If you read that headline, you may be confused. What exactly is Amazon Storyteller? Well, it’s a new service from Amazon Studios that allows writers to turn their scripts into storyboards, complete with characters and dialog.

This new storyboard can then be shared with others for feedback. The new service launched today, but is currently in beta. The best part, it’s free.

“We’ve found that many writers want to see their story up on its feet in visual form but find it harder than it should be to create a storyboard,” said Roy Price, Director of Amazon Studios. “Storyteller provides a digital backlot, acting troupe, prop department and assistant editor—everything you need to bring your story to life. We want to see great stories turned into movies and television shows and we’ll continue to develop new features and tools that help people develop great stories.”

Want to know more? Here’s how it works:

Storyteller begins by scanning a movie script that has been uploaded to Amazon Studios. It identifies the scenes, locations and characters from scene descriptions, and “casts” them from a library of thousands of characters, props and backgrounds. Filmmakers can recast or change locations, or they can upload their own images.

The final season of Spartacus: War of the Damned begins January 25^th on Starz.  That’s tonight! We left off last season with Spartacus and his merry band of rebels facing the full might of the Roman legion, which are not against pulling shenanigans.

I was more than happy to sit down with Manu Bennett, who plays the undefeated Gaul and Spartacus BFF, Crixus.  Manu was passionate, assured, and especially candid as he spoke about his former co-star Andy Whitfield and what awaits Crixus in the new season. Generous to a fault, he also shared some spoils of war. (Note: This interview contains spoilers.)

The Flickcast: “Be Here Now” is emblazoned on your shirt.  Can you talk about why the phrase “Be Here Now” is important to you?

Manu Bennett: “Be Here Now” was a tattoo Andy [Whitfield] had on his forearm when he was going through his cancer treatment.  There’s a documentary that’s going to be coming out soon.

Rather than not being in the know about what happened to Andy, this documentary is for people who are really interested in the show and really fell in love with Andy and I know there’s so many people out there who did. I’m sure Andy would have liked everyone to go and watch this documentary to see what cancer can destroy in this life.

With the “found footage” movie Chronicle making so much money at the box office, especially in relation to how much it cost, it was pretty much inevitable a sequel was going to be made. Fortunately, Fox seems to be playing this one smart and has brought back Max Landis, the writer of the first Chronicle, to pen the sequel.

In case you’re not familiar with Chronicle, it featured actors Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell and Michael B. Jordan playing three high school friends who gain superpowers. Unfortunately, as cool as that may sound, things don’t go exactly as they hoped.

Soon, the trio find their lives going out of control and friendships tested as they explore the dark side. Didn’t they ever see Spider-Man? Great power, great responsibility, that kind of thing? Kids today.

Anyway, Landis will reportedly be working on the sequel as his next project after recently selling projects to both Ron Howard and Disney. Fox is looking at a 2013 release for the Chronicle sequel.

There has been talk of a third Bill And Ted film for quite some time. A few weeks ago it was stated by Alex Winter that the script has been written, by the original writers no less, and is waiting on a green light. Winter intially made this proclamation at a screening of his cult classic film Freaked, but it didn’t really register.

Yesterday Winter actually re-affirmed the news via a twitter back and forth:

@kelly_carlin: is it true? Bill & Ted’s 3? > Hey Kelly. -Script done? Check. -We love it? Check. -Green light? Working on it!

That’s so totally awesome! Knowing that there is a completed script, written by the guys that did the originals, and loved by at least half of the original Wyld Stallyns is most excellent news indeed.

Part of what makes this story so fun, beyond the reaffirmation of a completed script, is that Kelly Carlin, to whom Winter was responding, is George Carlin’s daughter. There is an awesome symmetry to the impetus of this story comes from Rufus’ daughter herself.

Here’s hoping that the powers that be decide to put a little money down and give us a chance to take another wild ride with the saviors of humanity. San Dimas High School football Rules!

Even with a perfectly fine piece of software for reading Final Draft scripts on the iPad already available in the form of FDX Reader, some users were still waiting for an “official” solution from Final Draft themselves. Well, they need wait no longer — or at least won’t have to after February 16.

That’s right, the company is releasing its “official” app to read scripts written in Final Draft on your iPad. For some of you, this won’t seem like a big deal. For those of us who use Final Draft daily for work and have alwyas wanted a way to read scripts on our iPads with the same fonts, page numbering and formatting as on our computers, this is a great development.

Some of the apps features will include:

• Works with Final Draft version 8 FDX files – the Hollywood industry standard script file format
• Imports scripts using email, iTunes File Sharing, or Dropbox
• Perfectly paginates to US Letter and standard European (A4) page sizes
• Precisely displays production scripts, including colored production pages, locked pages, scene numbering, and more!
• Scripts accurately scale to actual draft size

The Flickcast recently got the chance to speak with Marshall Cook, whose new film Division III: Football’s Finest is now on Blu-Ray and DVD. Cook co-wrote, directed, edited, and starred in the film, which stars Andy Dick as an insane college football coach.

