Director Michael Corrente, left, takes a cell phone call while his development assistants, Mike Morgan, of Providence, center, and Tom DeNucci, of Cranston, look on during an interview.

The Providence Journal / Bill Murphy

PROVIDENCE — Sally Mendzela is nervous. Scared, even.

Tomorrow, she and hundreds of others will try to send a chill down the spine of local director Michael Corrente, who is offering unknown screenwriters the chance to pitch him a horror-movie script. Corrente promises that he will make the best 10 scripts into full-length movies, filmed entirely in Rhode Island, with A-listers as stars and a budget of $1 million each.

Mendzela, a Cranston resident and film school graduate, has been studying up on films like The Shining to prepare for her big pitch tomorrow, but her mind occasionally wanders to fantasies of her script getting picked up and her movie made — and then the big scene, the climactic red-carpet premiere, where her work debuts before millions.

“I’m really focused on this pitch. I’m dreaming, I’m getting up, I’m looking out the window at night,” she said.

Corrente, the director of such films as American Buffalo and Outside Providence, encourages that kind of dreaming — the sky is the limit here, he says. If the script is good enough, and the movie turns out right, a no-name could suddenly be catapulted into the movie industry’s elite.

“Yeah, a Rhode Islander, or someone from New England, could find themselves with a writing credit on a horror film that goes anywhere from direct-to-DVD to grossing $100 million,” he said.

Mendzela knows that the red carpet is unlikely. But she’s holding out hope that her pitch strikes a nerve with Corrente.

“Even if it never got a theatrical release outside of Rhode Island, or it just goes straight to DVD, If you think about how many scripts people write every year, how many people does even that happen to? Even if that much does happen, that would be enough for me,” Mendzela said.

And she’s not the only one; Since his Screamwriting competition was first advertised, Corrente has heard from more than 100 interested writers locally and nationally, and anywhere from 100 to more than 600 people could arrive at the Peerless Building downtown to make their pitch tomorrow. The aspirants will line up and wait their turn, and then will get four minutes to make their pitch in front of a panel of Corrente and his associates.

There are some conditions: The scripts must be set in one location, with no more than 10 characters, and can not exceed 90 pages (which equals roughly 90 minutes of screen time).

Those with good pitches will be given the chance to write a condensed version of the story. The very best of those will be asked to write full scripts, and the best of those will ultimately be made into movies. Corrente says he has financing and distribution for the movies lined up already.

Sitting in the atrium of the Peerless Building surrounded by his three assistants in their 20s, Corrente explains that from a production standpoint, horror has it all: it can be cheap to make, it has a stable fan base, and it can be highly lucrative.

“For years I had always said that it makes sense to put together a slate of horror films,” he said. “Every 3 or 4 weeks the number-one box office film in the country is a horror movie.”

While the audience for high-concept art can be more fickle, there are 8 million to 10 million people who will go see anything they hear is genuinely scary, he said. “They heard that it was frightening, they think that it was scary, they’re going to go see the film.”

But Corrente himself is no horror maven, and the scripts he’s seen floating around Hollywood bore him. He bets that opening up the field to anyone with an idea will draw fresh approaches, and attract true horror devotees.

“The people who have their finger on that pulse are their age,” he said, pointing at his assistants. “They’re young people that go and see these movies 15 times. I don’t know what’s hip in the horror genre. I know how to tell a good story and I know how to make a quality film for not a lot of money. That’s why I am soliciting ideas from people who love horror.”

Corrente is sure he will get big-name Hollywood actors to star and direct some of these films, name-dropping actor Christopher Walken and director Gus Van Sant as stars with local ties who could be lured to the project.

“Why did Danny Glover star in Saw? Why did Cary Elwes star in Saw? Why? Because it made $179 million and they got their back end of that. That’s why they showed up. And you’re asking them to come for a week! You give them a serious chunk of dough, and you treat them like a king, which we can do here in Rhode Island, and you give them a serious back end. And they’ll come and work with me because they know I do serious pictures,” he said.

Whether or not the films are successful, Corrente envisions that this project will reinforce Rhode Island’s status as a second-tier film destination

Film students from area schools — New England Institute of Technology, Rhode Island School of Design, Rhode Island College — will help crew the films, and the prospect of 10 guaranteed movies worth of steady work should attract and retain behind-the-scenes talent. Corrente salivates at the prospect of having a full stable of competent crew members locally, rather than having to fly in a key grip when he makes a movie here.

“The ones who graduate from college don’t have to necessarily go to New York or L.A. now,” he said. “By the time this slate of films is over, they’ll be a valuable asset to me as a crew base.”

For newcomers, this is the Golden Ticket of Willy Wonka fame, the one-in-a-million chance to break into movies. For established writers, it’s equally good: an opportunity to work on a stable project with money and distribution lined up.

Carl V. Dupre grew up in Providence, and moved to Los Angeles with the hope of getting into the film business. He wrote the script to 1999’s Detroit Rock City, a nationally-released film about four teens who try to scam their way into a KISS concert in the 1970s. Since then, he’s written the scripts to several horror films in Clive Barker’s Hellraiser series — and learned how difficult it is to get even a good script made.

Dupre now lives in Coventry, and he’s preparing a story to pitch to Corrente tomorrow. Even for an established filmmaker, he said, a deal like Corrente’s offering, with money and distribution, is a rare commodity.

“To be able to work on something that’s guaranteed going to get made is like gold,” Dupre said

He’s honing his pitch, but won’t give away any details.

“I’m very confident in it. I think it’s nice and scary, something we haven’t seen before, and hopefully it’ll fly. It scared me,” he said.

dbarbari@projo.com