Search Results for: James bond
Is it possible that a James Bond script could be worse than a Sharknado script? Read on because the answer may shock you. Then eat you.
Welcome to Weird Scripts Week! This week I’ll be reviewing odd scripts, odd ideas, and writing that’s just plain odd. It will all culminate Friday when I’ll be reviewing the strangest premise I’ve ever reviewed here on Scriptshadow. So buckle up, snort the nearest hallucinogen, and get ready to mutter “WTF” at least 182 times!
Genre: Action
Premise: When a plane goes down in the Bermuda Triangle, the United States and Britain enlist none other than James Bond to find out what happened.
About: This is an old discarded James Bond script from 1976 that was deemed too weird and “out there” by the studio. The fact that Sean Connery decided to pitch in on writing duties (a man who doesn’t have a single writing credit to his name in his 50 year career) probably didn’t help.
Writers: Len Deighton, Sean Connery, and Kevin McClory
Details: 150 pages (first draft – November 11, 1976)
I admit I’m not the biggest Bond aficionado. While I appreciate the character and understand why he’s so popular, I haven’t been a fan of the franchise’s direction as of late. My frustration boiled over while watching Quantum of Solace, a film that clearly had no script to speak of. That movie seemed to be more concerned with winning a Guiness record for most countries shot in than it did entertaining an audience.
I liked the films a lot more when I was younger. My favorite scenes were always the “cool gadgets” scenes, where a character would introduce a number of killer gadgets for Bond to use on his mission. Ever since Bond went dark, however, these scenes have been dropped, distancing me even further from the franchise. Strangely enough, franchises like Batman and Mission Impossible have thought these scenes good enough for their films, making Bond look even more out-of-touch.
Luckily, today, we get to go back to a time of Bond purity, a time when James didn’t take himself too seriously. The problem is, they may have strayed too far off the reservation, as the feedback I’ve heard about this script makes Sharknado sound like a contender for the Palme D’or. Let’s find out palme d’more, shall we?
As if sensing that it would eventually be featured on Scriptshadow Weird Scripts Week, “James Bond of the Secret Service” goes cuckoo almost immediately. We start out on a seaplane that’s carrying the United Nations Secretary General. As the plane enters the Bermuda Triangle (we know this because the Secretary General says, “I’ll be okay once we get past the Bermuda Triangle”) a laser beam from an undisclosed location (Europe??) shoots the plane, killing its power, forcing it to land on the water.
Once in the water, a giant contraption rises up, “takes” the plane, and pulls it underwater, bringing it all the way to the sea floor, where we see, among other things, planes, boats, stacks of gold bars(??) and oh, AN UNDERWATER KINGDOM!!! It turns out the Bermuda Triangle has been the haunt of a city/kingdom called Arkos. Never mind the fact that to build an underwater city in the year 1976, it would’ve cost 30 trillion dollars.
Eventually, we meet the creator and president of this secret underwater society. His name is Blofeld and I kid you not, he has a white cat which he strokes throughout his conversations with everyone. Blofeld, believe it or not, actually has a very legitimate goal. He wants to rid the world’s seas of pollution. How sweet of him. And yet, it just makes things even more confusing (why does the bad guy have a noble goal??)
So he sends a wire to all the world’s leaders telling them that if they throw any trash in the ocean, even an empty potato chip bag, there’s going to be hell to pay. I’m not sure what that means, since his influence seems to be restricted to the Bermuda Triangle, but it’s enough of a threat to scare most of the leaders.
Now you may be asking, where’s James Bond in all of this? I’m glad you asked. In the first 67 pages of the screenplay, James Bond gets THREE SCENES! And two of those scenes consist of a girl applying sunscreen to his back. I’m not kidding. In a script titled, “James Bond of the Secret Service,” James Bond is onscreen for 12 of the first 67 minutes.
Eventually, the United States and Britain figure out where Arkos is and send James Bond to a nearby island to infiltrate it. Luckily, Bond has a cover-story. He’s actually a finalist in the international backgammon championships and is set to play Largo, Blofeld’s evil underling. Once there, he gets attacked by a shark, only to find out that the shark is actually a robot!! It turns out the whole of Arkos is protected by an army of robot-sharks.
Not only that, but Largo’s deranged head-scientist has found a fitting way to deliver his nukes to the offending nations. By using Hammerhead sharks! Apparently the wider eyes make it easier to rest the nukes on top of their body. A full two pages is dedicated to explaining this concept.
This all culminates when Largo decides enough is enough, and sends his army of sharks to Manhattan. His plan? To blow up the statue of liberty and then program his sharks to go into New York City sewers and attack the local population. Eventually, the city of Arkos itself uproots and heads to Manhattan, where city battles city. The End.
Oh man.
Oh dear Jesus.
This started off weird but then just got bad. And I mean really really bad. Who gives their main character – the most iconic action hero in history no less – three scenes in 67 pages?????
And get a load of some of the writing here. I’ve hand-picked some gems for you:
“He has a large shark laboratory – for cancer research.”
Largo has faded the last sentence of his own dialogue. (what does that even mean???)
“Frankly, we don’t know what’s happening in this so-called Bermuda Triangle.”
“I’ve seen that man. He’s called Emilio Largo. Runs the Shark Island op. quite close to Shrublands. As a matter of fact, I’m playing him in the backgammon finals in Nassau.”
“You’re not Fatima.” “No. She was my twin sister – she’s dead.”
“So you see, even with the brain removed, the shark will continue its motion.”
Blood trickles down the cheek of the Statue of Liberty like a tear.
Is 1976 the year LSD was invented?
They couldn’t even get the sluglines right. At the end of every slugline, instead of putting “day” or “night,” they’d put the names of the people in the scene.
The script’s biggest faux-pas by far, though, was its inadequate use of Bond. The first half-dozen times we were with him (so, maybe, the first 85 pages of the script), he was either getting sun-screen applied, sleeping with a girl, listening to his bosses talk about Arkos, or being told what to do.
A main character is supposed to be ACTIVE. Preferably, you want your protagonist making decisions on his own, driving the story with those decisions. Now you can’t always do that because the story may dictate otherwise. With Bond, for instance, he works for people. Therefore, they need to give him orders before he can act.
However, the ideal scenario is to get those orders out of the way early, and then have your hero start creating his own storyline. If he has to check back in every 10 minutes to get a new order, then you have a hero who’s 100% reactive. And reactive characters aren’t nearly as compelling as active characters.
The reason Ripley, from Aliens, is considered one of the top 5 action heroes in history is because of how active she is in that movie. Outside of the opening act, she’s making all of her choices. She’s deciding what she and the others must do. We LOVE THAT as audience members. And while I’m by no means a Bond expert, I’m guessing that we see a much more active Bond in these recent movies.
I was hoping to read five scripts this week that were so weird, you’d all be able to read them and laugh with me. I can’t even recommend “Secret Service” for that, because I know you’ll be bored out of your mind by page 30. Let’s hope for something a little more fun tomorrow. But, if you’re into self-torture, download this script and give it a try.
Script link: James Bond of the Secret Service
[x] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Audiences want to follow your hero. It’s okay if you throw a teaser scene into your opening before you get to your protagonist, but preferably, you should start with your protagonist or get to him as soon as possible. The interest in your story will sink exponentially the longer your hero isn’t on screen.
