Creative Spotlight: Cheryl Meyer
Cheryl Meyer on a panel at the the Vancouver Horror Show Film Festival | Credit: Sarah Race
In January 2024, while the wider film and TV industry was still adjusting to life after a five-month 2023 writers’ strike, Cheryl Meyer was in the midst of an exciting professional juggling act.
The Canadian-born screenwriter has worked in the film and TV industry for over 10 years, but in early 2024, she was named to the Winter 2024 Elevate Collective cohort. A year later selected again, this time as a STARZ 2025 #TakeTheLead Elevate Collective Award winner. One of the foundation’s legacy programs, Elevate Collective, provided professional development grants alongside mentorship and coaching, script consultation, IP acquisition, and community connections that disabled writers need to level up their careers.
The grants, which started at $5,000 but could be as much as $12,500 a year, were designed to support living expenses so writers could remain employed primarily within the industry and focus on developing their projects and advancing their careers. It also supported the purchase of access tools to ensure they did their best work in the writers’ room and on set, funded professional and creative training, paid for travel to critical networking opportunities with disabled peers and future employers, and more.
Cheryl Meyer on the set of ‘All the Lost Ones.’ Credit: Catwalk Media
The consecutive awards came at the right time, helping Meyer propel herself to the next stage of her career. In those months when she first joined the Inevitable community, the screenwriter had just finished post-production on her Canadian Screen Award-nominated indie apocalyptic thriller All the Lost Ones and learned her horror feature, Carved, had been greenlit. On the TV side, she was deep in the process of taking out her adaptation of Gabrielle S. Prendergast’s Zero Repeat Forever, which had in Fall 2023 been selected for the two-day Toronto International Film Festival Series Accelerator and presented as part of the SeriesFest Pitch-A-Thon Roadshow at the festival.
Her attention was also locked onto another project, Chronic Elle, a disability-centric series with a personal touch that reflects some of Meyer’s own experiences as a woman living with chronic pain. The concept—which was later selected by the Athena Film Festival Episodic Writers Lab, where she received their Loreen Arbus Foundation Fellowship—was something Meyer was looking to rework structurally. The timing of the Elevate Collective funding helped make that and more possible. “I always strive to improve my craft, so having funds to invest in this part of my career is extremely helpful,” Meyer said.
Before the 2024 Inevitable Foundation Elevate Collective Award
Growing up in Timmins, Ont., Meyer’s path to telling stories for the screen began in college at the University of Toronto, with her earliest paid professional work in film and TV placing her in the middle of physical production, where she donned hats like production coordinator, production manager, and second AD, alongside working in post-production. Around 2018, she made the switch from production to screenwriting, staffing on series such as the TVOkids children’s edutainment show It’s My Party and the family drama My Perfect Landing from Project 10.
In 2020, Meyer made her feature-film screenwriting debut with the action-thriller The Last Mark, a Toronto International Film Festival 2021 Industry Select that was eventually acquired by Super Channel. Her next project, All the Lost Ones, debuted theatrically in Canada and later had a limited U.S. theatrical release. During its festival run, it garnered awards for Best Narrative Feature at Forest City Film Festival, as well as Best Narrative Feature and Best Screenplay at Vancouver Horror Show.
Starring Devon Sawa, All the Lost Ones is among the many projects aligned with the screenwriter’s broader interest in storytelling about invisible disabilities and women. Another is Invalid, which was selected separately as part of the 2022 Wscripted Cannes Screenplay list, an esteemed competition that highlights work by women and nonbinary writers.
“We're always looking for new stories as audiences, as storytellers and as producers, and the authentic experience has not been overly examined, so there's lots of space to dive into what the [disability and female] experience is like as something all viewers can watch,” she said.
Karen Huran and Cheryl Meyer accepting Canadian Screen Award for ‘Beyond Black Beauty.’ Credit: Taylor Erwin
In the 2024 Elevate Collective Program
Invalid—now titled Still Here—follows a woman, suddenly disabled and haunted by an apparition of herself from the night of an accident, whose caretakers are increasingly hostile towards her.
"The living expenses allowance was crucial to helping offset costs as I worked on writing spec scripts. And I diversified the professional development funds toward pitch coaching, scriptwriting, and storyboarding, so I could understand how to visually express my screenplay. Those two elements were the most impactful with immediate results."
