Newmarket Shooting Scripts: Like Trading Cards for Screenwriters
How I discovered "The Shooting Script" screenplays by Newmarket Press and rekindled my spirit for screenwriting and collecting
What follows is a story about how these shooting scripts influenced my life. If you're just looking for a complete list of titles in the series and the best way to acquire them, jump to this section. Otherwise, enjoy!
Over the past 20 years I've forgotten about something I once loved: the hobby of collecting. As a kid, it was baseball and football cards. More recently, it's been screenplays, particularly the bound screenplays in The Shooting Script series by Newmarket Press.
The first screenplay in the series I came across was The Shawshank Redemption at Half Price Books, a used bookstore in my hometown. This was in November 2023 when I began carving out time in the mornings for screenwriting.
I purchased another bound screenplay that day: Good Will Hunting published by Miramax Books. I loved reading each screenplay but the Newmarket screenplay felt different. Part of something bigger. Of course, I didn’t know what that “bigger” thing was at the time.
I didn’t know the screenplay was part of a series that was mostly out of print. I didn’t know that some of the screenplays in the series were listed online for hundreds of dollars. And I didn't know they'd be the catalyst for miracles and acquaint me with the spirit of my long lost relative, Mary Todd Lincoln.
Fate, it appears, disguises itself in inconspicuous forms. In this case, a Newmarket shooting script.
SIX MONTHS LATER
I returned to Pittsburgh in the Spring of 2024 after traveling abroad, all my screenwriting mojo gone. With the exception of ten pen-stroked pages that a pudgy Vietnamese girl doodled on, not much writing got done when I was away.
What replaced my passion for screenwriting was a drive to start a business and leverage some connections I had from working as a content marketer for 10 years. With little money, no apartment, and all my stuff in storage, pursuing traditional business felt more pressing.
I spun up a small business fairly quickly with some success but saw my future quite clearly and didn't much like it: growing the business, spending most of my time doing so, and growing older alongside my dream of being a screenwriter. Not necessarily a successful screenwriter, but a person who writes screenplays.
SUMMER 2024
A few months later, a family I had become friends with asked me if I wanted to stay in their beautiful home for the summer when they would be away. Still homeless, I immediately took them up on their offer. It would be my first summer as a butler, a fancy title I made up for myself. But butlering was not the easygoing gig I thought it would be.
After settling in, an energy I experienced five summers prior began welling up inside of me. Without much success from therapists in handling it, I did some research and came across the book Spiritual Emergency by Stanislov Grof, a man who dedicated his life to researching and writing about the strain of "spiritual emergence" after meeting his wife who struggled with it.
Now on the hunt for a screenplay idea and accepting a financially poor life as a butler in place of a business man, my goal with reading the book was two-fold:
continue to integrate the energy from the experience
look for interesting topics to write a screenplay about
During my reading sessions, I wrote down terms from the book I didn't know anything about but found interesting. The first term—the term at the top of the list—was "past life regression".
A few days after finishing the book, I visited a good friend for the first time in a while. I didn't tell her anything about my strange state of mind, the book, or the list. However, just before leaving her house, she went over to her bookshelf and brought back not one but two copies of a book about past life regression. "You might like this," she said… "plus I have two…" I don't think she had two copies of any other book on her shelf.
It usually takes me weeks to read a book but I read that book in a day. I had been adamant about writing an original screenplay but I knew ignoring the signs in front of me would be unwise. The material was handed to me on a silver platter. An adapted screenplay it would be.
The main issue I faced was a lack of confidence in my screenwriting skills. I had no formal screenwriting training and all the scripts I had previously written were incomplete except one. I needed help and inspiration to have a chance at pulling this off and catching the attention of the author.
CUT TO:
Rediscovering the Newmarket shooting scripts
I shopped around used bookstores for screenplays again without any success. Turns out, bound screenplays for produced films are quite hard to find. Major bookstores like Barnes & Noble don't even carry them. They have hundreds of books about how movies are made but not a single screenplay.
