The story of a pro football team’s general manager struggle to make an import draft pick that will change the course of his team’s future has placed at the top of this year’s BLack List. A survey of over 290 film executives, the Black List compiles the most liked unproduced screenplays that are making the rounds in Hollywood. The List was started back in 2005 with a little script called Juno coming in at number one. Since then, a number of screenplays that have made the list have been optioned and produced including The Time Traveler’s Wife, 500 Days Of Summer, Seven Psychopaths, Adventureland, The Town, Bad Teacher, Easy A, The King’s Speech and The Social Network.
There’s a few interesting statistics about this year’s List that jump out –
- Only 9 of the wrters making the list had made the list before.
- Of the 78 scripts on the List, nearly 70% do not currently have financing.
- 37% of the scripts on the List do not have a producer attached.
- 5 of the writers (or teams of writers) do not have an agent
- 10 of the writers on the List do not have a manager.
I would expect that the number of scripts without producers and/or funding and the number of writers without managers and/or agents is about to decrease fairly significantly over the next few weeks.
Here are the top 10 screenplays, along with their vote totals, on the List. You can download the complete list here.
65 – Draft Day
Rajiv Joseph, Scott Rothman
On the day of the NFL Draft, Bills General Manager Sonny Weaver has the opportunity to save football in Buffalo when he trades for the number one pick. He must quickly decide what he’s willing to sacrifice in pursuit of perfection as the lines between his personal and professional life become blurred.
43 – A Country of Strangers
Sean Armstrong
Based on true events. Inspector Geoff Harper conducts a forty year search for the Beaumont Children, three siblings taken from an Australian beach in January of 1966.
43 – Seuss
Eyal Podell, Jonathan Stewart
As a young man, Ted Geisel meets his future wife Helen, who encourages his fanciful drawings, and in the 1950s when Ted is struggling professionally, Helen helps inspire the children’s book that will become his first big hit, “The Cat in the Hat.”
39 – Rodham
Young Il Kim
During the height of the Watergate scandal, rising star Hillary Rodham is the youngest lawyer chosen for the House Judiciary Committee to Impeach Nixon, but she soon finds herself forced to choose between a destined path to the White House and her unresolved feelings for Bill Clinton, her former boyfriend who now teaches law in Arkansas.
35 – Story of Your Life
Eric Heisserer
Based on the short story by Ted Chiang. When alien crafts land around the world, a linguistics expert is recruited by the military to determine whether they come in peace or are a threat. As she learns to communicate with the aliens, she begins experiencing vivid flashbacks that become the key to unlocking the greater mystery about the true purpose of their visit.
33 – Wunderkind
Patrick Aison
A Mossad employed father and his CIA agent son team up to hunt an escaped Nazi.
31 – Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile
Michael Werwie
Based on a true (and ultimately surprising) story, a promising young law student fights an oppressive legal system and growing public scrutiny when his routine traffic stop snowballs into shocking criminal charges, imprisonment, daring escapes, and ultimately acting as his own attorney in a nationally televised murder trial.
29 – Glimmer
Carter Blanchard
When three friends go missing on a camping trip in a forest rumored to be haunted, the two left behind discover clues that lead them to a safe deposit box containing video tapes… showing exactly what happened to their friends.
29 – Me & Earl & the Dying Girl
Jesse Andrews
Based on Andrews’s eponymous novel, a quirky high school student who enjoys making films sparks a friendship with a classmate dying of leukemia.
28 – Devils at Play
James Dilapo
In the Soviet Union in 1937, a worker of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs finds a list of traitors, which he thinks is going to be his way out.
