Variety’s 10 Screenwriters to Watch: ‘The Acolyte,’ ‘Fancy Dance,’ ‘After the Hunt’ Scribes Among 2024 Honorees

Writers are more valuable than ever — both literally and metaphorically — after the strikes in 2023 over current compensation, and future worker protections, that hamstrung Hollywood for 148 days. Variety’s 2024 Screenwriters to Watch recognizes just 10 of the young scribes whose work will now and in the immediate future be essential to filling screens with stories to amuse, entertain and inspire. Drawing upon their diverse backgrounds, personal experience and perhaps most of all, boundless creativity, these screenwriters design vivid characters and conjure thrilling worlds to take audiences on mesmerizing, unforgettable journeys. Read about them here first, before being moved by their work. — Todd Gilchrist

• Cameron Alexander ("Heart of the Beast")

  Alexander loved movies so much as a kid that by high school, he considered skipping college to move from the San Luis Obispo area to L.A. to pursue entry-level Hollywood jobs. “I didn’t come from money or connections and knew I’d have to grind my way up through the system,” Alexander says, “and I knew I could outwork everyone.”

  When UC Santa Barbara offered Alexander a scholarship, he realized that it was “crazy” to walk away from a free ride. “I just figured I’d write scripts the entire time I’m in college,” he remembers. “When I graduated, I had about 10 scripts … and one of them was good.”

  Alexander’s professional career launched after he won honorable mention in a screenplay contest for a sci-fi film called “Omega Point” that he says was “crafted for marketability.” “I was obsessed with getting my foot in the door.”

  Alexander soon pivoted to more personal material with “The Heart of the Beast,” about a Navy Seal and his combat dog surviving in the Alaska wilderness. “It’s a love letter to my dog, who was my best friend.” David Ayer is currently attached to direct. Its followup, “Song of the Buffalo Nation,” draws inspiration from his background, a mix of European, Mexican and Navajo ancestry. “It’s like the indigenous version of ‘Braveheart,’” he says. “So thematically and spiritually, I really identify with this. It’s an important story to me.” — Stuart Miller

  Agency: WME

  Legal: Vainshtein Law

  Influences: Steven Spielberg, the Coen
  brothers, Michael Hirst 

• Khaila Amazan ("K-Pops")

  Amazan was uniquely positioned to work on “K-Pops,” which she co-wrote with Grammy-winner Anderson .Paak — it’s also his directorial debut. “There’s a channel called Mnet, which is like the Korean version of MTV, so I grew up on that,” she says. Amazan also brings a passion for Korean cinema, anime, sci-fi and horror genres to the table. Plus, her best friend from university lives in Seoul.

  “K-pops” is the story of a washed-up musician who’s persuaded to move to Seoul to work on a singing competition show. There he meets Tae Young, the son he never knew he had (and played by .Paak’s son, Soul Rasheed). The film, shot in Korea, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. 

  Amazan’s manager brought the project to her. “And I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I love K-pop.’ Dumbfoundead is this very popular Korean American rapper who’s producing it. Anderson .Paak I was new to but I’m like, ‘I’m gonna support this Black man.’ So I said yes. They hired me because what are the chances this young Black girl knows the ins and outs of K-pop?”

  She didn’t always want to be a writer — she had her heart set on being a reconstructive surgeon — but her mother, who is a therapist, encouraged her daughter to channel her feelings through writing and drawing. “Writing is definitely cathartic for me, a way to interpret the world around me and express my feelings,” Amazan says.

  Right now, she is adapting Jane Igharo’s novel “The Sweetest Remedy” into a feature for Netflix with Archewell producing and adapting “A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow” for ACE Entertainment, among other projects. — Carole Horst

  Agent: Verve

  Management: Grandview

  Legal: Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown & Passman

  Influences: Kim Jee-Woon, Shinichirō Watanabe, Bong Joon Ho, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Spike Lee, Aaron Sorkin

• Chandler Baker ("Oh. What. Fun.")

  Growing up, Baker didn’t realize that being a writer was a career. “I’m a risk-averse person, so I was always going to law school,” Baker recalls. But in college she decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month and “caught the bug.” She still went to law school, but to earn extra money she started ghost-writing novels. “I turned in one book a week before the bar exam,” she recalls.

