Hollywood stars Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are masterminding a competition that will provide a $1m (£690 000) budget for an unknown, untried writer-director to shoot their own movie. The aim, say the Good Will Hunting duo, is to break through the iron curtain of Hollywood nepotism and provide an opportunity for an everyday American with a good script and some promising film skills. ”This is not a charity or anything,” Damon told Reuters news service. ”It’s just the right thing to do. Rather than the traditional gatekeeper system, this contest is based on merit.”
Damon and Affleck chose the four competition finalists earlier this week from an initial response of over 7 000 submissions.
The finalists are Pete Jones (for his script Stolen Summer), Brendan Murphy (Speakeasy) and Evan Katz and Barron Ebenstein (who collaborated on Freeing Mr. Jiggs). The winner will be announced later this week.
The competition, dubbed Project Greenlight, was launched last autumn on the Live Planet website that Damon and Affleck co-founded with partners Chris Moore and Sean Bailey. Earlier this year, ten semi-finalists were given $8 000 (£5 550) worth of digital video camera equipment in order to shoot a scene from their movie script. Having mulled over the results, Damon and Affleck then selected their four finalists.
From here the process becomes even more accelerated. Upon the announcement of the winner, the lucky victor must immediately quit his job and commence work on their production. Among the finalists, Eberstein and Katz live in LA where they work as ”wig replacement executives” while Murphy is a graphic designer working out of Atlanta, Georgia.