The 16th edition of the "Black List" features 80 unproduced screenplays. Here are 40 of them, indexed from M to Z.
You can read and download the "Black List: 2020" screenplays and scripts right here, right now.
They're listed and indexed alphabetically for quick access. For Your Consideration, the next batch of 40 scripts. From Elijah Bynum's "Magazine Dreams", to Brett Melnick's comedy, "Yom Kippur", and everything in between.
If you're a young writer looking for study guides, you've found the right place. These "Black List: 2020" scripts were chosen by industry executives.
What is the "Black List" you ask? It may not be exactly what you'd expect. Discover more, below.
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: 2020".
Some screenplays get optioned by studios and become movies. Past scripts include "The King's Speech", "Free Guy" and "Promising Young Woman."
Written by: Elijah Bynum
Mentions: 9
A Black amateur bodybuilder struggles to find human connection in this exploration of celebrity and violence.
Written by: Emily Adams
Mentions: 7
Annie Mills has always known Margot Ellison to be two things: her best friend and a devout Mormon. But as high school graduation nears and Margot starts to crave change, the girls must grapple with the fear that growing up might require growing alone.
Written by: Samy Burch
Mentions: 10
Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple buckles under the pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film about their past.
Written by: Kelly O'Sullivan
Mentions: 9
When seventeen-year old Minnie’s best friend Callie is killed in an accident, she struggles to find an identity of her own and forms a complicated friendship with Callie’s grieving mother.
Written by: Jonathan Stokes
Mentions: 9
The President is murdered during a private dinner, and Secret Service agent Mia Pine has until morning to discover which guest is the killer before a peace agreement fails and leads to war.
Written by: Meghan Kennedy
Mentions: 11
Based on a short story by Rachel Khong. A love story set in the afterlife about our struggle to let go of the past, even when our present is heaven... literally. Tess keeps searching for the love of her life without realizing he’s right there next to her the whole time, helping her look.
Written by: Nikyata Jusu
Mentions: 9
Aisha is an undocumented nanny caring for a privileged child. As she prepares for the arrival of her only son, who she left behind in her native country, a violent supernatural presence invades her reality, jeopardizing the American Dream she’s carefully pieced together.
Written by: Dave Collard
Mentions: 26 (3rd overall in 2020)
An adaptation of David Sharp’s book The CIA’s Greatest Covert Operation that chronicles the clandestine CIA operation that risked igniting WWIII by recovering a nuclear-armed Soviet Sub, the K-129, that sunk to the bottom of the ocean in 1968.
Written by: Tara Cavanagh
Mentions: 11
When a tactless Nordstrom’s store manager denies two trans women access to the bathroom, Fran and Althea seek restitution and occupy the ladies room in protest.
Written by: Alexandra Skarsgard
Mentions: 8
Sex, money, and one schoolyard fad that took a nation by storm. Based on the true story of Ty Warner, the enigmatic entrepreneur behind a ‘90s toy craze that sparked madness, murder, and a billion-dollar empire.
Written by: Isaac Adamson
Mentions: 16
After discovering his secret songwriting partner dead, a country music star struggling to record new material makes a Faustian bargain with a family of possums who have taken up residency within his walls.
Written by: Heather Quinn
Mentions: 7
A woman abruptly discovers nothing she’s known until now is real, and she must recover the truth in order to save the rest of the country, still trapped inside of the lie.
Written by: Creston Whittington
Mentions: 11
A chemical leak in a local water supply in Central Florida wreaks havoc on the invasive population of pythons, leading a family to the fight of their life to survive.
Written by: Adam Gaines, Ryan Parrott
Mentions: 10
Harvard. 1959. A young Ted Kaczynski is experimented on by Dr. Henry Murray during a secret CIA psychological study that may have led to the creation of the Unabomber.
Written by: Dennis MaGee Fallon
Mentions: 15
London, 1888: When their friends begin dying at the hands of a brutal killer, an all-female crime syndicate, The Forty Elephants, must work together to take down the predator stalking them - Jack The Ripper.
Written by: Kat Wood
Mentions: 7
After her husband is attacked, assassin Ruby is lured into the open to hunt down those responsible, leading her back to the boss who wants to keep her in the fold at any cost.
Written by: Brian Gatewood, Alessandro Tanaka
Mentions: 17
A chain of scam artists goes after one wealthy family with the perfect plan to drain them of their funds. But when love, heartbreak, and jealousy slither their way into the grand scheme, it becomes unclear whether the criminals are conning or the ones being conned.
Written by: Greg Wayne
Mentions: 11
When a very fat and possibly gay boy from New Orleans is visited by an angel called Barbra Streisand, he sets out on a holy crusade in daytime television to touch and save the soul of every obese person in America before his demons consume him - if only to make his daddy proud. It’s the true gospel of Richard Simmons.
Written by: Rachel Wolf
Mentions: 9
When headstrong but well-intentioned college student Sara Jane bails on Senior Spring Break to drive a fourteen-year-old girl to get an abortion, she’s shocked to discover that her passenger is an undercover pro-lifer who has kidnapped her.