  After transitioning to adult novels, she left the law behind. Even while writing bestsellers, Baker says she always dreamed of her books being made into movies, writing “more cinematically so they’d be attractive for adaptation.” One of her books got optioned, but when the film’s producers refused to let her adapt it herself, the project fizzled. “I told myself that if a project of mine was going to die, I would much prefer it die by my own hand,” she says with a laugh. “For my next novel, I insisted that I be attached to adapt.”

  She has since written scripts for three of her works: “Oh. What. Fun,” “Big Bad” and “The Husbands.” “I did not assume that just because I was a successful novelist I’d automatically know how to be a screenwriter,” she insists. “It’s a different medium, and I wanted to give it the respect it deserves.” To prove she could do the work, Baker joined screenwriting groups, signed up for workshops, read scripts and wrote several original projects. “I even listened to 600 episodes of ‘Scriptnotes,’” she says. “I really did everything that I could to prepare myself, so when it was my turn to adapt my books, I was ready.” — S.M.

  Agency: CAA

  Management: Mosaic

  Legal: Jackoway Austen Tyerman Wertheimer Mandelbaum Morris Bernstein Trattner Auerbach Hynick Jaime LeVine Sample & Klein

  Influences: Nora Ephron, Gillian Flynn, Jordan Peele

• Jocelyn Bioh ("Once on This Island")

  “I thought I was going to be a dancer,” says Bioh, who has written for the “Star Wars” series “The Acolyte,” Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It” and “Tiny Beautiful Things,” and will next pen the Disney+ live-action film adaptation of the Broadway musical “Once on This Island.” “You don’t really know where your story is leading you.”

  Bioh recently won the 2024 Horton Foote Prize for her play, “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.”

  According to the screenwriter, that childhood passion for dance led her to musical theater and eventually to study writing in college. At Ohio State University, she found there were not many roles for Black actors and began to carve out space for herself as an artist.

  The “Russian Doll” writer went on to study playwriting at Columbia University and perform in Broadway productions such as “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.” She says her perspective as an actor informs her writing, highlighting the ability to approach written dialogue from an actor’s point of view as a linchpin of her creative process.

  Bioh writes stories that center on women, specifically Black immigrant women, and describes her writing style as character-driven narratives grounded in comedic elements.

  “My center of gravity is comedy,” Bioh says. “It’s important to me that people can be entertained by my work … to feel like they’ve connected with a character they would have never encountered before, have an empathy for them rather than [the] implicit bias they had going into
  the story.” — Andrés Buenahora

  Agency: UTA

  Legal: Del Shaw Moonves Tanaka Finkelstein Lezcano Bobb & Dang

  Influences: Lynn Nottage, Danai Gurira, Eddie Murphy and Issa Rae

• Dan Brier ("Sweethearts")

  Co-written by Brier with its director Jordan Weiss, “Sweethearts” aims to deliver the fun of classic coming-of-age comedies like “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Superbad” while acknowledging “new anxieties” relevant to its Gen Z characters. “The interesting challenge of this was, where do we find that broad appeal while telling a pretty specific story?” Brier says.

  Growing up in Scranton, Pa., Brier maintained “a little bit of a chip” on his shoulder about his hometown — at least until a beloved comedy show put him, and the prospect of being a writer, on the map. “When ‘The Office’ came out, I was obsessed with the show,” he remembers. “I knew who wrote every episode, and it was shocking to me that people got to do that for a living.”

  As Brier developed his voice as a writer, he says his small-town upbringing taught him how to empathize with his characters, even when making fun of them. “I like to approach anything I’m working on with the base assumption that people are good and trying their best, but we all make mistakes — and how can I combine those mistakes in the funniest possible way?”

  After “Sweethearts” premieres on Max in November, Brier will reunite with Weiss for an adaptation of Curtis Sittenfeld’s bestseller, “Romantic Comedy,” another opportunity to tweak the formulas that inspired and entertained him. “I just love comedy,” he says. “The intended aim is to make the audience laugh, but I think it can also be very much the sugar with the pill that can guide you and humanize people.” — Todd Gilchrist

  Agency: WME

  Management: Adventure Media

  Legal: Ginsburg Daniels Kallis

  Influences: “Anchorman,” “When Harry Met Sally…,” Charlie Kaufman

• Patrick Cunnane ("Eternity")

  “I went from working for the real White House to a fake one,” says Cunnane, who has written for “Designated Survivor,” “The Jim Jefferies Show”and “Influence.”

