2017 Big Break Category Winner Kevin Bachar stopped by the Write On podcast to discuss his new feature, The Inhabitant, starring Dermot Mulroney and Leslie Bibb. "It's a relative of Lizzie Borden set in modern times," says Bachar, "and she starts experiencing visions of Lizzie Borden, starts getting feelings of hurting her family. The question is, is this a sort of demonic possession? Is it schizophrenia? What's going on here?"

Bachar also shares the secret of how he transitioned from filming content for National Geographic to writing feature screenplays: "I think it's finding any time where you can actually get in front of the laptop. [When I lived in New York] I used to commute into the city, and that was a solid hour on the Long Island Railroad... I made a conscious decision to use this hour to write. and that was it. So that's 10 hours a week that I was able to just really focus on writing. Any time you have that free time, write."

The Inhabitant is coming to theaters later this year.

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Created by Bisha K. Ali, Ms. Marvel follows Kamala Khan, a 16-year-old superhero fan who's just trying to get through high school when she discovers she has powers of her own. Ali discusses how she put together the writer's room for the MCU series: "I had a room that [reflected] the experience of the characters that we're talking about... We had to have authentic writers; we had to have writers who understood what intergenerational trauma is, what it is to be an immigrant, what it is to be a second-generation immigrant, what it is to be an outsider... in order to get this arc that I wanted to get."

Ali goes on to share her advice for writers of color struggling to tell the stories they want to tell: "I think specifically [with] writers from marginalized backgrounds... there's this conflict of, 'I just want to do what I want to do, but I've never seen an example of that. I've never seen that made because people like me don't get to tell stories...' Stop worrying about that voice and really push yourself to be true to who you are."

Ms. Marvel is now streaming on Disney+.

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Based on the viral YouTube short from 2010, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On follows Marcel (Jenny Slate), a 1-inch tall shell who lives a colorful existence with his grandmother Connie (Isabella Rossellini) and their pet lint, Alan. When asked about creating and writing for such a unique protagonist, the original video's creator Dean Fleischer Camp says, "I think the thing that's always appealed to me about Marcel is he doesn't think of himself as small or weird or a talking shell or anything, and the film itself does not treat him with anything less than 100% dignity as a documentary subject and doesn't freak out over the fact that he's a talking shell."

Camp's co-writer Nick Paley goes on to share his own take on writing "weird" subject matter: "Do everything you can to cultivate high-sensitivity-listening to your own tastes. I think that is a skill that no one really taught us in film school: to self-authorize around the things that you love, even if you think they're dumb and kind of beside the point or not relevant to what's happening. I think the only type of work that is really special is the stuff that someone is really not sure is going to work for other people, and this film is a wonderful proof of that."

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is now playing in theaters.

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