PARK CITY, UTAH, November 8, 2024 – The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the lab fellows selected for the 2024 Episodic Lab program, taking place at the Sundance Resort in Sundance, Utah, from November 8–13. The selected eight artists working across seven projects are Miriam Agwai (Midnight Point), Osiris Pichardo Grullón (Majao y Mambo), Fatima Liaqat and Kyle Kubo (You’re Invading My Space), Missy Malek (Plain Sight), Paul Sanchez IV (AV’82), Yancey Wang (South Sea), and Kevin Yang (Best Friend). Their works explore themes of societal ascension, crimes of resistance, destructive friendships, and triumphs in the world of Bachata dance.
The five-day immersive experience of the Episodic Lab is created to unite early-career writers with an original series IP that has not yet been produced, giving them opportunities to work under the guidance of established showrunners and executive producers. The fellows will workshop their pilot, pitch their series, and participate in one-on-one story meetings, case study screenings, panels, and writers rooms focused on advancing their series concept. The fellows are also being supported through workshops prior to the lab, as well as our yearlong continuum of support.
“Imagine a world where people commit magnanimous, radical acts of integrity. Every project this year presents a version of that,” said Jandiz Estrada Cardoso, Episodic Program Director. “Our lab invites the most altruistic mentors and advisors who understand how to support projects that aim to impact global audiences who believe destiny is a decision.”
Creative advisors this year include Daniel Chun (The Simpsons), Nastaran Dibai (Resident Alien), Lee Eisenberg (Lessons in Chemistry), James Wong (American Horror Story), Graham Yost (Slow Horses), Michelle Ashford (Masters of Sex), Elgin James (Mayans MC), and Tanya Saracho (Vida). Industry mentors this year will be Emily Levitan (Netflix), Dante Di Loreto (Fremantle), Sarah Timberman (Timberman-Beverly), Simone Harris (Proximity), Juliana Janes (UCP), Dan Magnante (2AM), Naketha Mattocks (UTV), and Brett Osmon (UTV).
The Sundance Institute Episodic Program is made possible by Founding Supporters Lyn and Norman Lear and Cindy Harrell Horn and Alan Horn. Leadership Supporters include the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, AMC+, NBCUniversal Launch, Netflix, and The Harry and Florence Sloan Foundation.
Episodic Lab alumni include producers Katori Hall (P-Valley), Barry Jenkins (Underground Railroad), Tanuj Chopra (Delhi Crime season 2), Nick Jones Jr. (Yasuke), April Shih (Fargo), Mike Flynn (East New York), Crystal Liu (American Horror Story), Rafael Agustin (Hipster Death Rattle), Desiree Akhavan (The Bisexual), and Heather Rae (Outer Range). Past fellows have gone on to write on shows including Mr. & Mrs. Smith, The Sympathizer, Brother Son, Swarm, Ramy, Fight Night, Poker Face, Dr. Death, Lioness, Reservation Dogs, Silo, Futurama, Powerbook, Queen Sugar, Ms. Marvel, One of Us Is Lying, This Is Us, Little America, Dave, Snowpiercer, Bel Air, Better Call Saul, Sweet Tooth, and Brilliant Minds. Alumni have also set up or sold lab projects at networks including HBO, Amazon, STARZ, Disney+, Hulu, FX, ABC, CW, AMC, and Netflix.
The 2024 Sundance Episodic Lab projects and fellows are:
Miriam Agwai with Midnight Point: When a Nigerian immigrant working for an international crime division loses her power to see others’ memories, she will sacrifice everything to remain protected by the organization — even if it means betraying everyone closest to her.
Miriam Agwai is a Nigerian writer, director, and actor focused on telling stories grounded in our shared humanity. Her work has screened at the NewFilmmakers NY, Estes Park Film Festival, and Lady Filmmakers Film Festival. She is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts’ Film BFA program.
Osiris Pichardo Grullón with Majao y Mambo: In the world of competitive Bachata dance, a tenacious yet self-doubting son struggles to revive his father’s venerable but antiquated Latin dance studio while love dwindles, family relations strain, and his pursuits of becoming the next legendary Bachatero fall rapidly out of step.
Osiris Pichardo Grullón is a Dominican writer-director of projects centered on complex family dynamics. Currently, he is the assistant to showrunner Alex Kurtzman on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. An LALIFF Inclusion Fellowship finalist, Grullón is a Wharton/Penn graduate with a film/TV MFA from USC, and he is a nationally competitive Bachata dancer.
Fatima Liaqat and Kyle Kubo with You’re Invading My Space: Zaweela and Hiba, two burnt-out 20-something BFFs, are hitting the road for a cross-country girls trip filled with dollar menu diarrhea, horned-up romance, and self-medicated self-discovery. Then the aliens attack.
