Creator story · 2004–today
The side project that refused to die — and might finally be ready for a second act.
I created Scenaristes.com in 2004 as a free network for people who write films and the people they need around them. I never really monetised it. I never raised money for it. Yet more than two decades later, people are still joining, uploading work and looking for collaborators. In 2026 that persistence looks less like a forgotten website and more like an asset worth understanding again.
Data snapshot · 30 August 2026 · internal Scenaristes.com database aggregates
Why it existed
The original job
Help a writer be visible, share work and find the people needed to move a story closer to a film.
Writing is often presented as solitary work. Film-making is the opposite. A screenplay eventually needs readers, collaborators, producers, directors, actors, designers, technicians and people willing to take a chance on something that does not yet exist.
That was the gap behind Scenaristes.com. A writer needed somewhere to say who they were and what they were working on. A producer or director needed a way to discover writers and projects. Someone developing a film needed a collaborator, a script doctor, an illustrator, an actor, a translator or simply another person who understood the problem.
The site gradually became several products at once: a directory, a screenplay library, a classified-ad marketplace and a lightweight member workspace. Profiles can be explored by profession, education, country, language and medium. Screenplays can be browsed by genre. Classifieds range from collaborator searches and recruiting to pitches, services and competitions.
What accumulated
NOT JUST CONTENT. A STRUCTURED GRAPH OF PEOPLE, SKILLS, PROJECTS, LANGUAGES AND CREATIVE INTENT.
That structure is why the old site is more interesting than its interface suggests. The UI shows its age. The underlying jobs do not.
The long arc
Scenaristes.com started as a practical community project: give screenwriters a profile, a place to publish work, and a way to find directors, producers, collaborators and opportunities. I built it because the creative work is individual, but getting a film made never is.
Registrations accelerated sharply. The directory became more useful because it was no longer only a list of writers: it also contained directors, producers, actors, artists, students and other film professionals. People came for visibility and stayed because there were other people worth finding.
The site never became a conventional startup. There was no ad machine, subscription engine or fundraising story. I kept it online because people continued to use it. That makes it commercially underdeveloped, but also unusually clean as a signal: the community exists because the underlying job still exists.
After years of modest but persistent activity, registrations and screenplay uploads started rising again. The period from 2022 through August 2026 accounts for almost half of the registrations and uploaded texts in the site's entire history.
Generative AI is changing writing, story development, visualisation and production. At the same time, creators need trusted collaborators, provenance, control over their work and places where AI augments rather than replaces them. Scenaristes.com already has the human layer. The question is what to build on top of it.
The surprising part
The registration history is not a smooth decline from the 2000s. It has two distinct waves. The first peak came in 2007. Then, after more than a decade of modest activity, the site accelerated again.
From 2022 through 30 August 2026, Scenaristes.com recorded 6,266 registrations. That is about 46% of all registrations since 2004. During the same period, members added 1,799 texts and screenplays — roughly 48% of all recorded uploads since 2005.
In 2025 alone, 1,551 people registered and 612 texts were uploaded. By 30 August 2026, another 1,282 registrations and 275 uploads had already been recorded. Whatever is driving discovery today, the project is not surviving on nostalgia.
of all registrations happened from 2022 onward
of recorded text uploads happened from 2022 onward
The network today
The public directory currently includes 4,182 people identifying as screenwriters, alongside 609 film directors, 295 film producers, 164 comic-book artists, actors, editors, journalists, film students, photographers and many other creative roles.
France remains the largest geography, with more than 5,000 directory profiles. But the network also contains substantial communities in Spain, Argentina, Belgium, Morocco, Mexico, Cameroon, Canada, Italy, Algeria, the United States, Colombia, Ivory Coast, Venezuela and many other countries.
That matters because a future creative platform does not need to begin by manufacturing a community from zero. Scenaristes.com already has a multilingual, multi-role base and a history of people arriving with a concrete intent: make something, publish something, or find someone.
Visit Scenaristes.comA possible second act
This is not a description of the current product. It is the opportunity I see in 2026: modernise the network first, then add AI where it meaningfully helps creators move a project forward.
Private, creator-controlled feedback on structure, continuity, characters, pacing, dialogue and alternative story choices — assistance rather than automatic authorship.
Turn scenes into shot ideas, moodboards, storyboards, animatics and pitch material so a writer can move further toward a film before a full production team exists.
Use the existing network of writers, directors, producers, artists and other professionals to recommend collaborators based on project needs, language, geography, medium and experience.
Give each project a private home for drafts, notes, collaborators and versions — with explicit permissions and no training on private creative work without consent.
The line I would not cross
The writer remains the author. AI should widen creative possibility, not erase authorship.
Private scripts stay private. No model training on creator work without explicit opt-in consent.
Human collaboration is the moat. The network matters more than another generic writing chatbot.
Modernise the product before inventing complexity: mobile UX, onboarding, search, profiles and project pages first.
Not an exit story
Trombi.com taught me about focus, network effects and exits. Mer et Marine taught me about complementary founders, infrastructure and specialist audiences. Scenaristes.com is teaching me something different: a product can remain unfinished for years and still accumulate community, data and opportunity. The next question is whether that latent value deserves a serious product again.
Public product links