Your own private space
Your list sits in a space of its own, walled off from every other studio’s.
Slate protection
Your plans stay yours. Close calls never reach you.
You give us one line per project you’re developing. Each writer approves a short summary of their script. If the summary is too close to anything on your list, the script is held back before anyone at your studio sees a word — and nobody is told.
Northlight · project listConfidential
- Time-travel wild western comedy set in Nashville
- Heist on a 1960s cruise ship
- Female-led submarine thriller
- Haunted ski resort horror
- Coming-of-age drama in a Welsh mining town
Updated by phone, 1 March · approved by your development lead
Your part
One line per project. That’s the whole job.
No scripts, decks or treatments ever leave your building. A short, plain description is enough to spot a script that’s too close.
Lines like these are plenty
- “Time-travel wild western comedy set in Nashville”
- “Heist on a 1960s cruise ship”
- “Female-led submarine thriller”
- “Haunted ski resort horror”
- “Coming-of-age drama in a Welsh mining town”
- “Talking-dog family Christmas comedy”
- “Biopic of a Motown session drummer”
- “Zombie outbreak on a cross-Channel ferry”
- “Rival food-truck owners fall in love in Austin”
- “Near-future courtroom drama with an AI witness”
Rather not write anything down? We’ll call.
Once a month, one of our staff phones whoever you nominate, asks what’s new or dropped, and updates the list. You approve it. Nobody at your end has to type a word.
Confidential, always
Nobody sees your list. Nobody learns what it caught.
Never shown to anyone
Not to writers, not to other studios. When a script is held back, nobody is told which project it was close to — or that it was held back at all.
Under NDA throughout
Everyone at Gatehouse who could ever touch your account works under a non-disclosure agreement.
What happens to a script
Read once. Locked for good.
Five steps, in order. After step two, nobody can read the script unless the writer unlocks it.
1 · Writer
Signs the terms and uploads
Including a release: sending a script creates no deal, and no duty to read or pay.
2 · Gatehouse
A summary is written
Two to five pages, by an open-source language model on our own servers. This is the only time the script is read.
3 · Writer
The writer edits and approves it
Only the approved summary is ever compared or shown.
4 · Writer
The script is locked
With a password only the writer knows. From here on, nobody can read it unless the writer unlocks it.
5 · Gatehouse
The summary is compared with your list
One question: is this too close to anything you’re making?
An example
Enough to spot a close call. Not enough to give you an idea.
The summary is kept deliberately broad. It tells the comparison what the story is about — and doesn’t hand your team anything worth borrowing.
Your project list · private
- Time-travel wild western comedy set in Nashville
- Heist on a 1960s cruise ship
- Haunted ski resort horror
One line per project. Nobody else ever sees it.
Writer-approved summary
The Long Encore
A washed-up country singer stumbles through a time slip into 1870s Tennessee and, armed only with a guitar and bad jokes, has to win back a town from a crooked sheriff.
Too close to “Time-travel wild western comedy set in Nashville”. Your team sees nothing, and nobody is told why.
Writer-approved summary
Salt Lines
During a storm, a retired coastguard officer at a remote weather station shelters a stranger who may have come for something hidden on the island.
Not close to anything on your list. Your team can read the summary if they want to.
Too close: held back
Nobody at your studio sees anything — not even the summary. Nobody else is told. It’s noted in your private record, with the date, for your lawyers.
Not close: clear to read
The writer-approved summary is there if your team wants it. If they’d like the script, they ask, and the writer decides whether to unlock it.
When a similar project comes later
Similar isn’t stolen. The record can show the difference.
Studios develop ideas that resemble scripts they were sent, for perfectly innocent reasons. Gatehouse is built so the facts are clear — for the writer and the studio — long before anyone calls a lawyer.
An example
March 2026 · Writer
Sends “Salt Lines”
Not close to anything on the studio’s list. Nobody at the studio chooses to read the summary.
April 2027 · Studio
Adds a new project
“Storm-bound island thriller” goes on the list — dated and sealed, so it can’t be backdated.
April 2027 · Gatehouse
Looks back
The new line is compared with every summary already received. Salt Lines is close. The record shows nobody at the studio read it. Your lawyers are told, privately.
2029 · Writer
Sees the film, and asks
A named reviewer checks the record and answers plainly: nobody at the studio read your summary or unlocked your script, and the project began a year after yours arrived.
The look-back check
Every new project you add is compared with the summaries you’ve already received. If one is close, your lawyers hear privately — and learn whether anyone on your team read it — before work begins.
A list nobody can backdate
Each version of your list is sealed with its date. A project counts from the day it’s added. Nobody — not you, not us — can slip in an earlier date.
Sealed proof of earlier work
Optional: lodge a fingerprint of a treatment or outline, made on your own computer. The document never leaves your building, but it can prove later exactly what existed, and when.
Ask the record
A writer who sees a similar film can ask. A named reviewer, under NDA, checks who read what and when, and gives both sides a plain answer — without revealing anything about your plans.
Nobody read it
If nobody read it, that’s now on the record, dated, before a single page of your project is written.
Someone did read it
If someone did read it, you know before you commit. You can keep those people off the project, write down how the idea came about, or talk to the writer about an option. A phone call now beats a claim later.
Why holding back your list backfires
Leaving projects off your list doesn’t help you. A project that isn’t on the list has no dated proof behind it — and the record shows exactly which summaries your team read before a project appeared. Holding back only removes your own cover, and can count against you.
What does the reading
Our own model. Our own servers. No training.
The summary is written by a computer, but nothing about it is mysterious: one model, run by us, doing two plain jobs — writing a summary and answering one question.
An open-source model on our own servers
A powerful open-source language model that we run ourselves. Scripts never go to an outside AI company.
Never used for training
Scripts are read once, to write the summary — and never used to train anything.
No scoring, no ranking
It doesn’t judge quality or reject anyone. It writes a summary and answers one question.
A person, if you ask
Want a human to double-check a decision? A named Gatehouse reviewer can compare the summary with your list by hand, under NDA, and the review is recorded.
Why build it this way? Each step takes away something a claimant’s lawyer would need. See the legal design, claim by claim.
Protect your slate with one line per project.
Or one phone call a month. We’ll walk you through it with your own examples.