What I learned (practice edition): It’s advisable that you avoid adverbs in screenwriting. They just sound clunky. So here we get a couple of lines: “Bond dismally enters the plane.” And: “Bond drags himself wearily into a waiting car…” How would you change these lines to eliminate the adverbs, yet still get the requisite feeling across? Show off your writing skills in the comments section below!
One of my favorite characters from 2023 (Duncan Wedderburn in Poor Things)
Okay, it is WEEK 3 in our WRITE TWO SCRIPTS IN 2024 Screenwriting Challenge. Week One was playing with possible concepts. Week Two was solidifying a concept. And now we’re on to Week Three – FIGURING OUT YOUR CHARACTERS.
Usually, when writers write scripts, they start writing IMMEDIATELY after they’ve come up with their idea. This is almost always a mistake. When you jump into a script too quickly, you burn out fast. You’ve got a runway of about 20-40 pages but you never build up enough speed to take off.
You erroneously figure your premise is too weak and you abandon your script like an alcoholic abandons their family. Whoa, that just got dark. Disregard that. Actually: REGARD IT. This post is about character. And character flaws are crucial to understanding your next steps.
This is the part of script-writing NO ONE WANTS TO DO – the character work. It’s boring. It’s hard. It doesn’t allow you to have any fun, since it’s all backstory and, therefore, doesn’t fill up any pages. Yet, it’s probably the most important work you can do for your script.
In my experience, getting the characters right is the single most important aspect of a screenplay. You can have a bad plot, but if you have great characters, you can write a good screenplay. Meanwhile, if you have bad characters, even if you have a great plot, the screenplay will suck. The reader will not care what happens unless they care about the people taking us there.
If you create a character who we like, give them some kind of resistance within them that they’re battling, and show them succeed – if you get that right, NOTHING ELSE MATTERS.
However, we need to do a deep dive to get there. I don’t need to know when your character had their first kiss (unless it’s relevant to the story) or what their favorite food is. That stuff does help. And if you want to do that work, I’m all for it. But I’m looking for something more important.
Here’s what I want you to do this week. You’re going to make a list of your 4-5 major characters – the ones who have the most screen time. You’re then going to figure out the five major character pillars of each. These five pillars are…
Likability
Personality
Flaw
Arc
Central Relationship
Let’s go through these one at a time.
LIKABILITY
I got news for you. If we don’t like your main character, there’s a very good chance we won’t care about ANYTHING they do. Which means you can write the greatest story ever and we’ll still hate it because we don’t like the person. Go back through all your least favorite movies and I can pretty much guarantee you didn’t like the hero. So you have to figure out why your character would be liked by others. And no, you don’t get to ignore this one if you’re writing a dark comedy and your hero is a tough pill to swallow. You then have to figure out how to make your hero sympathetic. If they can do it for Joker, you can do it for your script. You want to have such a solid reason for why your hero is likable or sympathetic that, if you were taken to court on the matter, you would win the case hands down. That’s how persuasive your argument should be.
Here are a few recent movies and why their characters were likable or sympathetic. Willy Wonka – The nicest kindest person you’ve ever met. Ken in Barbie – All he cares about in life is getting this one person to notice him but she won’t. We can all sympathize with that since we’ve all had that person (people) in our own lives. John Wick – He’s sympathetic cause his wife died and they took his dog. He’s also likable because he’s a nice guy with good morals. Robert McCall (The Equalizer) – One of the most likable characters in movies because all he cares about is helping people who can’t help themselves, to the point where he’s willing to risk his secret identity to do so. Louis Bloom (Nightcrawler) – He’s the ultimate underdog in this night-crawling business (audiences love underdogs) and he’s obscenely driven (audiences love characters who are driven, cause driven people are active, and audiences love activity).
PERSONALITY
This is one of the most overlooked aspects of character creation in screenwriting and if you don’t pay attention to it, you are likely to have a boring main character. This happens ALL THE TIME in the amateur scripts I read. The writer makes all the surrounding characters fun and interesting but they assume that their main character needs to be so grounded that they don’t have any defining traits whatsoever. Which is a huge mistake. You have to give your character some personality.
The best way I know how to do this is to figure out your character’s sense of humor. Your sense of humor dictates the majority of your personality. Are they sarcastic? Do they like gallows humor? Are they goofy? Are they the “dad joke” type? Are they deadpan? Are they quick-witted?
Going beyond the humor, what other aspects do they bring to the table that help them stand out in a conversation? Are they sexy, like James Bond, who has that twinkle in his eye whenever he speaks to a woman? Are they intimidatingly smart, like Robert Downey Jr’s Sherlock Holmes? Are they cocky? Are they charismatic, like Ferris Bueller? Are they quirky, like Bella Baxter (Poor Things)? These are just some ways to identify your character’s personality. Define it as tightly as you can because if you don’t, your character is going to sound untethered. We’re never going to have a good feel for them.
FLAW
This is obviously a big one because it’s the thing that most defines your character within the context of your movie. Writers can get tripped up by flaws. But they’re easier to figure out than you think. The character’s journey in the movie will determine how you identify their flaw. For example, if the movie is about a banker trying to get rich, the flaw will probably be greed. If the movie is about being the best at something (Nightcrawler), the flaw will revolve around recklessness or perfectionism. If someone wants to be the best at all costs, that’s their flaw – they don’t know when to stop. If the movie is about a “my way or the highway” coach who’s trying to take a basketball team to the championship, the flaw would be stubbornness. He’s not able to listen to anyone else but himself.
Think of the flaw as the NEGATIVE part of your character’s personality. They have good things. But this is their one bad thing. And it’s usually the most dominant part of their personality. Some writers have asked me if addiction is a flaw. It can be. But it’s usually what leads to the addiction that’s the flaw. So if someone struggles to connect with others but can connect with them when they’re drunk, then they might develop an alcohol addiction. But it’s not the alcohol that’s the flaw. It’s their fear of connection. That’s what they need to overcome. Not the alcoholism.
ARC
Now that you know the flaw, you have to figure out how you’re going to arc your character over the course of the story. A well-constructed character arc is one of the most satisfying storytelling experiences an audience can have. We audiences love to see that broken character overcome that flaw that’s been holding them back the whole movie (which we extrapolate to mean ‘their whole life’) and finally change. It’s not the good guy beating up the bully at the end that gets us. It’s that our good guy’s flaw was that he was a coward and he’s finally overcome that cowardice to become brave, which gave him the strength to stand up to bully at the end. THAT’S WHAT GETS US. When George McFly punches Biff after being Biff’s punching bag the whole movie, we cheer because George has finally overcome his flaw, his cowardice.
Unfortunately, an arc isn’t just about establishing a flaw at the beginning and having them overcome it at the end. There’s all that in-between time as well. This is your second act and you want to set up three to four big scenes where your hero is faced with the opportunity to overcome their flaw but they fail. We need to see these little failures along the way for the big final change to feel genuine. So, as you’re constructing the arc, I want you to think about these 3 or 4 scenes in your script where you’re going to challenge your character’s flaw. And then, also, figure out what that final climactic scene is going to look like where your hero is faced with that opportunity to change once more and he finally does.
