Inevitable Foundation Is Evolving Its Accelerate Fellowship. Here’s How It Will Help Disabled Writers

Writers Sam Dunnewold and Ashley Eakin, alongside Inevitable’s president Richiel Siegel, discuss the industry challenges currently facing screenwriters and how the latest iteration of the 2025 Accelerate program aims to address it.

From left: Inevitable Foundation president Richiel Siegel and Accelerate Fellow Kalen Feeney. Credit: A Klass

By Abbey White

Shortly after Sam Dunnewold was named an Inevitable Foundation Accelerate Fellow in Spring 2022, the screenwriter landed a general meeting with a major television studio. His pitch, inspired by his time both working and unionizing at The Onion, was developed over six months before it was presented to the studio’s head of comedy. 

That was in March 2023, three months before the Writer’s Guild strike, a time when greenlights across the industry began to slow in anticipation of the work stoppage. The studio would pass on Dunnewold’s project, but when the strike ended in late September, the generally positive experience of that first pitch encouraged him to shop it around. His then-reps were “very pessimistic about that, and it seemed to be very much about the general state of TV.” 

“Coming out of the strike, everything I was hearing was that TV is really hard right now. Then I met with a lot of managers in January 2024 and every one was like, ‘I can't really help you on TV. This is a great pilot sample, but what do you have for features?’” the Sundance Episodic Lab alum recalls. “It very much felt like the music had stopped during the strike. The enormous golden age of the TV bubble had collapsed.”

An upper level TV writer who spoke on the condition of anonymity noted that in their experience, the current industry conditions aren’t just a turning back of the clock to the pre-streaming days.

“They would once buy and develop 50 scripts, and make 10 or more pilots in order to pick two or three to go to series. Now they make 10 scripts to make 1 pilot,” the writer tells Inevitable Insider about why there’s currently so few jobs for small screen writers. “Then that one show, instead of having 20 people on the staff, has three upper level people. That's why so many lower level and mid level writers are being shut out of the process.”

“Even if you have a great pilot, it’s only 20% of the equation. Who is showrunning is the next big question, and most showrunners are working on their own material right now,” adds Inevitable Foundation co-founder and president Richie Siegel. “Then there's the question of what is the season, what is the series, what is its budget? These other elements are the majority of the television equation that has to be filled in right now.”

For feature film writers, particularly those in the indie space, now can also be a challenging time, with Oscar-nominated Anora writer-director Sean Baker expressing that the industry is “struggling right now, more than ever,” during the 2025 Spirit Awards. 

“Gone are the days of DVD sales that allow for greater risk to be taken on challenging films. That revenue stream is gone, and the only way to see significant back-end is to have a box office hit with profits that far exceed what any of our films will ever see,” he told the Santa Monica audience about producing indies in the streaming age. “The system has to change, because this is simply unsustainable. We are creating product that creates jobs and revenue for the entire industry.”

How (and Why) the Accelerate Fellowship Is Changing

Amid these industry challenges, Inevitable Foundation has been looking for meaningful ways to support its work around investing in disabled writers and filmmakers’ artistic and financial freedom, and their use of film and TV to destigmatize disability and mental health. The result is the latest evolution of the Accelerate Fellowship, which will respond to some creatives’ current needs.

“When we started in the spring of 2021, the fellowship was focused on the person more than a project, allowing people the space to work on different scripts, flex their skills between mediums, and provide a lot of holistic support throughout the process,” recalls Siegel. “In many ways that version of the program has been very successful.”

But working with writers over the last three years has allowed Siegel and the foundation’s creative development team to better see how the industry is shifting, especially for disabled scribes who already face additional barriers to advancing their work and careers.  

“​​The bar for our community of artists is so high in terms of quality of material and depth of connections when it comes to breaking through, and in the last few years, progress for our community was coming from our ability to really lean into a specific project versus hover across multiple,” Siegel explains. “Our new iteration of Accelerate is focused on that by leveling up the quality of material support we provide, along with more targeted mentorship and connections.”

Historically, the Accelerate Fellowship has had a higher concentration of TV writers — a byproduct of the industry’s demand for more writers on a single project and more consistent terms of employment. It has also been shaped by the organization's dedication to helping disabled writers better situate themselves to produce disability-inclusive projects and hire other disabled creatives.

But disabled scribes getting projects produced alone can be just as meaningful in mediums like film, even if they aren’t the creative with the most power on a project, says Siegel. 

“If a disabled writer develops a television show and is able to get a room opened and get the greenlight, that's going to create jobs immediately. The bar to get there is so high right now though, in our analysis, a feature writer writing a spec and selling it means they might get rewritten, a director might come in and put their own stamp on the script, but that person still earned those wages, got that credit, and can take their career to the next level.”

The new iteration of the Accelerate Fellowship will account for the current working realities of TV and film writers, with access to creative, financial, business, and health resources, as well as support in preparing their next project in a time when the industry is asking even more from creatives. 

Sponsored by Netflix’s Fund for Creative Equity, the 2025 program will continue offering three TV and/or film writers a $40,000 grant, bespoke mentorship from industry leaders, community-building with other disabled creatives, and health insurance coverage. The program length, however, is now six months and the time will focus on supporting scribes through a rewriting sprint designed to advance the project they apply with. 

Who This Program Is For

Writers who are looking to level up or expand their library of original TV or feature spec and sample scripts (e.g., a TV writer currently looking to strengthen a pilot script or work on a feature), are encouraged to apply. As are those whose projects feature nuanced disability representation. 

“Our belief is that if we can get the material on the page and it can be excellent, we can bring all of our other resources together, which will lead to desired outcomes like sold projects and the leveling up of careers,” says Siegel.

For writer-director Ashley Eakin, who has one TV project currently in development and is working on a short-turned-feature out of the female incubator program Powderkeg: Fuse, the creative control that comes with spec scripts is empowering in a somewhat disempowering moment. 

So is being able to consider your story in different mediums, and to have your spec script for it — a traditionally unpaid effort — buoyed by the kind of financial resources and creative support only possible through a program like the Accelerate Fellowship. 

“If my show falls apart, we may pitch it to other places,” she says. “But I've also said I'm going to take these characters and make it into a feature because I think there are a lot of creative ways to get that feature made. My new mantra this year is writing stuff on spec to own it, so I can take it to places and say, ‘What's a realistic path to getting this made?’”

Writers interested in applying but who still have questions should email us.