Fortunately, Amazon was able to supply me with all the screenplays I could possibly want. The first one I bought was for Erin Brockovich, also part of The Shooting Script series.
Throughout the summer, I bought and read more screenplays from the series that I was coming to love more and more. Shooting scripts for The Truman Show, Spanglish, Big Fish, The Matrix, Black Hawk Down, and Dan in Real Life. I also read shooting scripts for Cinderella Man, Crazy Heart, and Merlin: three titles I actually found in a used bookstore while visiting my sister in Philadelphia.
Reading these screenplays got my screenwriting mojo bubbling again, and I felt ready to take a swing at a first draft of the adaptation for the book. I had also taken detailed notes, created an outline, and spent a week visiting the location where the story in the book takes place.
FALL 2024
After my summer of butlering and spiritual emergence(y), I used the little money I had left in savings to rent an AirBNB in North Carolina for a month. I had searched the entire eastern seaboard for an AirBNB that was private and less than $1500 per month and Greensboro, North Carolina, is where I landed.
The first week writing in the AirBNB was productive and peaceful, but the following weeks showed me that a honeymoon phase also applies to drafting a screenplay. My one friend told me to paint the windows black until the screenplay was finished. Easier said than done.
Accepting my fate as a screenwriter who writes at snail speed, my mind began to open and I started to have fun. To break from the page, I would hunt for screenplays in my new surroundings. My favorite used bookstore became McKays. Their locations are about three times the size as Half Price Books locations and their prices are sometimes a third. Unlike Half Price Books and other used bookstore chains, McKays doesn't closely monitor the value of books they receive and resell, making their locations especially exciting for book collectors.
One of the first screenplays I found at the McKays location in Winston-Salem was The Squid and the Whale, a screenplay in The Shooting Script series I bought for a few bucks. I didn't know it at the time, but it's one of the less common titles in the series that's listed online for 2-4 times its MSRP on Amazon and eBay.
Hunting for screenplays at McKays and other used bookstores became an evening ritual and remains an activity I continue to enjoy to this day. It also opened my eyes to buying used goods outside of screenplays. Rarely now do I buy something new before going to Facebook Marketplace, an estate sale, or a thrift store—something I never did before. It's lovely how taking an interest in something seemingly small like bound screenplays can impact other aspects of your life in big ways.
After four weeks of screenwriting and script hunting, I left North Carolina with 100 handwritten pages and a stack full of screenplays to enjoy and learn from. I said sayonara to my screenwriting treehouse and took to the Thanksgiving traffic on I-95 North, bound for Philadelphia to spend the holidays with family.
CHRISTMAS 2024
Two of the Newmarket shooting scripts I wanted to purchase but couldn't afford were for the movies Cast Away and Michael Clayton. For reasons I didn't yet understand, used copies of them were anywhere from $50 to $100. But Christmas was around the corner and a new opportunity to acquire them opened up. When family members asked me for gift ideas, I sent them links to these books on Amazon.
Only after Christmas did I begin to realize that these shooting scripts were already collectibles or could become collectibles in the near future. The first hint was seeing the asking price for the Michael Clayton shooting script listed as $912.99 on Amazon after my sister purchased the last available copy there.
The nostalgia of collecting sports cards as a kid began to burn after seeing this. It reminded me of how the price of a baseball or football card could rise based on its rarity, popularity, and performance of the featured player.
The shooting scripts awaken collector nostalgia
My interest in collecting sports cards began as a child after "raiding" someone's home in the neighborhood where I grew up.
I'm not sure how this started, but when someone's parents and siblings were away, me and the other kids in the neighborhood would raid their home for sweets, coins, and stray bills. It became somewhat of a tradition during the summertime on our deadend street in the quiet suburbs of Pittsburgh. As I write this, I even recall us shouting "Raaaiiid!" across the neighborhood before barrelling through a home.
During one of our earliest raids (maybe our first?), we found an abandoned stash of sports cards in the basement of the Kaminski household. Everyone in the Kaminski family was "out" one summer day except our friend who lived there. Being the youngest of the neighborhood kids and wanting to gain our favor, he let us raid his house.
We ran through the Kaminski house that day like baby bulls, but the tall steel cabinet at the bottom of the basement stairs stopped us in our tracks. Light from the summer sun entered through the glass block windows. The basement smelled of cement, floorboard dust, and cobwebs. Daddy longlegs scurried out of our way. Everything became still and quiet.
We opened the cabinet to reveal, not rusty nails and ancient tools, but thousands of sports cards. Our friend said his older brother had probably forgotten about them and that we could each take a handful. Of course, we took more, thus laying the foundation of our future collections.
After this we were hooked. We discovered that you could buy card packs at local grocery stores and that there were magazines that told you how much your cards were worth—sometimes hundreds! A sports card shop even opened up within walking distance of the neighborhood shortly after the raid and became our summer hangout. I recall a man in his forties running the shop who had a little cot in the back room. We all thought this was strange, but now that I'm in my mid-thirties, I get it. Collectibles and community do a fine job in sustaining the human spirit.
These days, I'm no longer interested in collecting sports cards like cot-man but am very interested in a nostalgic hobby. As a practicing screenwriter and lover of movies, screenplays seem like a solid option. The white spines of the Newmarket shooting scripts are even reminiscent of the white edges of sports cards in foil packs we would buy from cot-man and the pharmacies down the street with chore money and money "borrowed" from our moms' purses.
Collect screenplays? All signs point to yes.
After getting an apartment and contract with HP at the beginning of 2025, I had the mindspace and money to begin collecting screenplays in The Shooting Script series by Newmarket Press. This led me on an unexpected journey.
While searching for the screenplays on Amazon and other online marketplaces, I came across more bound screenplays outside the Newmarket canon, most notably the For Your Consideration (FYC) screenplays that studios send out to filmmakers and critics for awards season. Most people receive the softcover edition of these screenplays, but some receive rarer hardcover editions.
I bought five of the hardcover editions, along with some other screenplays, from a guy on Facebook Marketplace for a bargain price. Included in the lot were two gems: a rare leather-bound screenplay for The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and the FYC script for Lincoln.
What made the Lincoln script especially exciting was the signed letter from Steven Spielberg (the movie's director) pressed between the front cover and first page. What made it even more exciting is remembering that I'm related to Mary Todd Lincoln and discovering that the letter was sent to a movie critic in my home state with the same last name as me. Another small miracle. I took this as a sign to continue my journey as a collector, and it began paying off in more ways than one.
A few weeks later, I discovered another underpriced lot of FYC scripts from the private collection of a successful director who happens to be the son of a famous actress in Lincoln.
Even stranger, cooler, more miraculously?... I had told my manager at HP about the Lincoln find and, days later, the company had the sudden need for a screenwriter. In an unprecedented move, they decided at the last minute to create an immersive experience video for a major annual event and needed a story for the screen. My manager thought of me (I was not hired to do anything like this) and, six weeks later, the screenplay was produced (you can see people watching it from 0:22 to 0:17 in this LinkedIn post).
These events piqued my interest even further in collecting what started all of this: the Newmarket shooting scripts. So I encourage you, if you love movies, grab a script for one of your favorite movies and see where the journey takes you. There's some good karma attached to this collection.
The value of the shooting scripts
As educational material, The Shooting Script series is easily worth as much as an undergraduate degree in screenwriting. As someone who has read many of the shooting scripts, attended screenwriting classes at UCLA, and graduated with an undergraduate degree in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh, I think I have enough experience to make this claim. I often get more from reading a single title in the series than I did from any college class.
As collectibles, the entire series could easily be worth just as much—if not now, in the near future—and I think there are two reasons why some of the titles in the series demand two times, three times, four times, and even over ten times their original sale price as used books.
Originality
Based on my count, there's a total of 88 screenplay books within The Shooting Script series, making it the first and largest series of bound screenplays ever published by a book publisher. Other book publishers like Faber publish bound screenplays, but they're not part of a consistent series, design, or script type (e.g. shooting script).