CENTRAL RELATIONSHIP
There are no characters in a vacuum. You can’t express a character unless they’re bouncing off other characters. So you want to figure out what the central relationship in your movie is, then strategize how to get the most out of it. For example, in Titanic, the obvious central relationship is Jack and Rose. You don’t want to wait until you start writing to figure out how that relationship is going to work. You want to identify what the major source of conflict is in that relationship so that whenever the characters are together, they’re dealing with that conflict.
In that movie, Jack’s the kind of guy who lives by the seat of his pants. He does what he wants to do whenever he wants to do it. Rose is the kind of person who plans 8 moves because she has to. She’s in a prison – a bunch of rich people who live a highly structured life. And that’s what makes their relationship interesting. Their worldviews are opposite. If James Cameron had envisioned Rose as this cool chick who is more of a rebel, then Rose and Jack are too similar and you don’t get as much conflict. More recently, you can look at Tony Stark and Steve Rogers. Stark is willing to get dirty to get the job done. Rogers plays by the rule book. Those worldviews are what creates the conflict that drives that relationship.
Figure out these five pillars for, at the very least, your hero and your biggest secondary character. If you can extend it out to more characters, even better. I promise you that the more you know these five pillars, the more confident you’ll be going into your script. What you have to remember is that there’s the story being told by your plot (Save Barbie Land) and the stories being told within your characters themselves (Ken – must overcome his feelings of worthlessness and find purpose if Barbie doesn’t want him). If you can create a great character story, your script will be impervious to plot issues. I know that sounds crazy but it’s true. To this day, Swingers is one of my favorite movies. It also has one of the worst plots I’ve ever seen in a script. But it works because the characters all have their clear through-lines.
Okay, get to it! Next Thursday, we’re outlining our plot. Which means that, yes, you finally get to start writing your script in Week 5. Can’t wait!
GET THOSE LOGLINE SHOWDOWN ENTRIES IN! DETAILS BELOW!
The August Logline Showdown deadline is TONIGHT at 10pm. For Logline Showdowns, you send me a logline for a script. I then pick the best five loglines and they compete on the site with you guys voting. Whoever wins gets a script review the following week!
What: August Logline Showdown
Enter: Feature Screenplay Loglines Only
Deadline: Thursday, August 24th, 10:00 PM Pacific Time
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Okay, on to today’s topic!
Lately, I’ve been reading too many screenplays where I haven’t been able to connect with the characters. Whenever this happens, I go to this place where I think I can’t enjoy screenplays or movies anymore because I’m too deep inside the screenwriting matrix. I only see writers making choices rather than getting lost in a well-told story.
But then I’ll watch or read something good and realize that, no, it’s not that I’m emotionally dead inside. It’s that the writing isn’t good enough. The specific place where most writing goes bad is in the characters. The vast majority of the characters I read in screenplays are some combination of uninspired, boring, simplistic, and weak.
But the worst characters I see? Are the ones who are just *there*. That’s it. They’re on the page. They’re in the script. But they lack any sort of quality that pulls you in and makes you care about them. There are only 2 scripts on last year’s Black List where the writers wrote characters that I actually cared about. They were…
There were other scripts on the list that made me interested in the characters. But here’s why I’m writing today’s article. Making readers interested in your characters isn’t the same as making people *care* about your characters. It’s the difference between characters charged with TNT and characters charged with plutonium.
When you make the reader care about a character, they are EMOTIONALLY ENGAGED in your screenplay, which makes the story a thousand times more potent.
And writers just don’t know how to do this anymore. I don’t fault them for this. The biggest thing I’ve learned about screenwriting since I created Scriptshadow is that the hardest part to get right is the characters. That’s because you’re trying to represent a 659-dimensional human being in two dimensions. Our lives are hundreds of thousands of hours long. You think it’s easy to emulate that within two hours? It takes all sorts of writing knowledge to figure out how to condense the vast complexity of someone’s life into an artificial person who only exists for two hours.
But here’s the good news. I’m going to tell you how to do it. Right here. Right now. There are seven key things you gotta focus on. You will not be able to include all seven every time you construct a character. That’s because each script is different. But you should try and include as many as you can. Are you ready? Here we go.
A PAST
Give your character a past. Make that past as specific as possible. Because the more you know about that character’s past, the more you can include it in who that character is right now. If your character used to sell drugs on the street before becoming a big successful businessman, maybe he still has some of that “street” in him. Maybe he uses more slang. Maybe he’s not so prim and proper. If you know 19 other things about that character’s past and all 19 of those things have some echoes and remnants that have made it into who your character is today? I guarantee they’re going to be a more fleshed-out character than 90% of the characters the average script reader reads.
A SPECIFIC JOB
I just read this script where it wasn’t clear what the main character’s job was. I don’t think the writer knew. You can’t make this mistake. A character’s job is one of the easiest ways to add some specificity to them – to make them stand out from other characters. We spend half our lives at our jobs. So our jobs have a big influence on who we are, what we talk about, what we’re interested in, how much time we have for others. There’s a reality show I watch where this person used to be a bartender 12 years ago. And when he was a bartender, all he cared about was getting drunk and scoring chicks. In the latest season of the show, he’s become a bar owner. Now, all he cares about is where to score more investment money and ways to get more people to show up at his bars. Same person, but his job has created two completely different versions of him. For a writer to not be absolutely clear on what his main character’s job is and what that job entails and how it shapes his character is criminal. You’ve got to know!
DETAIL
I’m not exaggerating when I say that 99% of the scripts I read don’t include enough detail about the characters (specifically the main characters). Give me the details! Don’t tell me he’s wearing a “nice outfit.” Tell me what the outfit looks like. Is he wearing a blazer? If so, what color is it? That’s going to tell me something about him (if it’s lime green, I’m going to know that he’s eccentric). Is it a cheap blazer or an expensive one? Cause that’s going to tell me if he has money. Is it tailored or is it ill-fitting? That’s going to tell me if he cares about his appearance. And I’m just talking about his outfit here. Detail extends far beyond that. I want to know the details of his place. I want to know if he walks slow or fast. I want to know if he speaks with a lisp. Every detail you give is an opportunity for us to understand your character better.
ACTIVE
Make your character active. This is the one that most writers get right because it’s often a function of the screenplay. Most screenplays have a goal that needs to be achieved (Take down Thanos!). So your characters have no choice but to be active when they pursue this goal. Active characters are way more interesting than passive characters. Of course, there are rare stories that require a passive protagonist. That’s fine. But I promise you that for the 99.9999% of stories out there, you want your character to be active. It’s one of the easiest ways to make the reader connect with your hero. People like people who go after things.
A PERSONALITY
Ever go on a date with someone with zero personality? It’s misery, right? Same thing goes for movie characters. If they don’t have personality, we’re not going to like them. When I said above that I read too many boring characters, “boring” referred to “no personality.” Personality does not mean a super charming funny person, like Ryan Reynolds, by the way. I just mean they have to have some identifiable characteristics that make up a cohesive persona. They can be quirky, like Juno. They can be confident and assertive, like Ethan Hunt. They can be creative and ambitious like Tony Stark. They can be free-spirited, like Jack Dawson in Titanic. They can even be internal but tough, like James Bond. The point is, YOU NEED TO KNOW what those characteristics are. If you don’t know, there’s a good chance they’re going to be blank as a piece of paper.