  Prior to his screenwriting career, Cunnane was former President Barack Obama’s senior writer and deputy director of messaging. “I sat in the West Wing for six years, about 40 feet from the Oval Office and had this front row seat to history,” Cunnane says. “Traveling with President Obama across the country and around the world … it was just the most interesting experience of my life.” Cunnane’s experiences inspired “West Winging It: An Un-presidential Memoir,” a buzzy literary escapade focused on working at the White House.

  His first feature, “Affairs of State,” was selected for the 2019 Black List and is currently in development, and he returned to the List in 2022 with romantic comedy “Eternity,” starring Miles Teller. The film recently wrapped production at A24 with David Freyne directing.

  The “K Street” writer shared his excitement over having the freedom to write in his own distinct voice as a screenwriter rather than writing as an administration official. After writing political and romantic comedy projects in the past, Cunnane says he hopes to delve into genres such as comedy or action thrillers.

  “I want people to feel a little bit optimistic or hopeful,” Cunnane said of his writing. “I tend to lean towards a bit of comedy and charm.” — A.B.

  Agency: CAA

  Management: Heroes and Villains

  Legal: Jackoway Austen Tyerman Wertheimer Mandelbaum Morris Bernstein Trattner Auerbach Hynick Jaime LeVine Sample & Klein

  Influences: Larry David, Nancy Meyers

• Nora Garrett ("After the Hunt")

  It was March 2023 when Garrett decided she could no longer work from home eight hours a day training AI models for Meta, in her words, “barely subsisting.” Her debut script, “After the Hunt,” had only been at Imagine Entertainment since January. It was a blip in time in the film and TV development world, but her life had become unsustainable.

  “I was skipping out to take meetings, hoping emergencies didn’t arise, then coming back and working late, trying to make up for the hours that I had missed,” recalls Garrett.

  She got an extra psychological push to quit from filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, who had agreed to direct story about a college professor whose life is thrown into turmoil when a star pupil makes an accusation against one of her colleagues. “I was sort of borrowing from his confidence,” she says. “He’s such a force of nature. He works very quickly, but he doesn’t compromise his creative integrity. He was like, ‘We’re going to make it.’”

  True to Guadagnino’s word, they went into production over the summer in England with a cast that includes Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Chloe Sevigny and Ayo Edebiri.

  Her Meta gig came after nearly a decade in Hollywood, where she build up a jaded  facade after working in restaurants and serving as a personal assistant for industry figures including Rosamund Pike. But her “After the Fall” experience has brightened her perspective enormously. “It’s made me into a person who’s thinks it can happen, your dreams can come true,” she says. — Todd Longwell

  Agency: CAA

  Management: Sugar23

  Legal: Yorn Levine Barnes Krintzman Rubenstein Kohner Endlich Goodell & Gellman

  Influences: David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” Kenneth Lonnergan’s “Manchester by the Sea,” John Cassavetes’ “A Woman Under the Influence,” Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

• Tory Kamen ("Eleanor the Great")

  Kamen’s breakthrough screenplay, “Eleanor the Great,” was inspired by her 95-year-old grandmother’s decision to move from Florida to Manhattan. For someone whose career started at age 7 with the fake eulogies she’d write about family members, she had a deep well of personal experiences
  to draw from.

  Even so, she admits she thought the script might never be more than a calling card. “I’ve gotten every job I’ve ever had off of this sample,” Kamen says. “There were people, over the years, that were interested in making it, but you’re casting a 90-year-old woman to be in almost every scene — it’s extremely difficult to get that kind of insurance.” Kamen also knew movies about older people weren’t always profitable. “I thought maybe I’ll take that risk on making it when I’m older and hopefully have had a good career.” But once Scarlett Johansson signed on to direct with June Squibb cast as Eleanor, her expectations were upended.

