The 14th edition of "The Black List" features 73 unproduced screenplays. Here are the first 38, indexed alphabetically, from A to M.
Looking for some weekend reads? I think we can help you with that.
Read and download all of the "Black List: 2018" screenplays and scripts.
Four Your Consideration, we have the first 38 (of 73) scripts listed and indexed alphabetically for quick access. From Ari Berkowitz's and Ava Tramer's "(Please) Maternity Leave", to Noga Pnueli's time-travelling comedy, "Meet Cute", and everything in between.
If you're a young writer looking for study guides, you've found the right place. These "Black List: 2018" scripts were chosen by more than 300 film-industry executives.
What is "Black List" you ask? To find out how it all works, scroll down a little bit.
Unsure about exactly what is the "Black List"? Read on.
Consider the name ironic. This isn't a list of scripts written by those who are unwelcome in the industry. Rather, the "Black List" is a compilation of "most liked" unproduced screenplays from a particular year. Screenwriters, young and old, repped or voiceless, submit their works for consideration.
Annually, since 2005, film industry executives read hundreds of screenplays and choose which ones are their favorite. Referred to as a "mention", favored scripts with the most mentions are featured on, in this regard, the "Black List: 2018".
Some screenplays get optioned by studios and become movies. Past picks include: "The Babysitter", "Manchester by the Sea" and "The Founder."
Written by: Ari Berkowitz | Ava Tramer
Mentions: 9
Two friends try to get their third friend pregnant so they can stop hanging out with her.
Written by: Shawn Dwyer
Mentions: 10
The extraordinary true story of Bob Ebeling and Roger Boisjoly, the aerospace engineers who discovered the “o-ring anomaly” that led to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. After struggling to convince their superiors at Morton-Thiokol and NASA to investigate the anomaly, Ebeling and Boisjoly were tasked with proving it: an extremely complicated and expensive endeavor that took an emotional toll on their lives but helped bring about changes to the Shuttle Program that saved the lives of future astronauts.
Written by: John Wikstrom
Mentions: 7
A highly publicized AMA (Q&A) session between a fast-rising publicist and an aging music icon quickly turns into a deadly game of cat and mouse when the event is seized by a hacker who systematically beings revealing dark secrets from both of their pasts, forcing them to publicly confront the horrific events they’ve committed on the largest social media platform in the world.
Written by: Scott Conroy
Mentions: 21 (9th overall in 2018)
The true story of Chris Wylie and Cambridge Analytica.
Written by: Jenny Halper
Mentions: 7
Told through the eyes of ten year old Charlie in 1986, a family struggles to stay intact when an AIDS diagnosis makes them pariahs in their small New England town. Based on Alice Hoffman’s novel.
Written by: Alex Convery
Mentions: 17
Atticus Archer is college football’s version of a fixer. As he juggles chasing the nation’s top prospect, a mental breakdown from a star quarterback, and his own personal demons, an NCAA agent arrives on campus to threaten everything.
Written by: Aaron W. Sala
Mentions: 9
After a plane crash in the Pacific Ocean, a woman finds herself marooned on an island with a bloodthirsty beast.
Written by: Ryan King
Mentions: 10
A young man becomes an emergency medical technician in Harlem as a temporary stop before he enters medical school. There, he experiences a range of crises and stressful misadventures, including a mentor who has been numbed to the point that he makes a wrong decision in a life-and-death situation.
Written by: Jacob Colman
Mentions: 9
When a guy in a committed relationship starts to suspect that the avatar he’s been digitally hooking up with might belong to his best friend’s girlfriend, he becomes entangled in something he can’t quite understand.
Written by: Dave Rabinowitz | Charlie Wachtel
Mentions: 10
A down and out sports agent risks everything to bring a star Cuban baseball player back to the United States to play in the Major Leagues. Based on an amalgamation of true stories detailing the rise of the League’s movement to smuggle Cuban baseball players into the US during the 1990s.
Written by: Sascha Penn
Mentions: 8
The FBI pairs a young African-American agent with Greg Scarpa, the most notorious hitman in mafia history, to solve the murder of a civil rights activist in 1966 Mississippi.
Written by: Chris Thomas Devlin
Mentions: 29 (7th overall in 2018)
Peter has always been told the voice he hears at night is only in his head, but when he suspects his parents have been lying, he conspires to free the girl within the walls of his house.
Written by: Chris Kekaniokalani Bright
Mentions: 9
The incredible true story of the final trial of Clarence Darrow, the greatest attorney of the 20th century who for the first and only time in his career was fighting for the wrong side. Darrow defends a wealthy white family caught murdering a native Hawaiian boy whom they wrongfully accused of raping their daughter.
Written by: Flora Greeson
Mentions: 20 (11th overall in 2018)
The longtime assistant of a famous singer must navigate the rocky waters of the LA music scene to make her dreams of producing music a reality.
Written by: Nelson Greaves
Mentions: 9
When the crew of an oil rig begins to drill on one of the deepest stretches of the ocean floor, they awake a dark and dangerous creature that has been hidden away for hundreds of years.
Written by: Amanda Idoko
Mentions: 11
A high schooler, in an effort to find a more interesting story for her college scholarship application, lies about her father’s recent death. But when the father tries to take advantage of the lie by faking his own death, the high schooler’s nemesis investigates, and bodies start piling up.
