Earlier this year we had the "Brit list", the 35 most important un-produced screenplays in the U.K. Now we have the U.S equivalent, the Black List. Film executive Franklin Leonard has released his annual list of "most liked" "unproduced" screenplays in Hollywood.
According to the Los Angeles Times, six of the top-10 scripts have already been picked up by studios, with one, Margin Call, already slated to premiere at the Sundance film festival in January. The annual list of Hollywood's most liked un-produced screenplays is published on the second Friday of December each year, it began in 2004 as a survey with contributions from 75 film studio and production company executives. In 2009, over 300 executives contributed their opinion. So here they are:
1. College Republicans by Wes Jones. Aspiring politician Karl Rove runs a dirty campaign for College Republican chairman under the guidance of Lee Atwater, his campaign manager.
2. Jackie by Noah Oppenheim. Jackie Kennedy fights to define her husband’s legacy in the seven days immediately following his assassination.
3. All You Need Is Kill by Dante Harper. A new army recruit in a war against aliens finds himself caught in a time loop where he wakes up one day in the past after having been killed on the battlefield.
4. Safe House by David Guggenheim. A young man at a CIA-run safe house in Rio must help a rogue ex-agent escape assassins who want intelligence that he won’t sell them.
5. Stoker by Wentworth Miller. After the death of her father, a teenager must deal with a mysterious uncle who returns to spend time with the family.
6. 999 by Matt Cook. A gang of crooked cops plan a major heist that requires them to shoot a fellow officer in order to get away with it.
7. Margin Call by J.C. Chandor. Based on true events, the final 24 hours of Lehman Brothers.
8. American Bull by Eric Warren Singer. The true story of Abscam, the FBI’s 1980 undercover sting operation of Congress to root out corruption which was the brainchild of the world’s greatest con man.
9. Argo by Chris Terrio. The true story of how the CIA, with help from Hollywood, used a fake movie project to smuggle hostages out of Tehran during the 1979 hostage crisis.
10. The Last Son of Isaac Lemay by Greg Johnson. An aging outlaw, convinced that there’s evil in his genes, goes on a journey to kill his offspring. In the process, he discovers that his last remaining son is a terrifying manifestation of his worst fears.
