Other forms: screenplays
A screenplay is the written text of a film — every line and scene. Write a screenplay, an original screenplay, adapt the screenplay.
The format is rigid on purpose: correctly formatted, one page runs about one minute of screen time, so a hundred and twenty pages is a two-hour film. It describes only what can be seen and heard. Note the compound of screen and play.
1nounscreenplayThe written text of a film.
“She wrote the screenplay for the film, adapting it from a best-selling novel.”
screenplay is a text.
Also accepted in games: script
Screen plus play, on the model of stage play.
From screen + play.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA