Game of Thrones, Spartacus, Rome and Maybe, Sons of Priam?

I had mentioned a couple posts back that I've been reading scripts on the Talentville.com community. A site devoted to screenplay writers and industry professionals who are looking for new talent.  I mentioned a script that I read that is a concept for a series. This particular script, Sons of Priam, by writer, Jonathan Dick is an historic drama based on the Trojan Wars period.  It feels much like a Game of Thrones or Spartacus type epic. Jonathan is a very talented writer who did a wonderful job of bringing to life such legends as Hecuba, Achilles, Paris and Hector against a colorful backdrop of 12th century Greece.

It appears that Jonathan has written at least 3 episodes, all which rank high in terms of review submissions on the site. Last week Jonathon had a very interesting stroke of good fortune. I happened to be reading my weekly email  from another site that is devoted to screenplay writers and agency professionals seeking new material. The site is Jerol Lebaron's  Inktip.  The InkTip site sends members regular emails with a listing of specific projects that producers are currently seeking. Some are very specific in terms of genre, setting character specifics, budget and so forth. Some even go as far as specifying writers from a specific country or origin.

As I was perusing last week's newsletter from InkTip, I saw that a certain company G was looking for a series concept that was exactly inline with Jonathan Dick's concept. I believe the query stated something like: "...similar to Game of Thrones or Spartacus".  What was even more interesting is that they were only looking for Canadian writers. Jonathan just happens to reside in Ontario, Canada.  So I couldn't believe this was all falling in line for Mr. Dick. First, he has a great highly rated handful of scripts, perfectly fitting the criteria that this producer was looking for, but the fact that he is also Canadian was too much for me to not alert Jonathan to this amazing series of alignments. This all fit so much like a glove, that I quickly logged into Talentville.com and contacted him to pass on the good stroke of fortune. Jonathon thanked me for the lead and said he himself belonged to InkTip and knew about the query.  He later sent me a follow up message saying that he had contacted the mystery producer and that they had asked for his script.

How exciting for this writer!  I am excited for him too. The next best thing to getting your own work requested and read, is sharing in another writer's triumphs. I so hope this works out for Jonathan. And It would be nice if we as writers watched out for each other and helped to cross-promote our respective work and look out for opportunities that might help boost a great work, even if it isn't our own.