Contest Rules

Please read the following rules carefully. Any submission that does not comply with contest rules and regulations will be disqualified.

1. All writers of submitted material must be 18 years of age or older. Each writer or writing team may not have earned more than $25,000 or the foreign equivalent (jointly or individually) for work as a screenwriter and/or fictional television writer.

2. All scripts must be submitted in English and entry fees must be paid in U.S. dollars.

3. Entry in the competition is void where prohibited by law.

4. Judges, administrators, board members and independent contractors who work for kNIFVES are not eligible to enter the competition, nor are their spouses or other immediate family members.

5. Scripts must be the original work of the author(s) and may not be encumbered by any third party. Scripts that have been sold, produced, or are currently under option are not eligible, nor are scripts that have previously won a prize in the kNIFVES Awards competition.

6. Novels, short stories, stage plays, treatments, synopses, reality show concepts, and/or spec scripts for existing TV series are not eligible. Your script must be an original screenplay or teleplay.

7. Adaptations of books, plays, or other source material written by another author are not eligible under any circumstances; nor are scripts adapted from books, plays, or other source material written by you if your source material has been sold, produced, or is currently under option to any third party. Screenplays adapted from your own self-published books, plays, or other source materials are eligible if you have retained all rights to your work.

8. Once a script has been entered in the competition, under no circumstances will we accept substitutions of new drafts or corrected pages. If you wish to submit a revised draft of your script, you must enter it as a new submission and pay the appropriate entry fee.

9. The competition is not responsible for submissions that are lost, stolen, or damaged in transit, and we cannot return scripts once they have been submitted. Please retain an original copy of your screenplay.

10. Decisions of the Judges are final.  The contest and its administrators may not be held responsible for decisions by the Judges.