Many of the books in The Shooting Script series also contain letters, notes, and quotes from the screenwriters, directors, and producers who made the movies. For the most part, these insights are original, written solely for the screenplay book published by Newmarket Press.
Esther Margolis, the creator of Newmarket Press, is the person behind the series. After HarperCollins acquired the rights to the shooting scripts and other assets from Newmarket Press in October 2011, a VP at HarperCollins said, "Esther Margolis is a highly respected veteran of both the publishing and the film industries, with unparalleled relationships with countless studios and filmmakers."
Rarity
After the HarperCollins acquisition, printing runs of the original shooting scripts stopped and only a handful of new movie titles were added to the series, including shooting scripts for Coriolanus, J. Edgar, Hugo, This is 40, and Zero Dark Thirty, the latter of which was the last screenplay published in the series in 2013.
There were reprints of a few titles this same year, including the reprint for Erin Brockovich, but it seems 2013 marked the end of an era for Newmarket Press. No more original first editions in the series would be published, and it would become increasingly hard to find those that were. Out-of-print (OOP) is the lingo used in the world of book collectors, a term attached to books that demand a higher sale price.
Special editions
While compiling a catalog of the scripts (see below), I learned that some of them are especially rare and not even intended for individual retail sale. This information came to me after purchasing the scripts for 127 Hours, The Descendants, Black Swan, and The Wrestler in a bundle from a private book seller at a bargain price—what felt like another miraculous find. The copy of The Descendants even contained a letter from Fox Searchlight Pictures, similar to the letter in the copy of Dan In Real Life I received.
It's clever how Newmarket began partnering with studios to design and print scripts for FYC purposes. It's also exciting as a screenplay collector that special editions like this exist. On the back cover of The Descendants script and the other FYC scripts mentioned above, there is print that reads: "For promotional use only. This Shooting Script Special Edition is not intended for individual retail sale."
Some other special editions I've come across are "custom DVD editions" for Slumdog Millionaire and Little Miss Sunshine that are not intended for individual retail sale, as well as a hardback edition of American Beauty—the first and only hardback I've come across in the series. (I found the DVD edition of Slumdog at a used bookstore during my screenwriting retreat and unintentionally received the hardback edition of American Beauty when I bought a paperback edition online for five bucks.)
Whether it's an FYC edition, hardback, or traditional paperback with an unexpected studio letter or signature, I love how the screenplays in the series are full of surprises. It makes searching for them all the more fun.
Searching for the shooting scripts
There are several search tactics I use to find titles in The Shooting Script series—my favorite is going to used bookstores while traveling—but the most efficient way is through online search. To streamline this search, I created a catalog for the series with links to relevant pages across Amazon and eBay. I also assigned one of four levels of Availability to each script based on how difficult the title is to find and how much it sells for.
Common: easy to find and less than $20
Uncommon: less easy to find and over $20
Rare: more difficult to find and over $30
Scarce: extremely difficult to find and sometimes over $100
These labels are imperfect since the availability and pricing of titles in the series fluctuates day by day, but they provide a solid reference point based on two months of observation and research before writing this article. Whether you want to obtain the titles in the series to assist you in your screenwriting journey, build your screenplay collection, or do any number of the following—screenwrite, collect, sell, trade—the catalog and labeling system can streamline your search.
Note: In the catalog, click "File > Make a copy" to create your own version of the Google Sheet or download it for use on your favorite spreadsheet tool. Track your personal collection, add notes next to titles you want to collect, and sort titles to match your preferences.
The complete list of shooting scripts
Below is a simple version of the catalog with the complete list of the 88 bound screenplay titles in The Shooting Script series. There are other lists available online but they are either unorganized and incomplete. For some reason, it was my destiny to scour the web to produce a complete list of screenplays published by Newmarket Press. "Why am I doing this?" I often thought. "Shouldn't I be finishing my own screenplay instead of this list?" But the force driving my search was too great and fun.