  “The first thing June said to me at the wrap party was, ‘We got so lucky with Scarlett,’” Kamen recalls. “I wrote a super demanding role for a 90-something-year-old actor, and to know that June felt so taken care of and safe and she trusted Scarlett every day that she inhabited that role, that was everything.”

  Kamen — who enjoys creating characters who lie in order to fit in — says she recognizes the unique position she’s in, and she’s beyond grateful to be a working scriptwriter, especially given today’s difficult market. She’s currently working on a feature script she recently pitched
  to Apple. — Paula Hendrickson

  Agency: Verve

  Management: Anonymous Content

  Legal: Brecheen, Feldman, Breimer, Silver & Thompson

  Influences: Nora Ephron, Greta Gerwig, James L. Brooks, Michael Arden

• Noah Pink ("Eden")

  If Pink has developed a professional brand at this early point in his career, it’s as a screenwriter with a knack for telling true stories about revolutionary thinkers.

  His big break came in 2017 when he was hired as a creator/writer/executive producer of the National Geographic anthology docudrama series “Genius,” which over the course of four seasons has explored the lives of Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Aretha Franklin and Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Next, he wrote the script for the acclaimed 2023 feature “Tetris,” an unlikely Cold War comedy-thriller about the pursuit of the global rights for the titular building block video game.

  “I’m definitely interested in people who see the world differently, and as a writer, I’m attracted to characters who are willing to go further for what they believe in,” says Pink, a native of Halifax, Canada.

  In his latest effort, “Eden,” the protagonist goes a bit too far. Directed by Ron Howard (who also exec produced “Genius”), it tells the tale of Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Jude Law) and his lover Dore Strauch (Vanessa Kirby), who leave their native Germany in 1929 to set up an experimental society on the uninhabited South American archipelago Floreana, only to have their efforts upended by new arrivals, including a provocative baroness (Ana de Armas) and her two lovers.

  “In many ways Ritter was ahead of his time, trying to marry Western philosophy and Eastern practices taken from Buddhism, like yoga, meditation and breathwork,” observes Pink, who also directed second unit on the Australian shoot. “But his ego got in his way.” — T.L.

  Agency: Gersh

  Legal: Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, Hoberman, Newman, Warren, Richman, Rush, Kaller, Gellman, Meigs & Fox

  Influences: Alfonso Cuaron, Jean-Marc Vallée, Spike Jonze, Steven Spielberg

• Erica Tremblay and Miciana Alise ("Fancy Dance")

  Alise says their festival sensation “Fancy Dance” was inspired by co-screenwriter Tremblay’s studies of their native Cayuga language, where the word “aunt” is translated as “little mother.” “Being a proud aunt herself, she could feel the emotion in that word and the meaning that idea holds,” says Alise. “When she presented the idea of an auntie-niece story to me, I immediately knew that the world and our community needed this film.”

   After “Fancy Dance,” the duo will re-team on a thriller. Tremblay recently wrapped writing for the third season of “Dark Winds” and is “on a break from TV.” “I’m really excited to explore genre through an Indigenous lens. It’s been a really terrifying and rewarding process so far.” Like Tremblay, Alise will soon venture into horror and Westerns with “Wenonah,” though first she’s working on a comedy. “I’m currently working on an all-Indigenous ensemble comedy in the same vein as ‘Bridesmaids,’ ‘Girls Trip’ or ‘Joy Ride.’”

   Tremblay explains that her career as a screenwriter evolved from an admiration for the elder storytellers in her community. “I recognized their ability to get people to physically lean in while they were telling stories, and I’ve always wanted that power.”

   Alise has been a life-long writer. “I started with poetry and short stories in school, studied writing and media in college, self-published a novel in 2017 and wrote my first screenplay that same year,” she says. “I submitted that first feature script [for ‘Nancy’s Girls’] to the Sundance Indigenous Program, and I’ve been happily screenwriting ever since.”— Jazz Tangcay

  Agency: CAA (Tremblay)

  Management: Hopscotch Pictures (Alise), Ragna Nervik (Tremblay)

  Legal: (Alise) Granderson Des Rochers

  Influences: Ava DuVernay, Paul Thomas Anderson, Tazbah Chavez