Fatima Liaqat and Kyle Kubo met as writer-producers at BuzzFeed. They are 2021 CAPE New Writers fellows who have pitched series to Max, Disney, and more. Their work has been showcased at the UCB theater, in the digital pages of Vice and Vanity Fair, and on their fridge.
Missy Malek with Plain Sight: It’s 1999 — a group of disabled 16-year-old friends from the violent housing estates of Ladbroke Grove can no longer kid themselves about the life prospects available to them. They decide to form a gang and become the best drug dealers in the area. What could go wrong?
Missy Malek, a British actor and filmmaker, completed her undergraduate degree in philosophy at Oxford University. Her short film We’re Too Good For This premiered at the BFI London Film Festival. She starred opposite Ian Mckellen in Hamlet and The Cherry Orchard. She’s currently making her Broadway debut in Romeo + Juliet.
Paul Sanchez IV with AV’82: This hourlong drama follows 15-year-old Romeo, a LatinX punk rocker, and his ad hoc family of AV club outsiders as they battle racism, homophobia, and, later, homelessness, after his ad executive single white mother, Judy, moves their family to her childhood hometown of Darien, Connecticut: an affluent, conservative, lily-white, cisgender, Reagan-era hellhole.
Paul Sanchez IV is a writer-director known for his punk-inspired ethos of “Radical Inclusion and Empathy without Fear.” Unhoused as a teen and while attending NYU Tisch, Sanchez brings a raw, unfiltered perspective to his work, creating heartfelt stories that resonate with authenticity and grace. He holds an MFA from AFI.
Yancey Wang with South Sea: In 1800s China, when the young bride of an opium merchant is framed for her husband’s murder, she chooses to defy the patriarchy and embrace a lawless life of freedom and adventure on the high seas. Inspired by Ching Shih, the pirate queen of South China Sea.
Yancey Wang is a bilingual Chinese American writer who recently staffed on 20th Television/CBS’s True Lies. A former Disney production executive, she has produced premium content internationally. She is a graduate of AFI’s screenwriting program, and her scripts have won AFI’s Writers’ Room Ready Award and the ScreenCraft Action & Adventure Competition, among others.
Kevin Yang with Best Friend: This half-hour darkly comedic thriller follows a young man as he returns to his hometown to give his estranged childhood best friend a gift in the form of an unusual ultimatum: rekindle their friendship, or die.
Kevin Yang is a Chicago suburb–born Taiwanese American writer whose left-of-center, high-concept comedies center Asian protagonists amid the absurdity of human nature. He has worked on the series Hello Tomorrow and Little America, and his work placed in the Disney Writing Program and the Academy Nicholl Fellowships.
Sundance Institute
As a champion and curator of independent stories, the nonprofit Sundance Institute provides and preserves the space for artists across storytelling media to create and thrive. Founded in 1981 by Robert Redford, the Institute’s signature labs, granting, and mentorship programs, dedicated to developing new work, take place throughout the year in the U.S. and internationally. Sundance Collab, a digital community platform, brings a global cohort of working artists together to learn from Sundance advisors and connect with each other in a creative space, developing and sharing works in progress. The Sundance Film Festival and other public programs connect audiences and artists to ignite new ideas, discover original voices, and build a community dedicated to independent storytelling. Through the Sundance Institute artist programs, we have supported such projects as Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Big Sick, Bottle Rocket, Boys Don’t Cry, Boys State, Call Me by Your Name, Clemency, CODA, Drunktown’s Finest, The Farewell, Fire of Love, Flee, The Forty-Year-Old Version, Fruitvale Station, Half Nelson, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Hereditary, Honeyland, The Infiltrators, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Little Woods, Love & Basketball, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Mudbound, Nanny, One Child Nation, Pariah, Raising Victor Vargas, Requiem for a Dream, Reservoir Dogs, RBG, Sin Nombre, Sorry to Bother You, Strong Island, Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Swiss Army Man, A Thousand and One, Top of the Lake, Walking and Talking, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, and Zola. Through year-round artist programs, the Institute also nurtured the early careers of such artists as Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Gregg Araki, Darren Aronofsky, Lisa Cholodenko, Ryan Coogler, Nia DaCosta, The Daniels, David Gordon Green, Miranda July, James Mangold, John Cameron Mitchell, Kimberly Peirce, Boots Riley, Ira Sachs, Quentin Tarantino, Taika Waititi, Lulu Wang, and Chloé Zhao. Support Sundance Institute in our commitment to uplifting bold artists and powerful storytelling globally by making a donation at sundance.org/donate. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube.
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MEDIA CONTACTS: Tammie Rosen, tammie_rosen@sundance.org; Tiffany Duersch, tiffany_duersch@sundance.org; Alex Courides, alex_courides@sundance.org; Sylvy Fernández, sylvy_fernandez@sundance.org
