The Stage

Ex-EastEnders’ writer Jordan launches large-scale talent search

Published Tuesday 3 July 2007 at 16:00 by Matthew Hemley

Hustle and HolbyBlue creator Tony Jordan has launched a major talent search to find the next generation of screenwriters, with a competition he claims is the biggest of its kind in the UK.

The initiative will see one unknown writer walk away with £5,000 and a commission to pen a script for Jordan’s own production company, Red Planet Pictures. The winner will also receive agent representation.

Called The Red Planet Prize, aspiring screenwriters are now being called on to submit the first ten pages of a script, which will be read by a panel of judges made up of Stephen Fry, The League of Gentlemen’s Mark Gatiss, BBC head of drama Wales and drama commissioning Julie Gardner and Jordan himself.

Those who impress the panel will be asked to provide a full script, with six writers chosen to spend the day with Jordan, co-creator of Life on Mars and EastEnders’ former chief storyliner, as he whittles the competition down to one.

Jordan said: “I know what it is like for new writers. They send these scripts out and they get stacked up against a wall somewhere and never read.

“All most writers want is for someone to read their work properly. It is really heartbreaking and soul destroying to not get a response when you send your work out.”

He added: “I know there is new talent out there and the only way to find it is by doing something like this.

“My dream is to find a writer no one else knows about, who has written a script that is gobsmackingly brilliant, commission it and get it made.”

Jordan said he had managed to persuade Fry and Gattis to take part because they were “committed to finding new talent” and said the competition would become an annual event.

Entries - one per person - should be sent to redplanetprize@redplanetpictures.co.uk by September 1, 2007. Full scripts will be requested by October, with finalists contacted in December.