P.E.I. screenplay short-listed in prestigious contest

Adam Perry's screenplayA Small Fortune is one of 47 semi-finalists in feature category of the Shore Scripts Screenwriting Contest.

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The contest, which began in 2012, is devoted to discovering new writing talent and boasts a top prize of about $3,000.

"Very excited and honoured to place in the semi-finals," Perry posted Saturday on A Small Fortune's Facebook page, noting that only the top three per cent of submitted scripts made it to the final round for Shore Scripts.

Raking it in

The film is about a down-on-his-luck Irish moss harvester who finds a bag of money on the shore but then a body washes up too.

The top five scripts will be shared with all of the judges and production companies affiliated with Shore Scripts. One of those judges is Academy Award winning actor Jeremy Irons.

The winner is scheduled to be announced Thursday.

Perry has already shot a short film using the same storyline, called A Blessing From the Sea, featuring Trailer Park Boys' Jonathan Torrens, P.E.I. singer-songwriter Lennie Gallant and Lennie MacPherson. The short film, which cost more than $70,000, was financed with help from the Harold Greenberg Fund's Shorts-to-Features Program,The Movie Network and $12,000 from Innovation PEI.

Creating an irresistiblepackage

"We've created a package," said34-year-old Perry from his Charlottetown home. "When we present it to broadcasters and people who make movies, our job is to make it impossible for them to say no."

The film will play on The Movie Network next year. Perry plans to start submitting it to film festivals in January 2017.

The screenplay has already won several other awards, and was developed with the National Screen Institute's emerging filmmaker program.

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