The concept led Meyer to a creative connection with writer-director Justin Harding, with whom she co-wrote Hulu’s Carved. For this production, Meyer was invited to shadow the director on-set—an experience that directly helps elevate writers’ careers and that her first $5,000 Elevate Collective grant helped subsidize.
While there, she was exposed to the physical realities of production, was available to perform immediate script rewrites if called upon, and could align her creative vision with that of the director and actors, laying the groundwork for her future scripts to be more production-savvy. For this pivotal experience, the Elevate grant served as her income while on set and covered essential disability accommodations to safely and comfortably navigate on-location filming as someone with chronic conditions that include cold intolerance.
“I bought heated apparel so I could keep down my chronic pain while spending long hours outside or in drafty locations. This included a heated seat and heated scarf, which I will also use as I work in my home office,” she said at the time. “This equipment will help even more over time as I tinker and adjust how I can best set up my workflow ergonomically.”
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festivals Carved and All the Lost Ones screened.
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times Meyer made a publication list (New York Times, Playback).
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festival awards bestowed on film projects.
Around that same time, Meyer also made significant investments in Chronic Elle. Alongside retitling the TV project Jain vs. Pain, she had time—thanks in part to the programming funding—to pause other work and rewrite the project into a buddy comedy series about a woman with chronic pain that becomes personified as her super fan. Alongside support from story editor Lauren Gussis, Meyer “invested in a storyboarding workshop with the Vancouver Film School, so that I [could] better understand the visual roles of storytelling.”
Through STARZ 2025 #TakeTheLead Elevate Collective Award
Cheryl Meyer on stage at Series Mania 2026 Credit: Courtesy of Subject
In May 2025, Meyer would be selected again for Elevate Collective. But in the months leading up to her second year in the program, Meyer finally saw her series Zero Repeat Forever optioned, along with a nomination by the Canadian Screen Awards for her work co-writing an episode of Prime Video’s Beyond Black Beauty. She was also selected to pitch Jane vs. Pain at the ReelAbilities Film Festival in New York.
Once the program launched in the early summer, now with a $12,500 grant and mentorship through STARZ, Meyer made the permanent move to Los Angeles, secured $250,000 in private financing for a horror film featuring a disabled protagonist, and attended Cannes as part of the Wscripted Cannes Screenplay List's 5th Year Anniversary in support of Still Here. The latter, which saw Meyer briefly take the stage to discuss the project, was reviewed by several producers. During this time, she would also with the Canadian Screen Award in the Best Writing, Children's or Youth category for Beyond Black Beauty.
Within the program, Meyer was mentored by an executive at STARZ, and through her communications with the studio and network, received pilot feedback that helped her pilot Gold City become more commercially viable. Additionally, the funding allowed her to focus less on securing her next job and as a result, Meyer completed a full draft, which she submitted to Series Mania. It was selected for the Writers Campus 2026, which she attended in France as the year’s only North American project.
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festivals and/or markets attended.
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award nominations for All the Lost Ones).
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meetings with producers and executives.
Through the program, she also received education and transparency around the state of the industry, something she says was invaluable in helping her realistically and savvily navigate current challenges. She also saw her network grow, including relationships with new creative executives and producers with whom she was able to work directly via STARZ, as well as by joining Women in Film (WIF) and attending the American Film Market. The grant paid for her attendance at AFM, where she met with distributors, sales agents, and streamers around her slate of horror films—an experience Meyer says will see returns within the next couple of years.
For Meyer, being a part of Inevitable Foundation’s Elevate community over the last two years has provided a rare opportunity to share her experiences and challenges as a disabled creative with other writers and creatives. It has also helped her afford her move to Los Angeles, where she could make more direct career connections, comfortably dedicate time to developing projects that will increase disability representation, and offer unmatched insight into studio decision-making.
"The mentorship has helped me enhance my craft and my confidence. The award allowed for me to focus on my writing in development and to expand my networks through professional development opportunities. Both will pay off in the next year and without this award, neither would've been possible. Though 2025 has been a challenging year, the STARZ #TakeTheLead Elevate Collective Award has kept me optimistic and motivated, renewing my belief that there's a path forward."
