their group ,with greedy intentions, desecrates the gravesite, unleashing a curse that will kill them all unless they can break the spell.
Benjamin (drama) by Ranjani Arun
Log Line: Coming soon
Brains and Grit (drama) by John Ravitz
Log Line: After a career-ending injury, a fallen NBA star returns home and reluctantly takes over his late mentor’s high school basketball team, only to discover that coaching a group of struggling teens, alongside a neurodivergent basketball savant, might be his last shot at redemption.
Gay Bar for the Straight Guy (dramedy) by Patricia Sorge
Log Line: In 1992 Idaho, a stubborn Black veteran fighting debt, loneliness, and a failing bar accidentally becomes the owner of the town’s first gay hotspot. As protests erupt and business booms, he must choose between his deeply held prejudices and the unlikely friendships that challenge everything he believes.
Ghosts of Cape May (drama) by Tom Frangicetto
Log Line: Two suicidal people — a 31-year-old alcoholic ex-psychologist and a 19-year-old brilliant college student — help each other exorcise the ghosts that haunt their lives in a hotbed for paranormal activity–beautiful and spooky Cape May by the sea.
Haunting Vocals — When Revenge is Off-Key (dramedy) by Gloria Katch
Log Line: Haunting Vocals – When Revenge Is Off Key
An up-and-coming musician is offered original songs, mentoring and a shot at stardom by a famous recording artist, who wants to keep her legacy alive. Sounds great right? Not if the recording artist is a ghost, who is secretly manipulating the wannabe singer into avenging her murder.
Haven (crime) by Shiva Ramanathan
Log Line: On the eve of her baby brother’s first birthday, a twelve-year-old girl must protect her family when armed fugitives invade their remote farmhouse – only to discover that while blood may bind a family, truth will test how strong they really are.
Herb Jenk (comedy) by Adam Seidel
Log Line: When Jenk is released from prison after doing time for drug trafficking, he’s determined to turn his life around. To facilitate, he can make one final run. The only problem? He needs to bring along his five-year-old daughter.
Local Talent (dramedy) by Vincent Scarsella
Log Line: When a down-and-out actor, Steve Wilson, is duped by a phony Hollywood producer into raising $60,000 from other local actors and film crew, family and friends, to shoot a demo reel for his Baywatch-style remake — set not in Malibu, but on the shores of Lake Erie with plus-sized lifeguards – and the producer then vanishes with the money after shooting the demo reel for peanuts, Steve makes everything right by turning the fiasco into a film about the scam itself.
Meet The Hitlers (dramedy) by J.A. Brown
Log Line: An Israeli documentary crew travels to a small Alabama town to investigate a quiet family carrying the Hitler name, but their fears escalate when a charismatic teenage descendant runs for student body president and unintentionally begins to resemble the history everyone fears.
Mother Knows Best (thriller) by Rebecca Summers
Log Line: Desperate to protect her daughter from the trauma that once shattered her own life, an overprotective mother finds herself powerless when her daughter suffers the very trauma she vowed to prevent.
Murder in the Home * (horror) by Anthony Osarfo
Log Line: Collette is born from a desperate couple’s pact with a sorceress, but her parents’ failure to follow the dark instructions for her care unleashes a bloodthirsty entity. It kills her mother by draining every drop of blood from her body while she breastfeeds. Terrified, Collette’s father abandons her at a remote children’s home.
Skunk Hour (thriller) by Steven Snell
Log Line: A conscience-stricken uni student brings the friend he gave a false alibi to—and now suspects is a killer—to his ex-con older brother, the only person capable of uncovering the truth and ensuring the body disappears for good.
MR INBETWEEN meets DEATH & THE MAIDEN
The Monarch Project (thriller) by Jeff Warrick
Log Line: When a filmmaker’s documentary on schizophrenia leads him to investigating claims of a government mind-control program — and evidence that his own sister was one of its victims — his obsession with exposing the truth costs him his family, his crew, his sobriety and eventually his own grip on reality.
The Boogieman Comes on Halloween (horror) by Carlos Rivera Portillo
Log Line: Days before Halloween, a group of teenagers prank the wrong man and become the targets of a relentless stalker.
