The two winners of the UK screenwriting competition will each receive $39,000 (£25,000) towards developing their projects.

Shine Pictures, the joint film venture between the UK’s Kudos Pictures and US producer-distributor New Regency, has announced the two winners of its ‘Big Idea’ screenwriting competition.

Nick Alderton & Sam Callis’ romantic comedy Three Nights In Fiction and Stephen Keyworth’s sci-fi screenplay Youngstown have been chosen from over 700 entries. Both winning projects will receive $39,0000 (£25,000) towards developing their screenplays into features, with the help of the Shine Pictures development team.

The ‘Big Idea’ competition was launched in September. Sci-fi and Fantasy concepts were the most popular submissions accounting for 35% of entries, followed by romantic comedies (28%), action adventure (22%) and family comedies (15%). 

The winning projects were chosen by UK development staff at Shine Pictures including executive chairman Stephen Garrett, head of film Paul Webster, head of development Ed Clarke and Big Idea project manager Melanie Coombs.

In a joint statement, Webster and Garrett said: “We are genuinely delighted to have found these two exciting Big Ideas which clearly have global audiences in their sights. We very much look forward to working with these writers to develop these terrific notions into compelling screenplays and then films.”