A FLAW OR AN INTERNAL CONFLICT
Characters tend to be more interesting if they’re battling something internally. That battle might be a flaw (they’re stubborn). Or it might be an internal conflict (they haven’t properly mourned the death of a loved one). The great thing about flaws and internal conflict is that even when the story strops, your character’s struggle is still moving. You may be able to escape the bad guys for a while. But you can’t escape your thoughts. Or your weakness. It’s always there. So it’s downright silly not to include one of these for your character. I guarantee they’ll become more interesting once you do.
UNRESOLVED RELATIONSHIPS
One of the most relatable things on this planet are these universal struggles we have with other human beings. Old friends whose relationships we haven’t repaired cause we’re too stubborn. Mothers who won’t let their daughters stop thinking about getting married or having children. Divorced couples who wonder if they did the right thing. Being betrayed by someone you loved. Letting jealousy seep its tentacles into your marriage. Religious differences. Long distance relationships. Sibling rivalries. If you want the secret to pulling readers into a character, give that character a compelling unresolved relationship with another character. Take the most successful movie of the year – Barbie. Ken is in love with Barbie. He just wants to be Barbie. And she doesn’t want him. That unresolved struggle informs his entire storyline. It created an iconic character.
These are the ingredients. It’s up to you to decide how many to use and how to mix them. I encourage you to try and include all seven. Because the biggest mistake I see writers make when it comes to character is that THEY JUST DON’T TRY HARD ENOUGH. They don’t put in the effort. I read some scripts where I can tell the writer didn’t take a single minute before writing the screenplay to think about who their protagonist was. Trust me when I tell you, if you do that, that’s exactly how that character will come off to the reader – as someone who a writer did not put any thought into.
As I’ve said before, a movie can survive an average plot. It cannot survive an average protagonist.
Good luck and see you tomorrow for Logline Showdown!
Genre: Action
Premise: In order to clear his name and re-enter the Order, John Wick will have to take on the guy at the top of the program’s pyramid, the psycho, Marquis Vincent de Gramont.
About: The John Wick franchise had its biggest weekend ever, scoring 73 million bucks. This means that if you were betting on the “more money than kills” wager circulating around Las Vegas, you’d be short about 20 million, as Wick killed nearly 100 million people in this movie. Director Chad Stahelski swears this is the last John Wick film. “American Assassin” screenwriter Michael Finch teamed up with Shay Hatten to write it.
Writer: Shay Hatten and Michael Finch (based on characters by Derek Kolstad)
Details: 2 hours and 50 minutes long (no seriously!)
Are movies back??
Has the answer, all along, been to just ‘dude’ it up?
Hollywood has bent over backwards these past five years to de-masculinize the moviegoing experience. “Terminate the testosterone” was the operating slogan. If you wrote a script without a prominent female character, the studio would toss it then euthanize you, not necessarily in that order.
Well, it turns out that when you give your core audience what they want, as opposed to try and make a movie for everyone, you signal yourself as a flick that knows what it is and celebrates that.
John Wick 4 is a movie where you go get your dude friends, you head to Taco Bell, you buy a bag of taco carnage. You hide all the tacos in your pockets. Then you head into the theater and have John Wick Taco Time. 69% percent of the audience who saw this flick were dudes.
So which was better, the tacos or the movie?
The plot breaks down like so. The captain of all the Continental Hotels, Marquis, who lives in France, tells the New York Continental manager, Winston, that his hotel is no longer in operation since he failed to kill John Wick in the previous movie. He then blows the hotel up.
Marquis then force-hires this guy named Caine, who’s blind, and was once the best assassin in the world, and tells him to kill John Wick. Cut to Japan, where John Wick visits his old friend, Shimazu, who runs the Japanese Continental (it’s like White Lotus! Even Jennifer Coolidge was there!). Caine and his team descend upon this hotel which results in an outright war.
John Wick escapes and, after a side quest where John has to reclaim his name or something, Wick enacts prima nocta, whereby Marquis must battle him in a duel. If John wins, he’s back in good standing again. Marquis is a fan of Amelie so he sets up the duel at Sacre Couer. Marquis then swaps himself out for Caine. And then… well and then we have our shocking ending.
I don’t know if I have ever, in my life, seen a bigger gap between the quality of a script and the quality of a production. The screenwriting here is so bad. Yet the direction is so good. How do I reconcile this madness???
I suppose, if we’re being honest, the John Wick franchise was never about the writing. It is about a guy who goes after the Russian mob because they killed his dog. I’ve met third graders with better starting points for stories. Instead, the series focuses on its icy cool directing style and the “gun-fu,” which has risen to all new heights in John Wick 4, whereby somehow people are able to withstand 15 shots to the gut before they die.
Pretty much nothing makes sense in this movie. There is a team of people who monitor assassinations who have an office that takes up an entire floor OF THE EIFFEL TOWER. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Eiffel Tower but there are no private floors.
Therefore, this group of people are doling out 25 million dollar hits in front of anyone with a pair of binoculars. And, oh yeah, this office is run by 1950s pin-up cosplayers who ARE AMERICAN. So I guess France rents out a see-through office in the Eiffel Tower to American cosplaying assassins. Sure. Why not?
Or this was my favorite part. At the beginning of the movie, John Wick is hanging out in an abandoned underground subway when Lawrence Fishburne shows up with a freshly dry-cleaned suit for him, then proceeds to light a match and ignite a pre-arranged fire triangle on the ground that has ABSOLUTELY ZERO PURPOSE. Literally nobody benefits from this triangle of fire. And yet there it is.
But wait, there’s more! There is a fight to the death that takes place IN THE MIDDLE OF A CLUB. And everyone just keeps dancing! Two guys pummeling each other into a bloody pulp and no one bats an eye. At one point, after John Wick had fallen off a 40 foot railing, some guy two feet from him was more concerned about his twerking technique than checking to see if John Wick was okay.
One would think this would place John Wick 4 squarely into the “crap” category, which is so bad that it needs to pass special arbitration rules to even be included in a Scriptshadow review. But that wasn’t the case.
There’s something undeniably special about the production value of this movie. It joins the ranks of James Bond and Mission Impossible of showing us just how magical an experience REALNESS has on a film.
Every. Single. Location is stunning. The framing of every shot is beautiful. The production design is second-to-none. The costuming is excellent. The cinematography is so good.
Even when the set dressing is cliche, it’s done so much better than everyone else’s version of it, that it still leaves an impression on you. For example, John Wick walks into a church and every single candle in the place is lit. Seen it a million times. But it was done on so much steroids here that your jaw was on the floor.
There was a moment, though, that exposed this practice. I don’t even remember who was in the scene. I think maybe Marquis and Winston. The scene was pure exposition. It was there to set up *what needed to happen next*. It was so nuts and bolts plot exposition that Stahelski decided to set it inside a gigantic equestrian practice barn. As our characters work out the plot, these equestrian riders, for no purpose whatsoever, start riding around our two characters as they converse.
Make no mistake, it made for a visually interesting conversation. But when you’re going to these lengths to hide the fact that your dialogue is boring, you’re doing it the wrong way. What you want to do is find a dramatically interesting scenario that you can use as a vessel to hide your exposition.
