LogInUnknown Nightmare wants $100 and your screenplay.
Unknown Nightmare
Every filmmaker wishes to have their movie published, but you should be careful with the deals you make. Producer and writer Luke Barnett shared his experience with Unknown Nightmare, claiming it was an "AI-based scam preying on writers and filmmakers."
Unknown Nightmare suggests you give it your horror screenplay and $100 so it finds a distributor if the story is selected. As Barnett explained, you might receive an email from its executive producer Thomas Verdi, the founder of The Film Fund, who then puts your script through AI software called ProducerScore, which evaluates it so Verdi can choose 10 "winners" to "send to major distributors to package and distribute the selected films." According to Barnett, no humans read the scripts to check AI's score, although Verdi states that his team doesn't rely on ProducerScore only to decide who gets produced, it just helps narrow down the contestants, in his words.
ProducerScore supposedly chooses works using "industry-standard criteria and box office data," at least if Unknown Nightmare's site is to be believed.
"Sometimes the mention of AI scares the film community. But, we're not using AI to generate screenplays or replace directors, or even producers. What this ProducerScore software allows us to do is this: instead of spending hours and hours reading thousands of feature-length screenplays and choosing the best to produce, we can use ProducerScore, which is trained on an extensive dataset of real horror screenplays that have been produced and released as theatrically-screened feature films, we can narrow this massive stack of screenplays to the top-performing ones according to the software – the ones that, based on historical data correlating screenplays with box office performance, will perform best at the box office."
After this step, you get ownership of the film and enjoy the benefits, in theory. If your project is not selected, you still get 125% of your investment and 30% of the film's profits once Unknown Nightmare signs a deal with one of the distributors.
To make it all work, Unknown Nightmare is looking for investment through Wefunder, looking to raise $185,000 "to produce the initial feature film."
"So, a guy who has never produced a feature film, is charging aspiring writers and filmmakers $100 for him to send their script through an AI evaluation, and if it's positive, he will use the connections, that he absolutely does not have, to try and sell your script," said Barnett on X/Twitter. "And in the meantime, he's using Wefunder to scam investors out of money to make one low budget film."
Apparently, Verdi plans to show the scripts to Blumhouse, A24, Shudder, and other companies.
There are apparently over 20,000 email subscribers interested in the gig. Whether or not you're one of them, just be cautious of where you send your money and perhaps wait to see where Unknown Nightmare's efforts will lead first.
So what do you think? Is it a scam or an opportunity for filmmakers? Join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Reddit, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.