With the exception of a few titles in the series, most of the spines of the screenplays are white with tight, capitalized lettering for the name of the screenwriter and movie followed by "The Shooting Script". Every front cover has a video camera logo wrapped in text that says "The Shooting Script".
The titles of the shooting scripts are sorted in the order of the movie's release year, starting with the earliest, and the titles are linked to their respective listing page on Amazon.
Buying tip: The initial price you see on Amazon may not be the best price for the script. To verify, click the "Other sellers on Amazon" box below the main "Add to Cart" box. You can also easily cross-check prices on Amazon and eBay with the links in the catalog.
The Age of Innocence (1993) by Jay Cocks - Common
The Shawshank Redemption (1994) by Frank Darabont - Common
A Midwinter's Tale (1995) by Kenneth Branagh - Common
Dead Man Walking (1995) by Tim Robbins - Common
Sense and Sensibility (1995) by Emma Thompson - Common
The Birdcage (1996) by Elaine May - Uncommon
The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) by Scott Alexander - Common
I Went Down (1997) by Conor McPherson - Common
Swept from the Sea (1997) by Tim Willocks - Common
The Ice Storm (1997) by James Schamus - Common
U-Turn (1997) by John Ridley - Common
Merlin (1998) by Edward Khmara - Common
The Truman Show (1998) by Andrew Niccol - Common
Gods and Monsters (1998) by Bill Condon - Uncommon
American Beauty (1999) by Alan Ball - Common
Man on the Moon (1999) by Scott Alexander - Common
Snow Falling on Cedars (1999) by Ronald Bass - Common
Being John Malkovich (1999) by Charlie Kaufman - Scarce
The Matrix (1999) by Lana Wachowski - Uncommon
Erin Brockovich (2000) by Susannah Grant - Common
Nurse Betty (2000) by John C. Richards - Common
Salt Water (2000) by Conor McPherson - Common
State and Main (2000) by David Mamet - Common
Traffic (2000) by Stephen Gaghan - Common
Cast Away (2000) by William Broyles - Rare
Snatch (2000) by Guy Ritchie - Uncommon
A Beautiful Mind (2001) by Akiva Goldsman - Common
Gosford Park (2001) by Julian Fellowes - Common
Black Hawk Down (2001) by Ken Nolan - Common
Human Nature (2001) by Charlie Kaufman - Uncommon
About a Boy (2002) by Peter Hedges - Common
Adaptation (2002) by Charlie Kaufman - Common
Red Dragon (2002) by Ted Tally - Common
Igby Goes Down (2002) by Burr Steers - Scarce
Ararat (2002) by Atom Egoyan - Uncommon
The Emperor's Club (2002) by Neil Tolkin - Uncommon
Pieces of April (2003) by Peter Hedges - Common
The Actors (2003) by Conor McPherson - Common
Big Fish (2003) by John August - Uncommon
Dreamcatcher (2003) by William Goldman - Rare
Sylvia (2003) by John Brownlow - Uncommon
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) by Charlie Kaufman - Common
I Heart Huckabees (2004) by Jeff Baena - Common
Sideways (2004) by Alexander Payne - Common - Scene Lift Post
Spanglish (2004) by James L. Brooks - Common
In Good Company (2004) by Paul Weitz - Rare
Capote (2005) by Dan Futterman - Common
Cinderella Man (2005) by Cliff Hollingsworth - Common
Thank You for Smoking (2005) by Jason Reitman - Common
The Constant Gardener (2005) by Jeffrey Caine - Common
War of the Worlds (2005) by Josh Friedman - Common
Romance and Cigarettes (2005) by John Turturro - Scarce
The Squid and the Whale (2005) by Noah Baumbach - Uncommon
Transamerica (2005) by Duncan Tucker - Uncommon
Little Children (2006) by Todd Field - Common
Little Miss Sunshine (2006) by Michael Arndt - Common
Stranger than Fiction (2006) by Zach Helm - Common
United 93 (2006) by Paul Greengrass - Rare
The Good Shepherd (2006) by Eric Roth - Uncommon
Atonement (2007) by Christopher Hampton - Common
Dan in Real Life (2007) by Pierce Gardner - Common
Juno (2007) by Diablo Cody - Common
Knocked Up (2007) by Judd Apatow - Common
Margot at the Wedding (2007) by Noah Baumbach - Common
The Savages (2007) by Tamara Jenkins - Common
Michael Clayton (2007) by Tony Gilroy - Rare