Written by: Emily Siegel
Mentions: 10
When a journalist turned stay-at-home mom relocates to Los Angeles to rebuild after a personal trauma, she blurs the lines between fact and fiction... only to find herself at the center of her own story.
Written by: Laura Chinn
Mentions: 14
A awkward teenage outcast comes of age against the backdrop of the hospice where her brother (and coincidentally, Terri Schiavo) are dying.
Written by: Randall Green
Mentions: 15
Eighth grader Simon Paluska dreams of being a Taekwondo Black Belt, but he’s not allowed to take lessons. So he buys a Black Belt on Amazon for twenty-five bucks. Then, he has to use it.
Written by: Monisha Dadlani
Mentions: 10
A young girl creates a robot version of Harry Potter while her father simultaneously is treating Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe for a terminal disease.
Written by: Stephen Herman
Mentions: 10
A troubled priest confines himself to a remote cabin in the middle of the woods where he attempts to make a last stand against the demon that terrorized his family when he was a child.
Written by: Zach Dean
Mentions: 8
A brazen, high-action, genre-bending, love story about two very dangerous young people, who despite the corrupt and lethal world they operate in, find a soulmate in each other.
Written by: Sam Stefanak
Mentions: 14
When a dangerous stranger shows up at her front door, a depressed widow must confront her own past in order to protect her two children.
Written by: Justin Piasecki
Mentions: 13
A Nevada court judge who moonlights reffing high-profile boxing matches must face his demons when he’s assigned to the Olympic fight of an ex-con he’d previously sentenced for murder.
Written by: Arthur Hills
Mentions: 7
A troubled young surgeon travels to a desolate peak to climb the mountain where her father suffered a mental breakdown years earlier, only to realize halfway up the rock wall that she might be subject to the same fate.
Written by: Steve Desmond | Michael Sherman
Mentions: 17
After being haunted by a terrifying entity, a twelve-year-old boy teams up with his eccentric uncle and three other misfits to form their own ghost club, investigating all the paranormal sites in town so that he can find and confront the ghost that’s tormenting him.
Written by: Chaz Hawkins
Mentions: 17
A depressed, selfish black man fights for his life after taking a job at a white-owned beauty parlor, whose monstrous owners concocted a wildly popular shampoo that requires a sickening ingredient
Written by: Perry Janes
Mentions: 11
Following in his murdered mother’s footsteps, Michael Griffiths enlists in the United States Postal Service... only to discover a mail route full of surprises and a job that means maybe, just maybe, saving the world.
Written by: Erin Kathleen
Mentions: 7
A struggling single mother must confront dangerous forces - and sins of her past - when her world collides with that of a serial killer. Inspired by the true story of Delaware’s only serial murderer, the Route 40 killer.
Written by: Michelle Harper
Mentions: 7
When two life-long best friends discover that they’re both pregnant, they promise to embark on their journey together. But with the constant pressure of outsiders, the two struggle midst personal differences and must re-learn that what connected them as children can still be their glue as adults.
Written by: Aaron Rabin
Mentions: 8
A businessman’s obsession with his competitor leads him down a rabbit hole of self-discovery, fantasy, and delusion.
Written by: Gabe Hobson
Mentions: 8
A father and daughter living in remote isolation must fight for survival after aliens arrive seeking revenge for killing one of their own.
Written by: Cat Wilkins
Mentions: 25 (5th overall in 2020)
A high school senior attempts to get her principal fired after observing racist behavior, but she quickly learns he won’t go down without a fight.
Written by: Gabe Delahaye
Mentions: 8
An action comedy wherein Benji Stone, a lovable but deeply unpopular sixteen year old, is pulled into an international assassination plot by his uncle, a retired undercover assassin charged with babysitting Benji for the weekend.
Written by: Chris Parizo
Mentions: 9
The true story of how Vice magazine grew from a free magazine in Montreal into a multi billion dollar media empire, making two of its founders multi-millionaires while the third founder was kicked out and went on to modernize the white supremacist movement by creating the Proud Boys.
Written by: Chris Thomas Devlin
Mentions: 18
Three teenagers who rent a cursed VHS tape are pulled into an 80s slasher movie that threatens to trap them forever.
Written by: Mitchell Lafortune
Mentions: 7
A female U.S. Army Special Agent is sent to a remote, all-male outpost in Afghanistan to investigate accusations of war crimes. But when a series of mysterious events jeopardize her mission and the unit’s sanity, she must find the courage to survive something far more sinister.
Written by: Alvaro Garcia Lecuona
Mentions: 8
An unassertive seventeen year old turns his high school on its head when he asks out his crush, a transgender classmate.
Written by: Brett Melnick
Mentions: 7
After getting high on the night of Yom Kippur, three distant cousins wake up with muddled minds and empty stomachs as they find themselves in the middle of a kidnapping and a major drug ring.