For example, there’s an earlier scene where a “tracker” who claims to be able to find John Wick, comes to the Marquis to negotiate a contract. In that scene, there’s something dramatic going on – a negotiation. Both men have big egos. Neither likes the others’ terms. As a result, the negotiation escalates quickly. All of this while exposition is being given (their discussion is yielding what happens next in the story).
That’s how you do it. You can’t just put shiny things on a screen and hope they distract the viewer from the fact that you’re force-feeding them three minutes of dead-boring exposition. You must entertain them while feeding them. To highlight the ineffectiveness of Stahelski’s strategy, I don’t remember a single thing they discussed in that scene. But I remember what happened in that Marquis-Tracker scene down to smallest detail.
Dramatize scenes people. It makes a world of difference.
For me, what sets these movies apart is originality and cleverness within set pieces. The two set pieces that stood out to me were, one, Caine’s first sequence in the Japanese Continental Hotel. Remember, Caine is blind. So he carries these little motion sensors which he slaps onto walls. Then he lures his prey into these rooms and waits until they pass the sensors, which beep a noise, which tells Caine exactly where to point and shoot. I thought that was fun and clever.
And even though I was making fun of it earlier, I liked the John Wick club sequence for its bombastic over-the-top boss fight. John takes on this gigantic man who just won’t die. And they fight each other all over the club. The gigantic guy reminded me of boss fights in video games. You just keep hitting the guy and nothing happens. I’d never quite seen a scene like it in a film. And that’s all I’m asking for. You don’t have to give me something totally original. But at the very least, it needs to be original-adjacent.
Such a mixed bag with John Wick 4. The running time here is so ludicrous, it’s hard not to laugh at it. The number of kills could’ve been cut in half and nothing would’ve been missed. But I guess if this is your last Wick, you gotta go full Wick. And that they did!
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Shay Hatten says that Keanu Reeves is the king of demanding less, not more, when it comes to dialogue. In the first film (before Hatten came on board), there was a five page monologue for Keanu and Keanu ended up convincing the team that all he needed to say was, “Uh huh.” When it comes to how much, or how little, dialogue you should write, “less is more” is, historically, the more effective approach. Now you can get carried away with that. But the key is to be honest with yourself. Are you only writing that monologue because it’s a movie and you feel like that’s what happens in movies? The character gets a big monologue at this moment? Or are you writing that monologue because it’s something the character would really say? Lean into the latter. Because when characters start saying things that they don’t really need to say, that’s when dialogue dies on the screen (and on the page). There must be purpose behind the words for them to matter.
Where is Zendaya’s movie on this list??
It is time for the official RE-RANKING of the Black List. As we all know, at this point, the Black List ranking system is all over the place. It’s being manipulated by managers and agents. It’s promoting agendas that don’t include the quality of the script. It ignores scripts from seasoned writers with no clear delineation about who’s allowed and who’s not allowed to be on the list. We all have major reservations at this point. That’s not to say I think the list is irrelevant. There are still good scripts on it. They’re just not ranked correctly. Which is why you have me! I’ve read the scripts so I can tell you what’s good and what’s nowhere close to good. You can see the original rankings here.
There are twelve scripts on this list I haven’t read yet (Operation Milk and Cookies, Believe Me, Shania, Hello Universe, A Hufflepuff Story, St. Mary’s Catholic School Presents The Vagina Monologues, Lift, Sleep Solution, Thicker Than Ice, The Unbound, The Way You Remember Me, Ways to Hinder Winter). Eight of them I would rather lower myself into a boiling pot of water and die slowly inside, than read, so it’s safe to say they’d probably be non-factors on this list. But I will review a few more and, if anything is good, I’ll retroactively add it to this list. I’m excited to see what the true Top 10 looks like! We’re going from worst to best, here. Let’s get started!
59. Candlewood by Jason Benjamin and Jessica Granger
Logline: In 1992 a seaplane crash in a lakefront community sparks a relationship between three young sisters and the mysterious, injured female pilot.
Votes: 11
Original Rank: 27 (Tie)
Thoughts: This was one of the most baffling entries on the list. The story is so light and airy and devoid of conflict it’s almost as if it doesn’t exist. Everything from the random choice in time (set in 1992???) to the lesbian subplot that feels more like a ploy to get on the list than a genuine story choice, it’s one of those scripts you see on the list and just shrug your shoulders cause you have no idea why it got there above many more deserving screenplays.
58. Lady Krylon by Brandon Constantine
Logline: Two rival graffiti artists engage in a series of street battles, culminating in an otherworldy duel after the art starts bleeding into th ereal world.
Votes: 12
Original Rank: 22 (Tie)
Thoughts: To use an apt analogy, this script was like quickly scribbled graffiti art. It was so messy, I didn’t know what the artist was trying to paint. At the end of this script, the writer is making up mythology on the spot. Nothing is set up. It’s all random. I don’t now how this made the list.
57. Fiendish by Edgar Castillo
Logline: While meeting her boyfriend’s dysfunctional family at their ancestral manor, a young woman finds herself entangled in a bizarre and terrifying mystery when the family’s patriarch claims to have been cursed by a demon.
Votes: 9
Original Rank: 39 (Tie)
Thoughts: A horror script without enough original scares and without enough scares period.
56. Whittier by Filipe Coutinho and Ben Mehlman
Logline: 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.
Votes: 15
Original Rank: 12 (Tie)
Thoughts: I remember reading this logline and thinking, “This is either going to be a huge miss or great.” Cause it wasn’t your typical setup for a movie. I liked that. But whenever I see these loglines with pieces that don’t organically connect, it almost always bleeds into the screenplay itself. And that’s what happened. It had a “Chinatown written by a first-time screenwriter” vibe to it.
55. Loud by Whit Brayton
Logline: 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.
Votes: 13
Original Rank: 16 (Tie)
Thoughts: Nooooooo! I was so looking forward to this script. It had one of those newish high concept ideas I’m always looking for. The big critique I had for this one was that it was unsophisticated. And it’s trying sooooo hard to be the opposite. So every time it tries, it shines an even brighter light on how it’s failing. It didn’t feel like the writer had enough life experience to know what he was writing about.
54. It Was You by William Yu
Logline: With the future of Manhattan’s Chinatown at stake, a stubborn store clerk battles against an innovative CEO’s expansion plan, while both are unaware they’ve been falling in love with each other on a new, anonymous dating app.
Vote: 9
Original Rank: 39 (tie)
Thoughts: The Shop Around The Corner or You’ve Got Mail but not nearly as good. Wonky rule-set that doesn’t really make sense.
53. Skeleton Tree by Paul Barry
Logline: When an accident sinks their boat, two teenaged boys must learn how to survive the wilds of the remote Alaskan coastline, endure one another, and to come to terms with a long-held life-altering secret.
Votes: 10
Original Rank: 32 (Tie)
Thoughts: If the central relationship in your story isn’t working, nothing will work. And the central relationship between these two boys didn’t work. With that said, if you liked “Mud,” you might want to check this out.
52. The Dark by Chad Handley
Logline: When stranded on the far end of Manhattan by a mysterious city-wide blackout, a group of inner-city middle schoolers must fight through seemingly supernatural forces to make their way back to their parents in the Bronx.
Votes: 7
Original Rank: 57 (Tie)
Thoughts: A lot of you rightly pointed out that this was, basically, Attack the Block. Writers make this mistake all the time (especially young ones). They inadvertently rewrite their favorite movie. They’re so blind to it that they can’t see it. But we all do.
