Every year an unofficial list gets made comprised of the best screen plays that movie studios passed on throughout the year. It’s called The Black List.
Industry insiders vote and name 375 film scripts to try and offer them a second shot at life. Past saved films have included actual Oscar winners, including “Slumdog Millionaire,” “Argo,” “Spotlight,” and “The King’s Speech.” Not to mention the ones that didn’t win Oscars like Juno and Wolf of Wallstreet.
Each time one of the films gets picked over all (aka mentioned) it rises to the top of the list. Here are the current top scripts. Maybe an Oscar winner is in the mix! Find the entire list on the site.
32 MENTIONS
CAULIFLOWER
Daniel Jackson
Under the cruel guidance of a mysterious coach, an ambitious high school wrestler struggles to become a state champion while battling a bizarre infection in his ear that both makes him dominant in his sport and threatens his sanity.
30 MENTIONS
SEE HOW THEY RUN
Lily Hollander
A blind mother moves into a remote farmhouse with her young daughter, but the mystery of the home’s previous inhabitants intrudes upon her attempts to repair their relationship.
25 MENTIONS
DIVORCE PARTY
Rebecca Webb
Patricia Ford feels pretty good about trading her South Boston roots for a “perfect” life on New York’s Upper East Side, until everything falls to shit and her raucous girlfriends throw her a Divorce Party at the home she’s about to lose. As the night goes from wild to totally insane, Patricia takes back control of her life.
KILLER INSTINCT
Lillian Yu
After a Hollywood assistant is publicly fired for admitting while on a conference call that he’d love to kill his boss, he finds his boss dead in the office the next morning and goes on the lam to figure out the real culprit, all while being hunted by his boss’s assassin.
21 MENTIONS
THE VILLAIN
Andrew Ferguson
The completely outrageous and completely true story of “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli — from his meteoric rise as wunderkind hedge fund manager and pharmaceutical executive to his devastating fall involving crime, corruption, and the Wu-Tang Clan — which exposed the rotten core of the American healthcare system.
19 MENTIONS
ULTRA
Colin Bannon
When an ultramarathoner learns he is one of ten contestants chosen to take part in a secret race known as “the hardest race on earth,” he is forced to confront his past when he realizes there are deadly consequences for breaking the rules.
WAIT LIST
Carly J. Hallman
A troubled millennial from small-town Texas will do anything to get into her top-choice law school, including murder.
18 MENTIONS
MERCURY
Stefan Jaworski
When a first date takes a dangerous turn, down-on-his-luck Michael risks everything to save his newfound love from her past. Little does he know, the night — and his date — are not what they seem. Michael soon finds himself on a high-octane cat-and-mouse race across the city to save himself and uncover the truth, armed with nothing but his wit, his driving skills, and a 1969 Ford Mercury.
17 MENTIONS
IN THE END
Brian T. Arnold
In the near future, terminal patients are given the opportunity to go out with a bang with personalized VR “perfect endings.” But when the best Transition Specialist gets far too close to a patient, he finds himself questioning everything in his life.
16 MENTIONS
MR BENIHANA
Chris Wu
When a short Japanese kid from post-war Tokyo decides to make it big in the US of A, he discovers a winning recipe of exploiting his heritage with good old-fashioned American entertainment, to the great shame of his traditionalist father. This is the larger-than-life immigrant story of the OG daredevil playboy tycoon: the one-and-only Rocky Aoki.
WORST. DINNER. EVER.
Jack Waz
An estranged father and son have to survive terrorists, explosions, and, most terrifying of all, dinner with each other.