50 Great Screenplays by Women to Download and Study
You need to read all these scripts, like, right now...what are you waiting for?
A few months ago, my dear friend writer-director Liz W. Garcia (THE LIFEGUARD) replied on Twitter to a tweet from a male filmmaker recommending a series of “perfect” feature scripts…written exclusively by men. Sadly, it’s far from the first time I’ve seen filmmakers (consciously or unconsciously) omit women from the cinematic conversation.
If you’re an aspiring, emerging, or established screenwriter and you are not reading screenplays by women, you are failing yourself in so many different ways. Amongst them:
The educational factor: losing out on seeing how 51% of the population think to write screenplays, how they approach characters both female and male, how they tackle conflict, and more.
The patriarchy factor: participating in the sexist system of Hollywood storytelling that has dominated for nearly a century and appears will do so, according to most data, for many years to come. Male or female or however else you identify, don’t focus entirely on what the Industry and our childhoods tell us makes great stories. Step away from the common narrative.
The brilliance factor: there are so many spectacular screenplays out there written by women, many of which have reshaped popular culture.
To assist you in your education, I’ve curated a list of 50 screenplays written by women.
All of these screenplays tend to vanish, as all things do on the Internet. I’ve compiled them all into a master archive—downloadable ASAP for all of my paid subscribers to use for personal study. And if you want more resources like this one, be sure to check out my other script curations:
Resource: Hundreds of Screenplays All in One Place
Every six to eight weeks for the past couple of years, I’ve shared a personally curated screenplay collection for you to download and study. Today, I’m sharing all of them with you in one place!
AMERICAN PSYCHO by Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner
BELLE by Misan Sagay (Misan is a dear personal friend and this is a beautiful script)
BRIDESMAIDS by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo
CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty
