By Jandiz Estrada Cardoso
I am overjoyed to share the eight screenwriting fellows selected to participate in Sundance Institute's 2025 Episodic Intensive. In its third year, the annual program continues to introduce and expand our support for artists breaking into the scripted TV format with creative and professional guidance from a group of accomplished advisors. On April 10, we will gather virtually as a collective with fellows in Austin, Dublin, London, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and New York City.
As part of the intensive, the fellows will be paired with either award-winning showrunners and writing producers for one-on-one feedback sessions on their script or development executives for feedback sessions on their pitch. The projects from the Episodic Intensive fellows represent a vast array of compelling genres and topics, from an animated dark comedy, a homecoming drama, and a mockumentary to stories peeking behind the curtain of K-pop, folklore, a university demonology department, an underground dating ring, and a buried murder that awakens a sleepy farming town. There will also be a half-day writers room led by a seasoned writer-executive producer where the cohort will collaboratively adapt an independent film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival into a series.
The advisors participating in this year's Episodic Intensive are Alissa Nutting (Teenage Euthanasia), Bruce Evans (25 Stories), Desta Tedros Reff (A League of Their Own), Javier Grillo-Marxauch (The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance), Jennifer Yale (Dexter), Kesila Childers (Monkeypaw's No Drama), Michael Grassi (Brilliant Minds), Pia Chikiamco (Former Vice President of Comedy Development, HBO), Rae Sanni (A Black Lady Sketch Show), and Roch e Jeffrey (Grown-ish).
Fellows also receive Sundance Film Festival benefits; an invitation to join ELEVATE, the Institute's innovative, year-round professional development track that empowers Sundance Institute-supported artists with essential business acumen to propel their projects forward and build a sustainable career. The track includes private workshops, connections with other Institute-supported artists, and a Community Package to Sundance Institute Collab, our digital artist platform where they can enroll in self-guided craft training curriculums. They are also invited to join concurrent online workshops hosted by our allied organizations, such as Humanitas Industry 101. To foster community building, participants were able to take part in Episodic Program alumni perks, such as invitations to in-person events in Los Angeles in March, including a private pre-release screening of Netflix and Shondaland's The Residence and Dan Lin's Rideback Rise Master Class and reception with Issa Rae.
The Sundance Institute Episodic Program is made possible by Founding Supporters Lyn and Norman Lear and Cindy Harrell Horn and Alan Horn. Leadership Supporters are the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, AMC+, NBCUniversal Launch, Netflix, and The Harry and Florence Sloan Foundation.
I want to extend a very special thanks to our Episodic Advisory Council members: Michelle Ashford, Daniel Chun, Nancy Cotton, Dante Di Loreto, Lee Eisenberg, Mike Flynn, Susannah Grant, Erica Rivinoja, Sarah Timberman, and Graham Yost.
EPISODIC INTENSIVE FELLOWS
The screenwriters are:
Jaclyn Backhaus with As Far As The Eye Can See: Yuba City, California. 1971. A growing Punjabi American farming community is forever changed when a body is found buried in a nearby orchard.
Jaclyn Backhaus is an award-winning, NYC-based Punjabi American playwright and screenwriter who writes expansively about family, history, and literature. Her plays have premiered off Broadway and across the country. Backhaus is an alum of the 2024 1497 Features Lab. She was raised by two botanists in the Sonoran Desert.
Aaron Baumann with The Darkness Inside Us: A documentary crew follows a misfit team of demonology researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison led by Dr. Edgar Gray, who himself is a 3-foot-tall, demon-possessed marionette puppet.
Aaron Baumann is a U.S. Air Force veteran from Milwaukee. He balances writing between his family and work at a law firm. Among other festival and competition accolades, his World War II drama A Taste of Eternity is a semifinalist for the 2025 Table Read My Screenplay Cannes competition.
Summer Benowitz with blob: An anthropomorphic blob attempts to turn itself back into a human - one minuscule, infuriating, frivolous, anxiety-provoking task at a time (a show about being in your 20s).