The Flickcast:  Congratulations on the movie; it’s hilariously funny. You clearly have a good sense of comic timing.

Marshall Cook:  Well, a lot of the supporting cast are writers, and it was a culmination of everyone’s work that went into this. I don’t have the ego to say I’m the funniest person here.

TF:  Did you write it with the actors you got in mind?

MC:  Yeah, pretty much all of them, except for a couple. Alison Haislip, who plays my love interest, auditioned and she was very similar to the girl it was based on; she had that guy’s girl personality.  Also, she’s just a solid actor. I’m really glad we got her.

Even though this website could technically be called a “Blog” and those of us who contribute to it are known as “Bloggers,” we like to think of ourselves as writers. So, when other writers get recognized, as they have by the Writer’s Guild of America’s nominations for it’s awards today, we take notice.

We also take notice when movies that seem an odd choice for awards get nominated anyway. We will leave it to you, good readers, to decide which of the following nominees for Writers Guild awards seems a bit out of place.

Winners will be announced at the 2012 Writers Guild Awards on Sunday, February 19, 2012, during simultaneous ceremonies in Hollywood and New York. Check out all the nominees (and more) from the official press release:

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

50/50, Written by Will Reiser; Summit Entertainment

Bridesmaids, Written by Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig; Universal Studios

Midnight in Paris, Written by Woody Allen; Sony Pictures Classics

Win Win, Screenplay by Tom McCarthy; Story by Tom McCarthy & Joe Tiboni; Fox Searchlight

Young Adult, Written by Diablo Cody; Paramount Pictures

Even though this is technically a blog, we like to think of ourselves primarily as writers here at The Flickcast. Many of us have even been paid to write over the years and you can bet that pretty much everyone here has one or two screenplays, comic books or other literary works they are currently working on. It’s just the nature of things.

So, when the Writer’s Guild of America announces the nominations for outstanding writing for Television, we take notice and bring you all the details. That’s especially true when the top nominees are shows we really like.

One such show is Showtime’s freshman drama Homeland, which received 3 nominations including best drama series, best new series and best episodic drama. Homeland tied with perennial favorites Modern Family, Breaking Bad and Boardwalk Empire for the most nominations.

In addition to Homeland, Game Of Thrones, The Killing, New Girl and the Matt LeBlanc comedy Episodes all received nominations with Showtime getting a first time record of six for its shows. You may be wondering where Mad Men is in all of this?

Sadly, as the fifth season of the show was delayed, it didn’t make the cut for eligibility for this year’s awards. That’s probably okay as it gives a few other shows, like Homeland and Game of Thrones, a chance to shine. Can’t have Mad Men taking up all the awards, now can we?

The winners will be announced at the 2012 Writers Guild Awards on Feb. 19, 2012, at simultaneous ceremonies in Los Angeles and New York. Click through for the full list of nominee.

One of the most useful applications I use every day on the Mac has now arrived for Windows. That’s right Windows-using writers Scrivener is now available to you.

No matter if you’re writing the next great American novel (something for National Novel Writing Month perhaps?), research paper, script or any long-form text document that involves more than hammering away at the keys until you’re done, Scrivener, made by the fine folks at Literature & Latte, can help you get your work done. The multi-featured program excels at helping you collect research, bring order to fragmented ideas and avoid shuffling index cards in search of that elusive structure.

Scrivener can help you from the moment an idea comes into your imagination until the final finished pages are output. In short, it pretty much does everything for you except the actual writing.

Unfortunately, that will still be up to you. The rest you can leave to Scrivener.

As someone who uses this app daily (the Mac version) I can safely say it really helps me get my work done. Without it, I would be back to posting index cards to cork boards and trying to make things work that way. I like the 21st Century’s technological advancements and I like Scrivener.

Scrivener requires Windows XP, Vista, or 7 (32 or 64 bit). 1GB RAM; 1ghz Processor; 100mb disk space; 1064 x 786 screen.

When the iPad was first released many users regarded it as an ideal device to read books, comic books, magazines and screenplays. For that last one, your choices were pretty much limited to a PDF format of a script.

If you’re merely reading a script written by someone else, a PDF may work fine for you. But what if you’re a writer and want to read the current script you are writing using the de facto standard screenwriting app Final Draft?

That’s where something like FDX Reader comes in handy. The new app works a lot like iBooks or the kindle app for iPad and allows you to read Final Draft screenplays in their native file format and, more importantly, keep the formatting and page numbering of the script as well as adjust the size of the font — something you have a hard time doing with a traditional PDF file.

It also allows you to flip through pages with a tap or a swipe and jump to a page with a tap on the page number. The app is now available in the iTunes Store for $7.99 and works with the original iPad and iPad 2. Sorry, not the iPhone.

That may seem like a lot ffor what the app does but if you’re a screenwriter this app goes a long way to what we are all looking forward to: a native Final Draft app for the iPad. Until that arrives, being able to read screenplays on the iPad in their native format is pretty much good enough.