Justin D James

#1 Pilot on The Black List 2018 / 1st Place Winner of Script Pipeline 2019. Born and raised in central Florida, Justin grew up with a lifelong dream of following in Steven Spielberg's footsteps. At nineteen, he set out for the west coast, where he spent the first few months bouncing between PA gigs and living out of his car. Eventually, he worked his way up the production ladder, while squeezing in late-night writing sessions in pursuit of his ultimate dream.In 2015, just weeks after taking his dream job and beginning development on a passion project with Amazing Spider-Man producer, Pam Williams, a family health crisis sent him and his high school sweetheart back to the east coast, where he was forced to put his career on pause to help care for his mother-in-law while she was in the ICU. What was meant to be a two-month hiatus turned into a three-year detour. With 2,000 miles between him and the industry, Justin sought alternative methods to get his material noticed.In 2018, his pilot inspired by his mother, landed at the top of The Black List, where it stayed at number one for an unprecedented seventeen weeks. Later that year, while working as a PA for an east coast reality show, he decided to enter his first screenwriting contest. With a sobering one-hundred-and-thirty-two dollars in his bank account, he coughed up the $60 admissions fee and prayed for a miracle.On July 29th 2019, that miracle came true when he was announced the winner of Script Pipeline's 2019 TV Writing Contest. "Justin's pilot, submitted to one of the most competitive seasons in Script Pipeline history, rose to the top thanks to a prodigious and intimate sense of character development and overall storytelling." By early August, he was jumping from one corner office to the next, meeting with top producers and agents. Within weeks he found himself writing for one of the biggest producers in TV, landed major writing assignments, and has seen his young career begin to rise.As one studio exec described his writing, "He's like the lovechild of Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy, raised on Carl Hiaasen." A comparison he's quite happy with."It took me thirteen incredibly humbling years of rejection to get here... and the more things that went wrong, the more I knew they'd go right."::Via Script Pipeline