The Evil Edge (horror) by Warren Lane
Log Line: Whether controlled by deranged demons, bloodthirsty gods, or their own sadistic psychosis the killers in these five quirky tales have an evil edge.
The Night Man (drama) by William Mesce
Log Line: A burned-out ex-cop retreats from the world by becoming a night watchman at a shoreside resort shuttered for the off season, but must come out of his shell when he finds a young runaway girl whose tales of abuse might be delusions.
The Other Side of Life (drama) by Steffany Lohn Sommers
Log Line: A grieving mother believes the boy carrying her son’s heart is the last piece of him she has left, but her increasing attachment threatens to unravel the lives of both families forever connected by this extraordinary gift.
The Session (drama) by Timothy Francis O’Brien
Log Line: ALEXANDRIA GRAVES is a Marine Corps reserve officer who spends her civilian hours as a psychiatrist in Philadelphia’s Society Hill, treating a discreet roster of active-duty military and intelligence personnel whose secrets she is sworn to keep. It is a careful, compartmentalized life — until a U.S. senator with ties to her patient files turns up dead, and a second quickly follows.
Tough Out (thriller) by Pat St. Phat
Log Line: On a sweltering night in 1955, three ad executives celebrating a career-making pitch are confronted by a mysterious young boy who knows impossible truths about their lives, forcing them into a harrowing, claustrophobic unraveling of secrets, faith, guilt, and fate as the night spirals toward violence inside a Brooklyn bar.
When the Stars Align (comedy) by Timothy Francis OBrien
Log Line: A comely young professor, unlucky in love, must endure five blind dates set up by her graduate student after she loses a bet.
Zombie Park (horror) by James Bandsuh
Log Line: An employee at a theme park featuring actual zombies discovers the billionaire owner has been secretly drugging them, making them more dangerous and aggressive. He must discover the owner’s motive before the zombies turn so vicious they’ll break out of the park and restart a world-wide zombie apocalypse.
Short Screenplays:
A Quarterback Flight To Anywhere (drama) by John Ravitz
Log Line: On the day of the national game of the week, a star quarterback going through the worst slump in his career must decide if he can step onto the football field one more time.
Arden (drama) by Dale Wolf
Log Line: At a creative writing summer camp, a girl with cerebral palsy looks for love while she competes for a full college scholarship.
Blood Enough (drama) by Saeid Ghasemi
Log Line: When Rasta’s brother commits an accidental murder, she invokes the ancient Blood Enough ritual to save him only to discover the price is her younger sister.
Hamartia (drama) by Paul Weidknecht
Log Line: After fatally shooting a young carjacker, a man discovers his relationship with his family has changed.
Inconvenient (drama) by Michael McKay
Log Line: A seemingly harmless campus encounter turns quietly coercive as a young woman’s polite refusals are steadily overridden — by charm, by pressure, by silence. “When “no” is treated as inconvenient, sacrificing that boundary and sparing convenience ultimately turns devastating.
Miami Runion (crime) by Timothy O’Brien
Log Line: An aging Tony Montana, long thought dead, reunites on Miami Beach with former allies he betrayed decades earlier. As old wounds resurface and uneasy forgiveness emerges, the past catches up with him in a final, inevitable reckoning.
Noonie Blue (drama) by Skya Theobald
Log Line: After her mother abandons the family, an eight year old girl, her older sister, and her father must navigate their grief and new family dynamic as they prepare for her older sister to leave for college.
The Fanad Ghost (horror) by Timothy Francis O’Brien
Log Line: In 1875 rural Ireland, Malachy Harkin steals a gold coin from a cunning fae, Séan O’Kelly, and is cursed: for every coin taken, a woman of his bloodline will die in childbirth, heralded by the banshee’s wail.
The Salt Shaker (drama) by Michael J Volpe
Log Line: At a seemingly ordinary dinner, decades of friendship comes undone over MAGA politics, woke progressive ideals and a salt shaker – until a life-threatening event offers one last chance to repair what’s been broken.
Youniverse (sci-fi) by Justin Fontenot
Log Line: In 2035, history is a place you can rent by the hour. A woman spends one as a man — and idly becomes the greatest musician alive, humiliating the giants whose world runs on without her.
Ashley Scott Meyers