Milk (2008) by Dustin Lance Black - Common
Slumdog Millionaire (2008) by Simon Beaufoy - Common
The Burning Plain (2008) by Guillermo Arriaga - Common
The Hurt Locker (2008) by Mark Boal - Common
Synecdoche, New York (2008) by Charlie Kaufman - Rare
The Wrestler (2008) by Robert Siegel - Rare
(500) Days of Summer (2009) by Scott Neustadter - Common
Crazy Heart (2009) by Scott Cooper - Common
Funny People (2009) by Judd Apatow - Common
The Last Station (2009) by Michael Hoffman - Common
Taking Woodstock (2009) by James Schamus - Uncommon
The Kids Are All Right (2010) by Lisa Cholodenko - Common
The King's Speech (2010) by David Seidler - Common
Black Swan (2010) by Mark Heyman - Scarce
Please Give (2010) by Nicole Holofencer - Scarce
127 Hours (2010) by Simon Beaufoy - Uncommon
Coriolanus (2011) by John Logan - Common
Hugo (2011) by John Logan - Common
J. Edgar (2011) by Dustin Lance Black - Common
The Descendants (2011) by Alexander Payne - Uncommon
This is 40 (2012) by Judd Apatow - Common
Zero Dark Thirty (2012) by Mark Boal - Common
Join the community, build your collection
Moving forward, I'll begin publishing posts about a screenplay/movie in The Shooting Script series. The posts will include some of my favorite scenes from the screenplays and YouTube links to matching scenes from the movies. Everyone subscribed to Scene Lift will receive the posts.
Look out for the “Movie Treasures” newsletter
My journey with the scripts has also inspired me to begin collecting other types of screenplays and movie memorabilia—everything from original scripts issued to cast and crew members to older press kits for movies sent to film critics.
I’m coming across a lot of cool stuff and can’t buy it all so will start a newsletter called something like “Movie Treasures” that will include links to items that are undervalued and up for sale or auction. Since I’m mostly focused on undervalued items, its effectively a thrifting newsletter for movie collectibles. Again, everyone subscribed to Scene Lift will receive this.
I’d love to open a movie memorabilia store
What I’m most excited about now is the idea of opening an online and physical store in my hometown to sell movie memorabilia, kind of like cot-man with the sports card store (mentioned above if you didn’t read the whole story).
The physical store would feature a small theater that people could rent out, a main room with collectibles for sale, and an area with press kits where people could learn about the movies they love and see which movie they might want to watch next. It would be a sanctuary for anyone who loves movies and my headquarters for shipping out items to fine people like you from around the world.
I’m also thinking of selling “script packs” to honor the experience and nostalgia of those days in my old neighborhood when me and my friends would tear open packs of sports cards. A script pack would contain three bound screenplays from The Shooting Script series. One script in the pack would be uncommon, rare, or scarce.
I have many more ideas, including having private auctions for this community on ultra-rare items, but first thing’s first…
Finish the script!
It’s important to remember what started all of this and return to it: screenwriting. So, before opening a store or doing anything else outside of this blog, I’ll finish the draft of the screenplay I started. This is the best way to contribute to the medium of entertainment and inspiration I love most: movies.
Collecting is fun, but creation is the most meaningful. My hope is you find something you love to create while enjoying the hobby of collecting and community along the way.
This is so cool! I love reading about other people’s hobbies… especially collecting. There’s something so human but also so animalistic about collecting that I am really obsessed with. I can’t quite put my finger on it. I love that you collect these screenplays - I have found that reading scripts does so much for my writing, ESPECIALLY a shooting script. Thanks for sharing!