51. Killers and Diplomats by John Tyler McClain and Michael Nourse
Logline: The true story of the murder of four American churchwomen in El Salvador in 1980 and the low-level American diplomat who teamed with his most dangerous informant to smoke out their killers. Based on Raymond Bonner’s work for The Atlantic.
Votes: 7
Original Rank: 57 (Tie)
Thoughts: This script was just a big fat bummer. It never felt like a story that needed to be told. I’m not going to say, “who cares” about these women. But what’s the point of telling this story in 2022?
50. Indigo by Ola Shokunbi
Logline: 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.
Votes: 11
Original Rank: 27 (Tie)
Thoughts: A James Bond wannabe with an art thief as its protagonist. Not the worst idea but this was a 747 plane that never got off the ground due to its faulty premise logic about stealing paintings from one museum and giving them to another. It’s like that script you write when you’re 22 and know nothing about how the real world works. You make up your own world rules which is fun as heck until you start sending the script around and people look at you cross-eyed. Although I guess this did get 11 votes.
49. Cauliflower by Daniel Jackson
Logline: 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.
Votes: 32
Original Rank: 1
Thoughts: The only thing I remember about this script was how messy it was. Just a year earlier, there was a great script on the Black List called Magazine Dreams that covered a lot of the same territory. And Magazine Dreams was smart, specific, sophisticated, and had a strong voice. It showed how these scripts *should* be written. We didn’t get anything close to that with Cauliflower, which felt like the low-rent version of Magazine Dreams.
48. Cruel Summer by Leigh Cesiro and Erica Matlin
Logline: During the summer of 1998, five camp counselors accidentally kill a stranger in the woods.
Votes: 10
Original Rank: 32 (Tie)
Thoughts: A way too thin script with way too few laughs.
47. Carriage Hill by Emi Mochizuki and Carrie Wilson
Logline: A pregnant couple hoping to start their family in the suburbs find themselves embroiled in a decades long mystery which threatens to shatter their American dream.
Votes: 7
Original Rank: 57 (Tie)
Thoughts: I love movies where people move into mysterious new communities and weird things start happening so I was kinda into this. But eventually things just stopped being believable.
46. Rabbit Season by Shanrah Wakefield
Logline: 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.
Votes: 13
Original Rank: 16 (Tie)
Thoughts: I barely remember this one. But from what I do remember, it felt unrealistic that the main character was stuck in the park the whole movie. If you’re going to set up a movie dependent on its rules, those rules need to be rock solid. These were not.
45. The Devil Herself by Colin Bannon
Logline: When an elite assassin is sent to the haunted Harz Mountains in Germany on an extraction job she intends to be her last, she quickly learns that the local legends about witchcraft are true and must face a sinister supernatural threat.
Votes: 8
Original Rank: 46 (Tie)
Thoughts: Annnnnnd…. ACTION! And more action. And more action. And more action. The Devil Herself never slows down. And, ultimately, we can’t keep up with it.
44. Wheels Come Off by Kryzz Gautier
Logline: In the year 2065, a fiery teenager with a wild imagination, her paraplegic mom, and their clueless robot struggle to navigate the post-apocalypse; but when the mother’s wheelchair breaks, the trio must venture out into the dangerous “outside” for a chance to survive.
Votes: 11
Original Rank: 27 (Tie)
Thoughts: If this logline were a piece of jewelry, it would be one of the shinier ones on this list. Zany “out-there” concepts are fun to write. They really are. But I often feel they’re more fun for the writer than the reader. And that’s probably how I’d categorize this one. Kudos for giving us something different. But it’s ultimately too weird.
43. Sandpiper by Lindsay Michel
Logline: Still reeling in the wake of her husband’s death, master thief Viola Crier signs on to a risky, last-minute job set to take place inside a man-made time loop, but as the number of loops increases, the job begins to spiral out of control
Votes: 10
Original Rank: 32 (Tie)
Thoughts: As I helped develop a time loop script once, I can confirm they are some of the hardest concepts to pull off. There’s a lot of rule-setting that needs to happen and this script didn’t do its homework. I just remember this being big and cumbersome and confusing. It didn’t work for me.
42. Killer Instinct by Lillian Yu
Logline: 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.
Votes: 23
Original Rank: 4
Thoughts: It’s never a good sign when I have to go back to the review to remember what happened. But after skimming the review, I immediately remembered my big problem with this script, which was that the writer wasn’t following the right protagonist. That is Screenwriting 101 so that failure meant this script didn’t do well with me.
41. The Masked Singer by Mike Jones and Nicholas Sherman
Logline: Mickey Rourke loses his mind after he’s forced to take a gig on television’s highest rated show: The Masked Singer
Votes: 12
Original Rank: 22 (Tie)
Thoughts: What I remember most about this script is that I thought it was going to be funnier. This happens a lot with comedy. You’ve got these really funny loglines. Which means you gotta deliver the funny in the actual script! This was still not bad, though.
40. Go Dark by Josh Marentette and Spencer Marentette (newsletter review – e-mail carsonreeves1@gmail.com to join!)
Logline: A team of black-ops soldiers use an experimental technology to travel into the afterlife and rescue their dead teammate.
Votes: 8
Original Rank: 46 (Tie)
Thoughts: Oh how I was looking forward to this one. I saved it. Savoring that I had it in my back pocket for a tough day. This is a movie premise and then some! But this felt like a first draft. It was like Inception with all its cool imagery. But that imagery hadn’t been carefully woven together yet. In my estimation it’s at least 10 drafts from nailing its execution. Not a quick fix by any means.
39. Four Assassins (And a Funeral) by Ryan Hooper
Logline: The Adoptive daughter of a legendary assassin returns home for his funeral… and finds herself in the crosshairs of her four highly trained, highly dangerous siblings.
Votes: 8
Original Rank: 46 (Tie)
Thoughts: One of the better titles on the list leads to a fairly decent script. I always admire writers who can tell you exactly what their move is in the title, and this does that.
38. Michael Bay: The Explosive Biopic by Sean Tidwell
Logline: 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.
Votes: 12
Original Rank: 22 (Tie)
Thoughts: In retrospect, this script had a tough task. It’s doing a biopic as a comedy. The comedy was definitely the focus, though, and it wasn’t up to par. There were some LOL moments. But, when it comes to successful comedy scripts, the reader should be laughing out loud 30-40 times. I laughed out loud maybe five times here? Needs more laughs!
37. Worst. Dinner. Ever. By Jack Waz
Logline: An estranged father and son have to survive terrorists, explosions, and, most terrifying of all, dinner with each other.
Votes: 16
Original Rank: 10 (Tie)
Thoughts: If we were ranking these scripts on which are most likely to become movies, Worst Dinner Ever would probably be in the top 3. It’s a really fun premise. I just felt that the execution was predictable and the comedy wasn’t very funny. I still think this will get made. It’s a good enough premise that you hire a name screenwriter to rewrite it.
36. Idol by Tricia Lee
Logline: The true story of American Idol viral sensation, William Hung.
