Director Michael Corrente meets with the 19 finalists for his ScareRI project. The finalists were told to write a final version of their screenplays.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

PROVIDENCE

Just like a good horror movie, director Michael Corrente’s ScareRI project is keeping its subjects in suspense. The screenwriters have cleared one hurdle on their way to stardom, but will they survive to the end, and get their chance to make a horror movie with the Providence director?

More than 300 hopefuls have been slashed, hacked and chopped from the list since Corrente began his project to make horror movies with unknown screenwriters, but 19 screenwriting aspirants remain. Corrente gathered together these finalists last night and told them that they’re only one step away from getting their movie made, complete with a $1-million budget and guaranteed distribution.

“I’ll make the movie, I promise you. If you send me a script and it’s good and it’s done, I will make that movie for a million dollars. Rhode Island’s a great place to be making movies right now.”

Corrente’s ScareRI is a competition offering unknown screenwriters the chance to pitch him a horror-movie script. Corrente, director of films such as Outside Providence and American Buffalo, created an open call for writers to pitch him their scripts and from those he said he would make 10 feature-length movies, filmed entirely in Rhode Island, with A-list actors as stars. The scripts had to be set in one location, with no more than 10 characters, and could not exceed 90 pages, the equivalent of 90 minutes of screen time.

Days after he announced the plan, 320 people lined up outside the Peerless Building downtown for their chance to make it into the film business. They made their three-minute pitches to Corrente and his team, and among those, the best 54 were asked to write a short treatment fleshing out their idea.

That group has now been whittled down to a final 19, who Corrente has asked to write full screenplays. The 19 finalists met with Corrente last night. Corrente wouldn’t commit to how many of these 19 would actually get their movies made. It could be two, it could be five, it could be nine, depending on the quality of the final scripts.

“I don’t want to say I have all 10 right now, and then have completely shut the door, and have someone come up to me with a great script and say, ‘my nephew wrote this, you should read this,’ but I can’t because I have all 10 selected,” he said.

Corrente has already identified the first movie in the 10-picture slate, a project titled Skeleton Crew, by brothers Michael and Shawn Rasmussen. Filming will begin this summer, and he has secured distribution via City Lights Media Group.

For starring roles, Corrente is talking with actors he has worked with before, such as Outside Providence’s Shaun Hatosy and Brooklyn Rules’ Scott Caan.

“It’s extremely well written, it’s funny, it’s bright and it’s scary,” Corrente said.

After Skeleton Crew is complete, Corrente isn’t sure of the timetable of the following nine movies. But the business arrangement he has secured with his financial backers compels him to make all 10 films total, he said, so as to minimize their financial risk. Horror movies, he has said, are popular enough that even low-budget products make money, and he has leveraged the entire slate together as his way to guarantee financing.

The finalists were predominantly male, and range in age from their 20s to their 60s. Most were from the Rhode Island area, but some were selected from Boston and New York.

Jim Connell, 37, of West Bridgewater, Mass., pitched a script he called Blood Money, about a collection agency run by vampires. He was shocked to make the cut.

“I got the call and actually I was convinced that I hadn’t gotten it, because I hadn’t heard anything in a while, and so I had already mentally checked it off the list. It was a shock, and a pleasant one at that,” Connell said.

He’s got a second draft of his script done, but is now going to spend a few more months refining the work before he submits it.

“I think what he’s doing is a great opportunity — it’s daring, and it’s generous,” said Connell, who had previously written a screenplay for a short film, called Saul Goodman, that made it into several film festivals.

Sarah Treanor, a 43-year-old East Providence insurance agent, entered the contest as a lark — and though she’s surprised to have made it this far, she said she’s not letting herself have the red-carpet dreams yet. Her movie, Scaryoke, is about a string of murders during a karaoke contest. One by one, the contestants are knocked off — a fantasy, perhaps, for some karaoke listeners.

“It just came to me right away as a goof — and it started off kind of as a goof, because I never thought I’d have the courage to go up there. I’m not a writer,” she said.

“It’s been really, really great education — and it’s been great fodder at cocktail parties. If not anything else, it’s been a goof, it’s been fun. It’s been really really fun.”

Corrente didn’t want to throw out any hard deadlines for when the films would be made, but he acknowledged that people on every end are pressuring him, from the financiers to the actors to the production crew.

That said, he told the 19 assembled screenwriters that he wanted the final scripts in roughly four to six months.

Jacob Kramer, 23, came up from New York City for last night’s meeting with Corrente. His script involves a hypnotism session gone awry, where a young boy gains powers that cause the people he meets to do the opposite of what he asks them to do, with destructive results.

Kramer, a Providence native, made some short films when in college at Harvard University, but “never anything involving other people’s money,” he said. He was initially unsure as to how serious Corrente was — was this whole project a public-relations move, he wondered? Now that he’s in the final cut, he’s convinced of Corrente’s seriousness — but not sure whether he will make it through. He thinks he’s a good writer, but he said he’s not a horror buff, nor a pro when it comes to building the suspense that horror requires.

As Corrente’s project builds to its climax, Kramer is trapped like all the rest — he’s got no choice but to go back to New York, work on his script and hope that the director doesn’t ax him in the final minute.

dbarbari@projo.com