The Stage

Thousands compete for Jordan’s screenwriting prize

Published Thursday 20 September 2007 at 16:55 by Matthew Hemley

More than 2,000 aspiring screenwriters have entered a competition being run by EastEnders’ former chief writer, Tony Jordan.

Jordan, the creator of Hustle and HolbyBlue, organised the competition through his independent production company, Red Planet Pictures.

He invited writers to submit the first ten pages of a script and promised that every submission would be read by a panel of judges, including Stephen Fry and The League of Gentlemen’s Mark Gatiss.

The deadline for submissions has passed, and the judges will now decide which writers they want to submit full scripts.

From them, six will be chosen to spend the day with Jordan as he whittles the competition down to one, who will win a chance to write a script commission for the production company.

Jordan said the competition had been a “huge success” and commended all those who had entered for their enthusiasm and interest.

He added: “We’ve had around two thousand entries to the competition, which is daunting but shows how much talent there is out there.”