- This event has passed.
Prepare Your Story Idea for the Pitch of a Lifetime with Marilyn Atlas
March 5 @ 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm CST
$160
Wednesday, March 5, 2025 & April 2, 6:30-8:30pm CST, via Zoom
Nonmember $160 Member $135 *No student rate available for this class*
Do you have a story or an idea that would make a compelling movie or television series? Are you ready to package your idea and make the pitch to television executives, but don’t know how to take the next step? Let’s get our stories together and get ready for the big pitch!
In this two-day workshop, talent/literary manager and producer Marilyn Atlas will teach you the tricks and tips it takes to make that professional pitch. She will cover how to distill the essence of your story into short, sharp, easily digestible bite-size parts that strike the right balance between brevity, colorful detail, and cliffhanging suspense. The class will also review common mistakes writers make when pitching, strategies for adapting your pitch to your target audience, and advice on how to use comparable titles of similar works to prove there is an audience for your work.
Students will build pitch decks and have the opportunity to receive feedback from Marilyn on how to tighten and reveal the idiosyncratic narrative thrust of their stories.
This course is open to writers of all genres, backgrounds, and skill levels, 18+.
What you can expect in this workshop:
- How to make a pitch deck
- How to synthesize your story in an attention-grabbing way
- An opportunity to pitch your idea to a Hollywood producer
Marilyn R Atlas is a Talent/Literary Manager and Producer. Among her credits as film producer are Real Women Have Curves for HBO, which won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, A Certain Desire, starring Sam Waterston, and Echoes, which won the Gold Award at the Texas International Film Festival. She produced a movie at Lifetime, based on a YA book, airing in summer 2014, titled The Choking Game.
In live theater, Marilyn co-produced the West Coast premiere of the musical God Bless You Mr. Rosewater by Ashman and Menken (the writers of both Enchanted and Tangled). She also co-produced the Ovation award-winning play To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, which was made into a film starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Peter Gallagher. She is currently developing a musical based on her Sundance-winning film Real Women Have Curves (originally produced by Marilyn for HBO), amongst other projects. She was involved in several writers’ debut books for HarperCollins, Grand Central Publishing, and Source Books. She is in development on the movie Lola Goes to Roma, amongst other projects. She has long been committed to projects that celebrate diversity.
Marilyn is a member of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers. Marilyn has spoken at various colleges, film festivals, and industry events on creating three-dimensional, non-stereotypical characters. She is the co-author of a relationship-based, screenwriting guide called Dating Your Character, about an organic approach to character creation for Stairway Press’s Summer 2015 catalog. She is also featured in the book Write Now! from Penguin/Tarcher.
