In the middle of a morning of awards announcements, the Black List has announced its 2021 list of best unproduced screenplays, some of which may end up becoming fodder for future awards seasons titles.
Since 2005, the Black List has been taking a tally of industry executives’ favorite screenplays that they’ve read in the past year that have yet to be filmed. Past screenplays have included best picture winners like Slumdog Millionaire, Argo and The King’s Speech, with recently produced former Black List screenplays including King Richard, 2021 box office break-out Free Guy and Promising Young Woman, with the latter earning the best original screenplay award at this year’s Oscars.
This year’s selection includes stories about several prominent figures like Kanye West, director Michael Bay, Shania Twain, and “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli. The screenplay at the top of this year’s list is Cauliflower, from writer Daniel Jackson, which follows an ambitious high school wrestler who is battling a bizarre infection in his ear that both makes him dominant in his sport and threatens his sanity.
Elsewhere on the list, there is an origin story of Michael Jordan’s deal with Nike that birthed his eponymous shoe line, titled Air Jordan, and the comedy Dennis Rodman’s 48 Hours in Vegas (the plot is in the title), which already has a home at Lionsgate with Phil Lord and Chris Miller attached to produce.
See the 17th annual Black List, updating below, and here on the Black List website.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
GRIZZ
Connor Barry
A car accident strands a young paramedic in the rugged Pacific Northwest where she is hunted by a ravenous grizzly bear.
HOMECOMING
Murder Ink (Brandon Broussard, Hudson Obayuwana, Jana Savage)
Ten years after graduation, one of New York’s most eligible bachelors and his eccentric wanderlust wingman try to pull their recently divorced friend out of his rut by taking him back to Howard University’s legendary Homecoming for the best weekend of their lives.
WHITTIER
Filipe Coutinho, Ben Mehlman
While looking into a client’s murder, a Los Angeles social worker stumbles on a political conspiracy in the wake of the 1987 Whittier earthquake.
*WEIRD
Augustus Schiff
An autistic kid tries to do normal college things — making friends, figuring out if girls like him, getting over his mom’s death — while seeing life in his own “musical” way.
AIR JORDAN
Alex Convery
The wild true story of how an upstart shoe company named Nike landed the most influential endorsement in sports history: Michael Jordan.
THE COLLEGE DROPOUT
Thomas Aguilar, Michael Ballin
A young Kanye West’s intimate journey to create his seminal first album that reinvented hip hop music.
HOT GIRL SUMMER
Michelle Askew
After witnessing a drug deal gone wrong, thirteen-year-old (and exceptionally awkward) Beatrice accidentally finds herself in the middle of an underground drug ring…and on the perfect route to having a proper hot girl summer.
HOTEL HOTEL HOTEL HOTEL
Michael Shanks
A man wakes up trapped in a mysterious hotel room. All alone in a mind-bending prison, his only chance for escape is teamwork: with himself.
LOUD
Whit Brayton
A famed experimental musician finds himself embroiled in the race to solve Earth’s primary existential threat: A deafening sound that never stops, forcing all of humanity to survive in silence.
RABBIT SEASON
Shanrah Wakefield
Supernatural horror about a woman stalked through a dark city park by the most monstrous manifestation of manhood during her walk home from her high school reunion.
LADY KRYLON
Brandon Constantine
Two rival graffiti artists engage in a series of street battles, culminating in an otherworldy duel after the art starts bleeding into the real world.
THE MASKED SINGER
Mike Jones, Nicholas Sherman
Mickey Rourke loses his mind after he’s forced to take a gig on television’s highest rated show: The Masked Singer.
MICHAEL BAY: THE EXPLOSIVE BIOPIC
Sean Tidwell
Packed with enough C4 to split an asteroid in two, this tell-all Michael Bay origin story reveals the explosions that defined him, the fire that ignited his little heart, and the fate that sealed his Hollywood destiny.
SYMPHONY OF SURVIVAL
Daniel Persitz
The incredible true story of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich writing an epic symphony during the deadly World War II siege of Leningrad — a work of art so powerful it would save him and his family, all while helping to unite his people with the Allies.
BELIEVE ME
Hannah Mescon, Dreux Moreland
An absurdist biopic chronicling the many rises and falls of Donald Trump, culminating with that fateful night at the 2011 Correspondent’s Dinner.
CANDLEWOOD
Jason Benjamin, Jessica Granger
In 1992 a seaplane crash in a lakefront community sparks a relationship between three young sisters and the mysterious, injured female pilot.
INDIGO
Ola Shokunbi
An art thief who takes priceless objects from museums and private collections and redistributes them to their original countries of ownership is tracked by a dogged FBI Agent across the globe.
JELLYFISH DAYS
Matthew Kic, Mike Sorce
A young woman and her devoted boyfriend’s lives are dramatically altered by a medical procedure that could potentially quadruple their lifespans.
Source: HollyWood
