Deadline recently announced that the screenplay ‘Motherboy’, a chilling family thriller by emerging writer Tess Brewer, has Alan Scott Neal (Last Straw) attached to direct. After landing on the Black List in 2024, the feature script garnered the interest of producer Denise Di Novi and Oliver Scherick for Di Novi Pictures, and has quickly gained momentum.
We sat down with Brewer to find out more about her path to getting her project set up.
A Leap of Faith
When Brewer told her parents she wanted to be a screenwriter, she got major mixed messages.
“My mom was encouraging me to do it, because she works in the industry. She does makeup and special effects, so I grew up on set watching her recreate dead bodies and stuff, which was so cool,” Brewer says.
Her dad, once a musician, was far less enthusiastic. “He was very hesitant about anything creative. So I had my mom encouraging me, and my dad telling me to find a stable job.” That push and pull eventually led Brewer to nursing school, but even there, the call to write movies was growing louder.
“I decided once I graduated that I had to either become a nurse or become a screenwriter. For nurses, new hires are night shifts, and those are so grueling. And then in my clinicals for nursing school you have to work full-time for free to graduate. There was just no way I could do both,” she says.
She chose screenwriting, and from 2018 on she wrote non-stop, experimenting with TV pilots, features, and everything in between. To pay the bills, she’s been working full-time remotely as an assistant to a self-help author, and keeping her fingers crossed.
Raising ‘Motherboy’
The script that changed everything began with something personal - a challenging chapter involving the disapproval of a partner’s mother.
“I was desperately trying to fit in, to show her how much I cared about him,” Brewer says. “But the more I tried, the more out of place I became. I felt like a total doormat with no voice.”
That emotional strain led to a realization: Brewer hadn’t seen the tense dynamic between women and their partners’ mothers taken seriously in the horror genre, only hinted at in rom-coms.
“I thought, well, this is a universal problem, and I haven’t really seen it in a horror film yet. So I started writing ’Motherboy’ because I just wanted to show myself I wasn’t crazy. And maybe I could make a really, really messed up horror movie that a lot of people would relate to.”
The result is a claustrophobic thriller about a woman trapped in a snowstorm with her husband and his manipulative mother, forced to confront secrets buried deep in the family. Influenced by Misery, Darren Aronofsky’s Mother, and Barbarian, Brewer crafted the script in just a month. Within the year, it was on the Black List, attached to Di Novi Pictures, and had a passionate director onboard.
Representation Comes to You
Brewer’s path to getting a manager highlights a lesson many emerging screenwriters struggle with. She spent years cold-calling and emailing reps, usually meeting dead ends. It wasn’t until a friend passed ‘Motherboy’ to his brother, a rep at Anonymous Content, that everything shifted.
“Craig Mazin said on Scriptnotes [the podcast] that representation comes to you, you don’t go looking. And I took that advice. I just focused on my writing and trusted that one day someone would find it and love it. That’s essentially what happened.”
Of course, it wasn’t always smooth. Brewer remembers sending the script to a TV writer she met during the strike, only to be told it was one of the worst scripts he’d ever read.
“There have been so many people who’ve said that about my work,” she says. “But at the end of the day, you have to trust your voice. You have to fucking want it.”
Advice for screenwriters
Brewer is quick to acknowledge that she’s still learning, but she does have hard-won wisdom for writers chasing their own breakthroughs.
First, she recommends networking as often as possible. “You have to know people in this industry. It’s important to make friends.” Secondly, she says to write all the time with the aim of discovering your unique point of view. “Figure out your voice. Don’t copy other people or try to write what you think studios want. Finding my voice meant writing through what I’ve been through. It turns out that was the thing that made all the difference.”
Next, she says don’t be afraid to break the rules. “‘Motherboy’ breaks a lot of screenwriting rules, and that’s exactly why some people loved it and others hated it. But that’s okay. Be bold.”
Her final piece of advice is surprisingly practical: Therapy. “This industry is so cutthroat. If you don’t trust yourself and love yourself, you’ll get torn apart,” she says. “I highly suggest therapy.”