The Sea Devils Wins $15,000 Screenwriting Competition in Hollywood

Dublin writer/director Tom Cosgrove has been awarded $15,000 as this year’s winner of the 7th Big Break! International Screenwriting Contest. In a glamorous finals ceremony at the Montmartre Lounge in Hollywood, Cosgrove’s screenplay The Sea Devils, a horror story about the crew of an Atlantic trawler who unexpectedly land a monster from the deep, was voted the best script from over 3000 entries.

The prize is the biggest payout in screenwriting competitions, and back home after his whirlwind visit to Los Angeles, Cosgrove spoke about writing and his experience in Hollywood:

“I first began writing screenplays when I was around sixteen years old. It seemed like a good way to get rich at the time, plus I thought I could do a much better job at writing James Bond stories in my own imagination. So I took some time off school and started to jot down ideas for a story called “Order of the British Empire.” A story that resurrected the only son of Joseph Gobbles as the heir of the Nazi Reich. Sadly, everyone on earth refused to read the script. To this day, it remains encased in dust and cobwebs somewhere in the attic of my parents house, but it was a start.”

As part of his prize Cosgrove had meetings with executives, agents and producers, and he explained how he came up with his winning idea:

“The Sea Devils emerged from numerous sources including paintings by JW Turner, The Isle of the Dead by Sergei Rachmaninov and a windswept evening beside the sea, the most cinematic vista known to man. I had also read somewhere that Alien had been inspired by a parasitic deep-sea organism known as Phronima. From there the story just fell into place, with about 18 months of drafting.”

The script had already made the finals of other competitions, but then came the moment when the winner was announced:

“Apart from the fact I was extremely nervous, it was a thrilling moment. Also quite surreal. That’s not to say I expected it or anything though. I’ve had enough rejections as a screenwriter too know just how hard it is.”