FOX Entertainment Writers Incubator

Eligibility and project requirements

No age, residency, citizenship or work-authorisation requirement is published anywhere, which is a genuine gap. You need not live in Los Angeles, but FOX states there may be in-person events or meetings there that participants are expected to attend. WGA status is irrelevant. Prior paid writing work is fine within a cap: you may still apply if you were at staff writer level on no more than one season of a show, and no explicit bar on currently staffed writers is published. Writing teams are accepted, with bios and resumes for each member. Submit one original episodic pilot script as a PDF; anything that is not an episodic pilot will be disqualified. All genres including comedy, drama and animation. Scripts must be fully original, must not incorporate or build on existing intellectual property, and scripts relying on generative AI are not accepted. Resubmissions must have changed by at least 75 per cent. Judging is not blind: your name may remain on the cover page.

Formats

TV Pilot

Open to

United States

Deadlines & fees

Dates and fees checked against the official site 23 Sept 2026.

Prepare your entry

Prizes

TREAT THIS AS UNPAID. FOX's overview page promises a stipend once, in a sentence that is visibly garbled and has been live since at least November 2025, while three separate passages state that participants will not be entitled to and will not receive any wages, remuneration or financial benefits as compensation. Those denials are framed as an unpaid-trainee legal test, which is structurally incompatible with paying a stipend, so the single stipend mention should not be relied on. RIGHTS ARE THE HEADLINE RISK, and FOX is unusually direct about it. In the same answer that denies payment, FOX states there will be an exchange for certain rights to the written materials submitted and created during the programme, and refers applicants to the FWI Letter Agreement. Two binding documents are required at application, the Submission of Materials Release and Agreement and the FWI Letter Agreement, and neither is published: both sit behind account registration. So rights are confirmed to be exchanged in place of payment, and the specific option, first-look or assignment terms are not public. Note too that participants rewrite their submitted scripts during the programme, so the agreement reaches both submitted and newly created material.

Judging

Submissions are reviewed by professional readers and FOX Entertainment executives, none of whom are named. Finalists need two people willing to give recommendations by phone; written recommendation letters are not accepted. No individual feedback is given on submissions because of volume. THE CAP IS THE THING TO PLAN AROUND: applications close at 1,000 submissions or on the published date, whichever comes first, and in both of the last two cycles the cap closed the window early. Treat the published deadline as a ceiling and the opening day as your real deadline.

Frequently asked questions