2024 Scripted Series Lab Showrunner Announced

We are excited to announce that award-winning showrunner Michael MacLennan has been selected as the Showrunner-in-Residence for the 2024 Scripted Series Lab. MacLennan will lead the sixth iteration of the PSP’s flagship program. 

“We are thrilled to have Michael MacLennan on board for 2024,” says PSP’s Executive Director Camilla Tibbs. “Michael brings writing and producing talent, rigour, and a wealth of experience working across Canada and in the US. The 2024 cohort are incredibly fortunate to be able to work with him.”

“The West Coast has a diverse and deep bench of writers, and as a fourth-generation Vancouverite, it’s an honour to return home with this opportunity to mentor some of them,” says MacLennan. “Having met the wildly talented contenders, I expect we’ll all be lucky to work for them in a few short years.”

The Scripted Series Lab, which runs from January to April 2024, guides six up-and-coming BC-based screenwriters in a writer’s room as they develop an original series. In addition to this hands-on writing experience, the soon-to-be-announced participants will receive valuable mentoring on their own original pilots, plus workshops and information sessions with industry experts, all with a goal to help them build sustainable careers in the entertainment industry. Many program alumni have gone on to write for series on Netflix, CBC, Apple TV+, Amazon, Bell, Corus and more. 

Michael MacLennan

Vancouver-born Michael MacLennan has been nominated seven times for the Writers Guild of Canada Canadian Screenwriting Award, and received the WGC’s 2018 Showrunner of the Year Award. A producer of nearly 300 episodes, his credits include Co-Executive Producer of Queer As Folk, creator and EP of Godiva’s, Co-EP on Flashpoint, Bitten, and Freeform’s hit series The Fosters. He co-created and show-ran Bomb Girls, twice nominated for Best Series by the Canadian Screen Awards and honoured as Outstanding Dramatic Series by the US Gracie Awards. He has written multiple pilot scripts for CBS and ABC and served as Executive Producer and Showrunner of Omnifilm Entertainment’s BritBox/ITV series The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco. Most recently, he created for Netflix Tiny Pretty Things, which was their number-one series worldwide for fourteen days.