Raised in Philly and based in Los Angeles, Summer Benowitz is a writer, filmmaker, and magazine creator whose work centers on absurdist psychological dramas and social satire. Her stories have been featured via Film Shortage, Dances With Films, HollyWeb, Woods Hole Film Festival, Silver Lake Shorts, Cusper, and Currant Jam.
Liz Femi with Butter Baby: In this animated satire set in turbulent '90s Nigeria, a group of 10-year-old misfits confront class, capitalism, oppression, and fourth grade.
Liz Femi is a Nigerian American writer and a 2024 Pushcart Prize winner in poetry. Her play Take Me to the Poorhouse is an NAACP Theatre Award nominee, and her work has been published in Michigan Quarterly Review, Good River Review, Wild Roof Journal, Stone Poetry Quarterly, and West Trade Review.
Patricia Kelly with Humdrum: A heartbroken court transcriber inappropriately interferes in the cases she types to try to find justice for victims, but quickly loses sight of what's right and what's very wrong.
Patricia Kelly's debut feature, Verdigris, was nominated for five IFTA awards and has won 12 festival awards. Founder of Mn Mn Films, she has two features in development with Screen Ireland and is a member of Ireland's Writers Guild, Screen Directors Guild, Screen Producers Guild, a
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
07/08/2025
July 8 2025, 22:30 (PDT) Tata Motors & Dolby Bring Dolby Atmos to Harrier.ev, R...
12/07/2025
As the death toll continues to mount, with at least 120 killed and more than 170 people still missing on July 10 from devastating Texas floods, a number of broa...
12/07/2025
EL SEGUNDO, Calif., and MIAMI -DirecTV and TelevisaUnivision have signed a deal that will make the ad-supported premium subscription tier of ViX, ViX Premium wi...
11/07/2025
PARK CITY, UTAH, July 11, 2025 - The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the 11 producers chosen for its annual Producers Labs, returning to Ucross Fou...
11/07/2025
If you've ever wondered what might be playing in Clark Kent's headphones...
11/07/2025
L3Harris Technologies President of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Jason Lambert and General Manager of L3Harris Waco facility Sean Ling held a ce...
11/07/2025
ARLINGTON, Va. WETA, the flagship public media station in the national capital area, has launched WETA+, a new streaming service tailored for the local Washingt...
11/07/2025
The Federal Communications Commission has emerged as one of the central players in the broadcast TV landscape in 2025, with its deregulatory policies sparking h...
11/07/2025
Calrec will introduce usability, customization and system enhancements across its entire range of Argo consoles during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Amsterda...
11/07/2025
LONDON Encompass Digital Media said it will support live and on-demand viewing of the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup across multiple global regions for sports enterta...
11/07/2025
Two-thirds of broadcast engineers reaped the benefits of a pay raise within the last year....
11/07/2025
CARY, N.C. SmallHD has launched the Quantum 27, a new 26.5-inch Quantum-Dot OLED monitor designed to deliver postproduction image quality in a compact, set-frie...
11/07/2025
The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau and Tegna have entered into a consent decree that will settle an investigation into the accidenta...
11/07/2025
WASHINGTON Following news in early July that Paramount had settled President Donald Trump's lawsuit, Sens. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Ben Ray Luj n (D-N...
11/07/2025
Model/Actriz Performs Lead Single Cinderella on The Late Show with Stephen Colbe...
11/07/2025
Behind the Mic: Amazon Prime Preps for First Season of NBA Action; MSG Networks ...
11/07/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Suite Studios' Craig Hering on Adapting to Client...
11/07/2025
2025 SVG Content Management Forum Breaks Down AI's Impact, Continued Transit...
11/07/2025
A Journey HOME: University of Nebraska's HuskerVision Goes IP Leaders from the HuskerVision and Lawo share their IP learnings By SVG Staff
Friday, July 1...
11/07/2025
CMSI, Remote Picture Labs, Ace ESPN's Cloud-Based Editing Efforts for Wimble...
