screenplay
Americannoun
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a motion-picture or television scenario.
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Older Use. a motion picture.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of screenplay
Explanation
Before a movie can be filmed, a writer has to come up with a screenplay, a written script that describes all the action and every line the actors will speak. How entertaining, thrilling, realistic, or fantastic a movie is depends on many variables, one of the most important being the screenplay. A truly great screenplay includes brilliant dialogue that develops the characters and moves the action forward. TV shows and elaborate video games also require screenplays. Some writers adapt books or older movies into new screenplays, while others come up with entirely original stories for their screenplays.
Vocabulary lists containing screenplay
Academy Awards, List 3
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myPerspectives 7.3
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Introduction to Drama
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
It is the first in a trilogy by Nigerian-American author Tomi Adeyemi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Gina Prince-Bythewood, director of Bafta-nominated historical drama The Woman King.
From BBC ● Jul. 28, 2026
Though their big-screen adventures could not capture the comedic chaos of their stage act, Martin and Lewis transformed even the most pedestrian screenplay into box-office gold.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 25, 2026
Large language models can spew Mississippi Rivers of data and text, but they struggle to write a log line for a 120-page screenplay, a subtitle for a book, or a few lines of poetry.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026
Call it a stretch, call it being good at your job, but it’s difficult to deny how much of Jolie is embedded within the screenplay.
From Salon ● Jun. 29, 2026
Meanwhile, William Faulkner rewrote the Russian sequence of the film and typed up the full screenplay.
From "A Thousand Sisters" by Elizabeth Wein
Films like “They Will Kill You” and those in the “Ready or Not” franchise incorporate visual elements of the divine and satanic to distract from their mediocre screenplays and recycled ideas.
From Salon ● May 19, 2026
"In the Writing categories, the rules codify that screenplays must be human-authored to be eligible."
From Barron's ● May 1, 2026
This complex relationship to the West in general and Texas—McMurtry’s home state—in particular courses through the McMurtry oeuvre of novels, screenplays, nonfiction and criticism.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 30, 2026
The Envelope spoke to the writers of five of this year’s Oscar-nominated screenplays to discover the secrets behind their note-perfect endings.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 17, 2026
Unable to get work there, he moved to England, where he wrote screenplays under pseudonyms.
From "Spooked!" by Gail Jarrow
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