Written by: Cody Brotter
Mentions: 30 (4th overall in 2018)
The story of how oddball internet reporter Matt Drudge broke the Lewinsky Scandal and nearly took down a presidency, all from a desktop computer in his one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood.
Written by: Jason Kessler
Mentions: 8
Famed artist M.C. Escher reluctantly uses his unique view of the world to help the Dutch Resistance fight Nazi occupation during WWII. Inspired by the life and art of M.C. Escher.
Written by: Elissa Karasik
Mentions: 36 (1st overall in 2018)
A disgruntled employee of Snapchat tells the rise of her former Stanford classmate, preeminent douchebag and current boss Evan Spiegel.
Written by: Christy Hall
Mentions: 34 (3rd overall in 2018)
A young woman must get home by herself on Halloween with no cell phone battery and a group of gamergate trolls out to get her.
Written by: Will Lowell
Mentions: 15
When Grace and her husband Jay retreat to an empty vacation island to escape his grueling political campaign, Grace begins reliving traumatic experiences from her past, forcing her to question what is real. After she discovers that powerful people behind Jay’s campaign have been manipulating her experiences, Grace’s struggle to retain her sanity becomes an all too real fight for survival.
Written by: Jake Disch
Mentions: 7
A satirical take on the unbelievable but true story of how the NRA changed overnight from an apolitical gun safety and marksmanship club into the most powerful and unhinged lobbying group in Washington, DC.
Written by: Holly Brix
Mentions: 10
A couple’s wedding anniversary is interrupted by a home invasion.
Written by: Shawn Dwyer
Mentions: 10
After Bill Alexander’s long-running show 'The Magic of Oil Painting' was cancelled by PBS and replaced with Bob Ross’ show, 'The Joy of Oil Painting,' Alexander accuses the soft-spoken afro’d Ross of stealing his act, inciting a bitter dispute that changed the lives of both men forever. Based on a true story.
Written by: Jason Rostovsky
Mentions: 8
What starts as a fun day for a group of friends in the woods turns into a living nightmare for one rabbit.
Written by: Steve Desmond | Michael Anthony Sherman
Mentions: 30 (5th overall in 2018)
A down-on-his-luck high school senior discovers that the old roadside diner outside of town is secretly a hangout for parallel universe travelers. He sets off on a mind-bending adventure across the multiverse that takes him beyond his wildest dreams.
Written by: Brett Treacy | Dan Woodward
Mentions: 14
When a man’s estranged wife gets lost inside of her own mind during an experimental procedure, he must navigate her subconscious to find her in the memories of their past.
Written by: Mark Bianculli
Mentions: 8
When a US soldier learns that her Army medic brother is being held hostage by a sadistic ISIS executioner, she deserts her military post and enlists the help of a group of female renegade Kurdish fighters to bring justice when their armies won’t help them.
Written by: Matt Fisch
Mentions: 7
When bio-tech titan Van Danzen is falsely convicted of murdering his business partner, he sends his greatest creation – a spitting-image humanoid robot – to serve a life sentence in his place. However, the humanoid’s militarized programming sends him on a rampage to escape prison and hunt those responsible for his creator’s set-up and imprisonment.
Written by: Charlie Efron
Mentions: 7
After their marriage is shattered by the most public sex scandal in sports history, Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren scramble to pick up the pieces while hiding out from the press and the police in their Florida mansion.
Written by: Bill Kennedy
Mentions: 10
After the United States survives a vampire war, a young human girl going through puberty learns that she may be turning into a vampire.
Written by: Kenny Kyle
Mentions: 19
The riveting true story of AJ Daulerio’s meteoric rise from obscure sports blogger to Editor-in-Chief of Gawker Media during the wild, heady early days of the digital journalism boom, culminating in the Hulk Hogan sex tape trial, which brought about Gawker’s downfall and set a precedent for billionaires to attack the media and free speech.
Written by: Mattson Tomlin
Mentions: 9
A henchman-turned-terrorist has a bone to pick with an idolized vigilante. When he takes control of a city skyscraper, the hero known as the Leopard comes to the rescue – but when both the terrorist and the Leopard are overtaken by the hostages, a kangaroo court evolves as the hostages navigate their complex histories with the vigilante.
Written by: Zach Baylin
Mentions: 35 (2nd overall in 2018)
The true story of Richard Williams, the hard-nosed and uncompromising father of tennis prodigies turned superstars, Venus and Serena Williams.
Written by: Mattson Tomlin
Mentions: 7
A couple fights to hold their relationship together as a memory loss virus spreads and threatens to erase the history of their love and courtship.
Written by: Mike Schneider
Mentions: 9
A chronicle of the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case in the early 2000s, based on reports, court transcripts, and police interviews.
Written by: Pamela Garcia Rooney
Mentions: 7
The unlikely bond between a Latinx transgender woman and the queen of Christian televangelism. Inspired by the very real life of Tammy Faye Bakker.
Written by: Noga Pnueli
Mentions: 12
When a woman finds a time machine in a downtown Manhattan nail salon, she uses it to keep traveling back in time 24 hours to make her previous night’s date perfect.
