Red Planet Prize, Winner!

The winner of this year's Red Planet Prize is Simon Glass with his script 'In the Flesh', a dark comic tale of people taking control of their destinies, however hopeless they may seem and laughing in the face of adversity.

The script was chosen from over 1500 entrants. Simon has been writing for a few years and has worked in series drama, theatre and even opera. Simon commented; “I feel deeply honoured, thrilled and incredibly grateful to have won the Red Planet Prize”. (Simon's just signed up to Twitter and you can follow him here.)

Huge congratulations to Simon, plus the good handful of runners-up who will enjoy mentorship and workshops with Tony, Red Planet and Kudos in the New Year.

As ever, I'm exceptionally proud to be part of this writing competition (I came up with the idea, and am one of the judges), and the range of scripts and writing talent out there is impressive (and a bit scary - got to raise my game!). But the competition would be nothing without Tony's passion and generosity, and now Kudos's commitment to find and nurture new writers.

For those of you who were rejected and may feel a bit spurned, don't feel too down or disillusioned. The Red Planet Prize is a screenwriting competition that has to make extremely tough decisions to whittle down the entries into a manageable shortlist. A lot of these decisions come down to subjective reaction, so don't give up on a script (or your writing) if you really feel it's got something to offer. If you're thinking of hanging up your pen because of a Red Planet 'no', then maybe writing isn't for you. You got to stick at it, and roll with the punches. And remember, there's always next year!

Congrats to Simon again, and all the runners-up! Really had fun reading the scripts this year, such a good and varied batch.