MACRO Episodic Lab WInners Selected At Sundance For Development

Lena Waithe, Eva Longoria, and representatives of MACRO and The Black List have selected Sahar Jahani and K.C. Scott as the winners of The MACRO Episodic Lab powered by The Black List.

The winners, announced at Sundance, will each receive development support and a pilot presentation or sizzle at a budget of up to $30,000.

The Lab was launched on June 6, 2018 with a mission to discover episodic storytellers of color, empower them with creative tools and resources to help launch their careersm and provide industry support to writers from a wide range of backgrounds who typically do not have access to the traditional Hollywood system.

Launched in January 2015 by former William Morris Endeavor (WME) partner Charles D. King, MACRO is a multi- platform media company focused on the new majority multicultural market and develops, produces and finances film, television, digital content, tech companies and brands driven by people of color that encompass universal themes to which all people can connect and relate. To date, the company’s film projects have received nine Oscar nominations.

The Black List, an annual survey of Hollywood executives’ favorite unproduced screenplays, was founded in 2005. Since then, more than 440 Black List scripts have been produced, grossing over $28 billion in box office worldwide.

Applicants to the Episodic Lab were invited to submit their ideas to MACRO and The Black List team for review. Over 3,000 applications were received and 500 scripts made the semi-finals.

Jahani is a first generation Iranian-American screenwriter, director and producer raised in the San Fernando Valley. She worked as a development coordinator for YouTube Originals before becoming a writer’s assistant on the upcoming Hulu/A24 series Ramy, where she wrote her first episode of television. Her first short film, Grey Matter, was awarded the 2017 Islamic Scholarship Fund Film Grant. She was also a 2018 Film Independent Project Involve Fellow, where she wrote and directed her short film, Just One Night. It premiered at the LA Film Festival this past fall.

The son of a Haitian public school teacher and a Jamaican engineer, Scott was born and raised in Chicago. Scott is a former student of fiction workshops at Carleton College, Northwestern University and The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis.

He is a two-time finalist of The Loft Literary Center Mentor Series Award and a finalist of The Avery Anthology Small Spaces Fiction Prize, judged by Junot Diaz. His most recent published fiction, You Can Love a C Student, appears in Avery Anthology’s seventh issue. His short film script, Nevada Zoo, was a finalist for the 2018 Shore Scripts Short Film Fund, and his feature, This Is Working, was featured over a four- episode run of the popular screenwriting podcast Scriptnotes. Scott lives in Oakland with his wife and two sons.