Early March 2025
Sant Mori Castle,
Girona,
Spain
Have you dreamed of writing a screenplay and seeing it come to life on the silver screen?
Or written a TV show or play that you long to see produced?
Or maybe you’ve published a book and are wondering about how to turn it into a film script?
Seems impossible, right?
Mentors
Laurence Coriat
Laurence Coriat was born in France and moved to London in her early twenties. She wrote Michael Winterbottom's WONDERLAND which was selected in competition at Cannes in 1999 and won the best British Independent Film award that year. She co-wrote Sandra Goldbacher's ME WITHOUT YOU, starring Michelle Williams and Anna Friel, which was unveiled at the Venice Film Festival in 2001. She went on to collaborate with Michael Winterbottom in 2006 on A MIGHTY HEART an adaptation of Marianne Pearl's account of her husband's kidnapping and murder, starring Angelina Jolie. She co-wrote Winterbottom's GENOVA, which starred Colin Firth as a man struggling to cope with the death of his wife.
She worked with Marc Evans on PATAGONIA (2010), a Welsh Argentine drama starring Mathew Rhys and HUNKY DORY starring Minnie Driver (2011). In 2012 Coriat continued her collaboration with Winterbottom on the film EVERYDAY, which charts the relationship between a man, imprisoned for drug smuggling, and his wife and was shot over the course of five years, a few weeks at a time. The film was nominated for a Best Single Drama BAFTA in 2013.
2015 sees the release of LADY GREY set in South Africa, starring Peter Sarsgaard and Emily Mortimer and directed by Alain Choquart.
In 2016, she took part in a writers room with show-runner Hossein Amini and wrote two episodes (5&6) of MCMAFIA, Amini’s International Emmy award winning BBC series, directed by James Watkins. She worked on ICARUS an Iain Softley project about British astronaut Michael Foale who overcame a series of crises aboard the Mir space station.
Her original TV series ANIMALS based on an original idea and developed with French independent company “Haut et Court” and UK “Warp Films” was on the 2021 Brit List and is now at the BBC.
She has several other TV proposals in development: CAPITAL, an epic TV drama series about the beginnings of Wall Street with RAW TV and DMC FILMS and THE MARILYN SESSIONS developed by Germany’s Windlight Pictures with Isabel Coixet directing.
She has another feature film project in development with Isabel Coixet and is a co-writer on Michael Winterbottom’s latest film SHOSHANA which will premiere at TIFF23.
Scotty Mullen
Scotty Mullen is an award-winning writer known for his work with Syfy, Lionsgate, and Lifetime. He is also an accomplished casting director.
After getting his feet wet writing on the pop-culture juggernaut “Sharknado” franchise, Scotty's storytelling skills have evolved into adapting true-life stories into feature films.
As of this date, Scotty has written 15 produced screenplays which have been filmed in 7 different countries. His productions feature a variety of stars, including Luke Wilson and Olivia Newton-John.
Scotty is known for being an enthusiastic collaborator with producers; almost all of his scripts have been written on assignment. Scotty is often hired for his script doctor skills and ability to save a production from the proverbial “developmental hell.”
Originally from small-town Kansas, Scotty went to college in Atlanta and now works from his home in Los Angeles.
Chris Deckard
Prior to co-founding the management/production company Fictional Entity in January 2017, Chris Deckard spent over seven years working with and representing talent at major agencies such as ICM Partners and WME. He has worked closely with traditional and new media buyers to find and develop content for domestic and international audiences. In addition to helping cast and package numerous features and series, he has evaluated thousands of scripts for actors and directors. Chris graduated from Cornell University and earned his J.D. from Notre Dame Law School.
Fictional Entity’s clients have been named to The Black List, The Hit List, The Young & Hungry List, The Blood List and been lauded by the PAGE Awards, the International Emmys and placed as finalists in The Heath Ledger Scholarship and the Academy Nicholl Fellowship The Academy Nicholl Screenwriting Awards, the AWG, ADG, SPA, and AACTA. Clients have written, directed, starred, and produced in numerous formats, including features, TV, virtual reality, and podcasts, independently and for companies like Netflix, NBCUniversal, AMC, Legendary, Meta, Marvel, Fremantle, SyFy, the CW, Warner Bros., Amazon, Blumhouse, Comedy Central, BBC, the ABC Australia, Foxtel, TruTV, Super Deluxe, Hallmark, CBS, Lifetime, E!, and MSNBC.
Chris has advised clients through multiple successful series pilot and pitch sales. He and his business partner were non-writing Executive Producers on a series pilot that sold to a major US network in 2021. In 2024, Fictional Entity client highlights include: a book-to-series pitch sale to Netflix, a first-time writer/director’s feature film entering production, the release of three series from first-time writing Executive Producers, and a feature film release.
Niall Johnson
Niall Johnson has been a British-based film writer and director for 20+ years. His most recent work is as a writer on the visually-striking animated drama-documentary ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE, based on the memoir by Ryszard Kapuscinski about the Angolan civil war of the mid-1970s. Winner of the Best Animated Film at this year’s European Film Awards, it received its World Premiere at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. Niall’s two most recent films as Writer-Director were released within a year of each other: MUM’S LIST (2016) the critically-acclaimed true story weepie romance based on St John Greene’s best-selling memoir, starring Rafe Spall and Emilia Fox; and the Western-styled adventure story THE STOLEN (2017) set in New Zealand’s 1860s Gold Rush, starring Alice Eve, Jack Davenport, Graham McTavish and Richard O’Brien.
Niall came to Hollywood’s notice in 2003 with his spec supernatural script WHITE NOISE, starring Michael Keaton, which opened in January 2005 at #1 in the UK and #2 in the US, where it broke the record at the time for the biggest January opening for a non-sequel. In 2005 Niall wrote and directed black comedy KEEPING MUM, starring Rowan Atkinson, Maggie Smith, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Patrick Swayze. He adapted the script from an original by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Russo (Nobody’s Fool, Empire Falls). His other credits include wife-swapping comedy-drama THE BIG SWAP, and traditional haunted house TV-Movie THE GHOST OF GREVILLE LODGE starring Prunella Scales and George Cole.
Born and raised in Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham, Niall’s passion for movies is a result of a childhood spent producing epic remakes of the likes of PLANET OF THE APES, STAR TREK, DOCTOR WHO and BATMAN with his brother, a friend, and a silent Kodak 8mm film camera—the most notable recurring feature of these being his mother’s laundry hanging on the washing line in the back-yard.
The Retreat includes...
Sponsors
ISA
Freixenet
MWP