11/07/2025
Netflix Enters the Live-Boxing-Production Ring for Round 2 With Historic Taylor-...
11/07/2025
Back to All News
Too Hot to Handle: Italy Is Coming on July 18 Only on Netflix
Entertainment
11 July 2025
GlobalItaly
Link copied to clipboard
July 11, 20...
11/07/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Will Release Death Inc. Seasons 1, 2 and 3
Entertainment
11 July 2025
GlobalSpain
Link copied to clipboard
Season 1
Season 2
Se...
11/07/2025
AI and Multimedia Authenticity Standards Collaboration launches two papers to guide the future of AI integration, today at the AI for Good Global Summit
The...
11/07/2025
Ceramics - the humble mix of earth, fire and artistry - have been part of a global conversation for millennia.
From Tang Dynasty trade routes to Renaissance pa...
10/07/2025
The current holder of the prestigious Thomson Foundation Young Journalist of the Year Award has been forced to stop reporting over fears for her safety in Afgha...
10/07/2025
Spotify is turning up the volume on Australian music with a multipronged initiative designed to highlight the dominance of Australian artists on the global stag...
10/07/2025
This is not a drill: Oasis is back on the road-marking its first live performanc...
10/07/2025
The music industry depends on fresh ideas, bold voices, and emerging talent. Yet across the U.K., too many young musicians lack the space to develop their craft...
10/07/2025
NEW YORK - July 10, 2025 - Nielsen, the global leader in audience measurement, data and analytics, today announced that it appointed Richard Pacheco as head of ...
10/07/2025
Local newscasts don't exist in a vacuum. News directors and station management constantly evaluate what's working, what isn't and perhaps most impor...
10/07/2025
Lawo has announced that Stuttgart Media University (Hochschule der Medien, HdM) has comprehensively modernized its central recording studio after selecting an I...
10/07/2025
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) has opened early-bird registration for the Media Technology Summit, which will take place in a ne...
10/07/2025
NASHVILLE, Tenn. TNDV Television has launched Aspiration 35, a new version of its 40-foot Aspiration truck reimagined for cinematic multicamera productions....
10/07/2025
BURBANK, Calif. Key Code Education, a provider of instructor-led postproduction training, is growing its curriculum with new programs for beginner and intermedi...
10/07/2025
HACKENSACK, N.J. Actus Digital will demonstrate how broadcasters can transform compliance monitoring from a necessary expense into a strategic revenue driver at...
10/07/2025
The Federal Register has published a summary of the Federal Communications Commission's Public Notice seeking comments on its ownership rules that lists a d...
10/07/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Presents the Official Trailer for SuperestarPlay Video
Play Video
Entertainment
10 July 2025
GlobalSpain
Link copied to clipboard...
10/07/2025
In the race to understand our planet's changing climate, speed and accuracy are everything. But today's most widely used climate simulators often strugg...
10/07/2025
As one of the world's largest emerging markets, Indonesia is making strides toward its Golden 2045 Vision - an initiative tapping digital technologies and...
10/07/2025
10 Jul 2025
VEON and Cohen Circle Secure Investor Commitments for Kyivstar Listing Kyiv, New York, Dubai, and Philadelphia - July 10, 2025 - VEON Ltd. (Nasdaq:...
10/07/2025
5G for all? What the DFL's use of Easy5G and RefCam could mean for events in...
10/07/2025
Save the Date: PGA TOUR Studios Welcomes SVG Remote Production Summit on Oct 14-...
10/07/2025
Cloud on the Road: How Remote-Production-Service Providers Are Adapting to a New...
10/07/2025
Seattle Kraken's Ryan Schaber on the NHL Team Taking Live Game Productions I...
10/07/2025
FOX Sports Reboots Small Control Room in Los Angeles as Hub for Vertical-First P...
10/07/2025
SVG Sit-Down: MSE's Zach Leonsis, ViewLift's Rick Allen Go Deep on Joint...
By Jandiz Estrada Cardoso