Vote: 9
Original Rank: 39 (Tie)
Thoughts: In retrospect, I was probably too harsh on this script. I detest biopics so much that just seeing that genre denomination can cloud my judgement. At least the writer came up with an unexpected subject in William Hung. And she does treat him like a real person and not like a joke. If I had to do it over again, I probably would’ve given this one a little more love.
35. See How They Run by Lily Hollander
Logline: 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.
Votes: 30
Original Rank: 2
Thoughts: I barely remember this script. It’s got a pretty good concept, which I suspect is why it made the list. And with horror, as we just saw with “Smile,” you don’t need a whole lot to win over an audience. But I still felt like the writer didn’t do anything special with the premise. I was hoping for more.
34. Mimi by Scarlett Bermingham
Logline: A successful illustrator finds herself friendless after her best friend gets engaged, forcing her to embark on an epic quest to “date” for new girlfriends — as an adult.
Votes: 10
Original Rank: 32 (Tie)
Thoughts: A bit try-hard with the illustration component rearing its head into the story. It’s something I’ve seen before. And the best part of the premise, the “dating for friends” stuff, wasn’t as good as it could’ve been. Rallies late but doesn’t ultimately live up to its promise.
33. Divorce Party by Rebecca Webb
Logline: 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.
Votes: 25
Original Rank: 3
Thoughts: What I’ll say about this script is that when I read the logline, I remembered the story. What you have to keep in mind with readers is that most scripts are forgettable. You literally forget 99% of what happened within 72 hours. Because there just wasn’t anything in them that stood out. So this script had to have had something about it if I remembered the whole thing. I suppose its success will depend on how they cast it. But it definitely has “the female version of The Hangover” vibes.
32. Bella by Chris Grillot
Logline: A young college student is forced to confront her family’s dark past when a mysterious stalker appears, derailing her life and sending her spiraling into a web of anxiety and paranoia.
Votes: 7
Original Rank: 57 (Tie)
Thoughts: This script feels current, sort of like a cousin episode to Euphoria. Like, “What if we followed Maddy into her own movie?” If you liked Black Swan, you’ll love this.
31. Hard to Get by Dan Schoffer
Logline: After Amanda is seemingly ghosted by the man of her dreams, she’s delighted to discover he’s actually been kidnapped — and takes it upon herself to be his rescuer, going on an adventure of epic proportions along the way.
Votes: 9
Original Rank: 39 (Tie)
Thoughts: I always smile when I read this logline so that’s a good sign. And I could see this script fetching an A-list actress, which may make it look more desirable. But I just thought the same thing that I think for a lot of scripts I read, which is that the writer didn’t go to enough lengths to give us a fresh experience. I felt like I’d been here before.
30. Chicago For One by Madeleine Paul
Logline: Based on Robbie Chernow’s hilarious viral solo adventure, a newly heart-broken groomsman takes Chicago by storm celebrating a solo Bachelor Party Weekend after the rest of the party — including the groom — get stuck over 700 miles away
Votes: 9
Original Rank: 39 (Tie)
Thoughts: This is a cute idea. It’s a cute screenplay. But this reminds me of the movie “Tag.” They had a viral story that didn’t quite work as a movie but they made it a movie anyway. That feels like what they’re doing here. It’s an okay script but don’t go looking for anything more than that.
29. Max and Tony’s Epic One Night Stand by Thomas Kivney
Logline: A disastrous Grindr hookup goes from bad to worse when a meteor unleashes a horde of aliens on New York and the two ill-matched men must depend on each other to make it through the night alive.
Votes: 7
Original Rank: 57 (Tie)
Thoughts: I commend the writer for coming up with a non-obvious LBGTQ story. I would watch this movie a million times over before I watched Bros.
28. Dennis Rodman’s 48 Hours In Vegas
Logline: Before game 7 of the NBA finals, Dennis Rodman tells Phil Jackson he needs 48 hours in Vegas. What follows is a surreal adventure with his skittish assistant GM that involves a bull rodeo, parachuting out of a Ferrari and building a friendship that neither one of them ever thought was possible but will end up solving both of their problems.
Votes: 7
Original Rank: 57 (Tie)
Thoughts: This was a big spec sale! Of the comedies on the list, it’s probably one of the better ones. If you’re unaware of Dennis Rodman, it’s a pretty sweet ride. Cause he basically did a lot of this stuff for real. Okay, maybe he didn’t drive a Ferrari off a cliff and jump out in a parachute.
27. Ultra by Colin Bannon
Logline: When an ultramarathoner earns he is one of the 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.
Votes: 19
Original Rank: 6
Thoughts: Ohhhhhh! This one started off so good! And I loved the big concept. The mythology gets dicey at the end, though. When you’re building that mythology into your script, stay away from “absolutely batsh#t insane.” It sounds good in theory but it’s just going to leave your audience scratching their heads. This should be a good movie though.
26. The College Dropout by Thomas Aguilar and Michael Ballin
Logline: A young Kanye West’s intimate journey to create his seminal first album that reinvented hip hop music.
Votes: 13
Original Rank: 16 (Tie)
Thoughts: A testament to the writers that I didn’t hate this script. Probably because Kanye West is one of the most complex people on the planet. He’s such an oddball and he’s got mental issues and he’s a musical genius. I do think it’s kinda cheap to write a biopic about him because anyone can do that and get on the Black List. But this was pretty good.
25. Jellyfish Days by Matthew Kic and Mike Sorce
Logline: A young woman and her devoted boyfriend’s lives are dramatically altered by a medical procedure that could potentially quadruple their lifespans.
Votes: 11
Original Rank: 27 (Tie)
Thoughts: One of the more frustrating scripts on the list. It has some good moments, including a surprising twist around the page 30 mark. But its a heavy script that doesn’t give you enough to justify all the work you have to do ploughing through those heavy parts. If they could get another screenwriter on this to clean it up, it could be good. Right now it’s teetering between okay and good.
24. Barron’s Cove by Evan Ari Kelman
Logline: When his young son is viciously murdered by a classmate, a grieving father with a history of violence kidnaps the child responsible, igniting a frenzied manhunt fueled by a powerful politician — the father of the kidnapped boy.
Votes: 8
Original Rank: 46 (Tie)
Thoughts: I remember this script for having one great jarring chase scene. Also, for successfully tackling a difficult setup. It’s good enough to check out.
23. The Fire Outside by Yumiko Fujiwara
Logline: Peter, a seventeen-year-old painter, lives with his controlling mother in a lonely house in the wilderness. When he meets a mysterious stranger, he begins to question the reality he was raised to believe, gathers the courage to leave his mother, and unveils the sinister truth behind his upbringing.
Votes: 8
Original Rank: 46 (Tie)
Thoughts: It should be noted that I remember the details of this script intimately. Which is strange because I didn’t exactly like it. But if I’m remembering details this many months after reading a script, there must be something to it. Sure, we guess the twist fairly early on. But the way that twist is executed still contains enough uncertainty to keep us hooked.
22. *Weird by Augustus Schiff
Logline: 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.
Votes: 14
Original Rank: 15
Thoughts: This one caught me by surprise. I thought it was quite good and did a good job of taking us into the mind of someone with autism. I’ve read a lot of younger characters with autism. I’d never experienced an autistic protagonist in college though.
21. Homecoming by Murder Ink
Logline: 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.
