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Short of the DayA harrowing and compelling short starring and directed by Josh Hutcherson

The most terrifying facet of extreme schizophrenia, I think, is the idea that the line between reality and delusion can at times not exist, that even though your senses might tell you something’s wrong or off, your mind won’t translate it into meaning. You learn you can’t trust yourself, basically, and that, to me, is the most frightening thing I can think of. We each are, at the end of every day, our only arbiters of the truth, and to learn you’re incapable of always telling or always accepting that truth from yourself must be its own kind of private hell.

Now, of course, I am describing an extreme sort of the disease, not everyone who suffers from schizophrenia suffers to that degree as there are in fact several medications that can help those afflicted lead normal lives. That...

Having established himself as an actor, Josh Hutcherson has now moved behind the camera. The Hunger Games co-star’s short film ‘Ape’ is the most buzzed-about entry with The Big Script, a five-video filmmaking series now available through Conde Nast Entertainment (Cne)’s owned-and-operated video platform The Scene.

The Big Script is a collaboration between Cne, Hutcherson’s Turkeyfoot Productions, and Indiginous Media, a studio founded in 2014 by a trio of entertianment industry vets. The project’s producers combed through thousands of screenplays from Hollywood’s Black List before settling on five to adapt into short films. The resulting videos range from 11 to 17 minutes in length, and four of them are directed by their writers. The lone exception is ‘Ape,’ which Hutcherson directed from a screenplay written by Jon Johnstone.

With The Big Script, Cne, Indiginous, and Turkeyfoot are hoping to introduce viewers to the “next generation of great storytellers,...

“Ape,” a psychological thriller directed by Josh Hutcherson (“The Hunger Games,” “The Kids Are Alright”), debuted today on the Conde Nast-owned digital platform The Scene. The fifteen-minute film stars Hutcherson as a schizophrenic teen battling hallucinations, with a script by Jon Johnstone.

The film is part of a new emerging filmmakers initiative from Conde Nast Entertainment, Indigenous Media, and Josh and Michelle Hutcherson’s Turkeyfoot Productions, called The Big Script. Citing an increase in major studio tent pole films, The Big Script aims to find and produce “independently created content that can thrive on digital/emerging platforms” and is “driven by unique voices.”

Read More: Female Filmmakers Are ‘Grossly Underrepresented’ When It Comes to Directing Opportunities, New Study Finds

Partnering with The Black List script database, the five films were chosen from over 2,000 submissions, with the only requirement being that the film feature characters in their late teens to late twenties.

For several months, nascent production company Indigenous Media and actor Josh Hutcherson have teased an incubator project called The Big Script, through which they would take five scripts from Hollywood’s Black List and adapt them into digital shorts. Now, titles and summaries have been provided for all five projects, with Hutcherson set to direct one of them.

As he previously discussed during the Tribeca Film Festival, Hutcherson will direct Ape, which will follow the story of a young man who suffers from schizophrenia. The other four shorts will all be directed by their respective screenwriters. The five projects included in The Big Script all feature leads in their teens and early twenties. Here, via Variety, are brief descriptions for all of them:

“Ape” by Jon Johnstone: To take control of his life, Travis Wilker must conquer the hallucinations that plagued his childhood.

“Boy in a Backpack” by Bradley Martocello...