Movie Magic Screenwriter Dormant
The old guard professional, still sold and updated.
At a glance
- Maker
- Write Brothers, Inc.
- First release
- 1994
- Status
- Dormant — available, but barely updated
- Platforms
- Windows, Mac
- Pricing
- $169–249.95 perpetual (still sold)
- Native format
- Movie Magic Screenwriter (.mmsw)
What it is
Movie Magic Screenwriter (from the Write Brothers lineage behind Movie Magic Scheduling and Budgeting) was Final Draft’s great rival through the 1990s and 2000s. It is still sold and maintained: the 6.8 line carries 64-bit and Apple Silicon releases through 2026, though there has been no new major version in years.
What people are saying
The good
Loyalists prize its depth (TV, stage and musical templates richer than rivals), a decades-long reputation for better customer service than Final Draft, and real cachet in episodic television. Multi-decade users still run it happily on modern machines.
The bad
The dominant current judgment is dormant: version 6 dates to the late 2000s, modern-OS problems took years to patch, some tools have been broken for long stretches, and premium pricing with Final Draft interoperability friction makes it hard for working writers to justify today.
Paraphrased consensus from user reviews, forums and retrospective coverage across the web.
Where it came from
Born as ScriptThing (circa 1994) from ScriptPerfection Enterprises, acquired by Write Brothers — a company whose 1982-founded founders built the first screenplay formatter — and merged into Movie Magic Screenwriter in the late 1990s.
Worth knowing
Write Brothers’ first product, Scriptor, won a 1994 Academy Award for technical achievement — the Oscar behind the whole industry.
Getting scripts in and out
Imports: Final Draft (.fdx)