The Black List have released their annual collection of the best unproduced screenplays currently circling Hollywood.
End of the year lists are not hard to come by online, and especially ones about films, but The Black List stands out among the many for its prestige, uniqueness, and now, the possible chance to contain the next big hit. For example, seven of the last twelve screenwriting Oscars have been won by scripts listed on previous iterations of the list, and within the last ten years of its existence, 225 films have gone on to be produced, won 171 Academy Awards, and brought in over 19 billion dollars at the box office. Films you might remember from the past few years alone include Slumdog Millionaire, The King’s Speech, Argo, and American Sniper, as well as this year’s Spotlight. This year, in the list’s eleventh edition, the survey reached 250 studio executives and resulted in 81 scripts making the list.
The top five are:
- Bubbles, written by Isaac Adamson; A biopic of Michael Jackson’s famous pet narrated by the chimp himself.
- Stronger, written by John Pollono & Scott Silver; The true story of Boston bombing victim Jeff Bauman, who lost his legs in the attack and became an integral part to the capture of the suspects.
- The Libertine, written by Ben Kopit; A drama following the house arrest of the Head of the French National Assembly, and the rising tension between him and his family as details of the case against him become clear.
- Rocket, written by Jeffery Gelber and Ryan Belenzon: Another biopic but this time about a human – the great baseball pitcher, Roger Clemens.
- Crater, written by John J. Griffin; A sci-fi coming of age film, set in a time where humans have colonized the moon. A group of five teens take one last road trip before one of them is sent on a journey that’ll last longer than the other’s lifetimes.
You can read the whole list online here.
