4-year old writer s short screenplay picked up for production

A 14-year old Grade 8 student at Cape Town's St George's Grammar School has become one of the youngest South Africans to have a screenplay picked up for production. Jamie Johnson's serial-killer short script Sinner has been acquired by Cape Town and L.A based Memetic Films for an October shoot.

Jamie is the son of local screenwriter Paul Ian Johnson, co-creator and writer of the 2016 SABC1 boxing drama series Jab, as well as several upcoming feature films, including The Number, Hit and US rom-com Prodigal Sons.

Jamies been showing me several interesting horror, fantasy and sci-fi short scripts he's been developing, said his father. Sinner was an edgy, attention-grabbing, to-the-point exercise in suspense. Memetic Films came back within a day, offering to acquire it for production.

We have several feature film projects on the go with Paul, who shared Jamies short script with us, said Memetic Films Mendy Groner. In addition to being a tight, dark serial killer story, Sinner had surprisingly mature underlying themes of cultural identity and self-acceptance that interested us.

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With his father coming on board as co-writer, Jamies script was tweaked to heighten its genre and adult appeal while keeping the original story concepts in place. Jamie earns sole story screen credit along with co-screenplay billing but some of the added adult content means weve probably taken it beyond his age-restriction, said Paul.

Jamie said he was just excited that Sinner had generated any interest at all. I regularly develop short film stories for my father to comment on, said Jamie. With Sinner, he just said: let's get this one made.

With pre-production and casting underway, Sinner is set for a mid-October shoot in Cape Town, with Groner taking the directors chair.

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