Votes: 15
Original Rank: 12 (Tie)
Thoughts: The big thing I remember about this script was that it was super-fun. When you’ve got a simple premise, like coming back to your school for Homecoming Weekend, you need to be able to create good characters and write strong dialogue because the plot isn’t doing anything for you. So it’s up to the characters and the dialogue to do that work. Which this did.
20. Mr. Benihana by Chris Wu (newsletter review – e-mail carsonreeves1@gmail.com to get on!)
Logline: 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
Votes: 16
Original Rank: 10 (Tie)
Thoughts: Look, I may not like biopics. And you may not like the fact that I constantly remind you that I don’t like biopics. But if your biopic is written well, I will respect it. And this was written well. It wasn’t mind-blowing but it has a unique character and I found it to be entertaining.
19. The Villain by Andrew Ferguson
Logline: 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.
Votes 21
Original Rank: 5
Thoughts: Hey, have I told you I don’t like biopics? Luckily, this dude is a pretty interesting guy. I definitely think it’s braver to chronicle a villain in a biopic because it’s harder to make us care. So the writer gets points taking that challenge on. And the script does exhibit some voice. Not bad at all.
18. Apex by Jeremy Robbins
Logline: When an adrenaline junkie sets out to conquer a menacing river, she discovers that nature isn’t the only thing out for blood.
Votes: 7
Original Rank: 57 (Tie)
Thoughts: This script keeps changing things up at just the right times in the story, keeping you interested from start to finish. It isn’t blazing any trails. But it travels the already-traveled trails quite well.
17. The Family Plan by David Coggeshall
Logline: A former top assassin living incognito as a suburban dad must take his unsuspecting family on the run when his past catches up to him.
Votes: 7
Original Rank: 57 (Tie)
Thoughts: This is a great example of how to write a comedy spec. It’s all in the concept. If you get the concept down, it will do a lot of the work for you. Your uncle is a retired John Wick? I can imagine 10 comedic scenarios in a couple of minutes from that premise alone. So I wasn’t surprised at all, after I reviewed this, when it came together as a film, which will star Mark Wahlberg.
16. Abbi and the Eighth Wonder by Matt Roller
Logline: When a misogynist explorer meets his sudden (and violent) end, his long-overlooked understudy seizes the moment and embarks on an adventure that will earn her a place in the annals of history.
Votes: 10
Original Rank: 32 (Tie)
Thoughts: Very funny main character. Also some great supporting characters. This script takes on questions of feminism and misogyny in a lighthearted way. I feel like Black List scripts these days are designed to trigger you. This was the opposite. Which is probably why I liked it so much.
15. Follow by Michael Kujak
Logline: When a social media influencer meets a fan at a meet-and-greet, she’s so taken with her cleverness and vulnerability that she invites the fan to intern with her for the summer. At first, they’re an unstoppable team, but soon, the influencer is forced to wonder who she has let into her life.
Votes: 10
Original Rank: 32 (Tie)
Thoughts: This one was great. It really got the stalker-friend dynamic right. These scripts are all about building that central friendship that the reader knows is going to explode at some point. And it wasn’t a disappointment when the explosion came.
14. Blackpill by Alexandra Serio
Logline: Awkward and lonely, Jared is only able to find a community online — until the day he realizes that his favorite Youtuber lives nearby. Desperate for a connection, he becomes determined to find a way into her life… whether she wants it or not.
Votes: 7
Original Rank: 57 (Tie)
Thoughts: A fun little stalker script that doesn’t quite go how you expect it to. Had the potential to be even better, though, if it went deeper into its main character’s desire for fame.
13. Hot Girl Summer by Michelle Askew
Logline: 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
Votes: 13
Original Rank: 16 (Tie)
Thoughts: An unexpectedly fun fish-out-of-water script. Does a good job of going right up the line but never crossing it. I described it in my review as Little Miss Sunshine meets Euphoria. I don’t know if that’s totally apt, but it does seem to exist somewhere between those two universes. And it’s funny!
12. Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel by Michael Shanks
Logline: 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.
Votes: 13
Original Rank: 16 (Tie)
Thoughts: Easily the hardest of all the executions to pull off on this list. So Michael Shanks gets credit just for making us care the whole way through. This is the ultimate trippy low-budget production that has a big enough concept to potentially break out. There are some really clever moments in here. This one surprised me.
11. Wait List by Carly J. Hallman
Logline: A troubled millennial from small-town Texas will do anything to get into her top-choice law school, including murder.
Votes: 19
Original Rank: 7
Thoughts: This was a good script! It reminded me a lot of Promising Young Woman, which I loved. It’s not as well written but it shares a common theme of making you think this is going to be some “all women are amazing and all men are terrible” scripts, but then making its female protagonist do more and more questionable things. It engaged with the gray area when all anyone wants to do today is live in the black and white. This was a good one.
10. From Little Acorns Grow by Laura Kosann
Logline: After a woman becomes one of the first female presidents of a 1950s publishing house in New York, she draws a former college classmate into her orbit, who soon finds her literary empire is not what it appears to be.
Votes: 8
Original Rank: 46 (Tie)
Thoughts: This is one of a handful of scripts on the list that I thought I may have been too harsh on with my review. It’s basically one of those “chess match” scripts, where two people are playing each other. And the script does a good job of exploring that. It is slow in its second act, but its big third act makes up for it.
9. False Truth by Thomas Berry, Isaac Gabaeff, and Nathan Gabaeff
Logline: The life of a cynical San Francisco criminal lawyer at the top of his career unravels when he agrees to represent a father accused of killing his infant son in an extraordinary case that challenges widely accepted medical beliefs, a biased justice system, and his own personal worldview. Based on true events.
Votes: 7
Original Rank: 57 (Tie)
Thoughts: Easily the biggest surprise of the list. If you would’ve told me ahead of time that I would’ve been riveted by a true story about “shaken baby syndrome” I would’ve told you you were bananas. But it looks like I’m the banana here cause this was actually good!
8. Yasuke by Stuart C. Paul
Logline: The true story of the first and only African Samurai in feudal Japan who rose from being a slave for the Jesuits to fighting as a Samurai in the unification of Japan.
Votes: 11
Original Rank: 27 (Tie)
Thoughts: Ava Duvernay, who used to get sent every African-American project town, once said, frustratedly, “Not every story about the first black person in a situation is worth telling.” And that went through my mind when I saw this logline. But I was happy to be proven wrong. This is not only a good story, it’s a script where the writer clearly cares about the subject matter. There’s a ton of specificity here that draws us into this world. A very strong Black List entry.
7. Symphony of Survival by Daniel Persitz
Logline: 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.
Votes: 12
Original Rank: 22 (Tie)
Thoughts: I went back to this review recently and, after thinking about it, I probably gave it more praise than it deserved. If I remember correctly, I hadn’t read a good script in a long time so I was just happy to read anything that was good. In retrospect, the script probably needs more depth. But it’s still a really good story. When they’re stuck behind enemy lines with no way out and they’re starving… I felt it. I felt that pressure and that fear. So this is definitely worthy of being a top 10 Black List script.
6. In the End by Brian T. Arnold
Logline: 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.
Votes: 17
Original Rank: 9
Thoughts: I was surprised when I re-read this review and saw that I gave In The End an “impressive.” I remember liking it, but it’s hard to get an “impressive” from me these days. Maybe I was bowled over by the fact that someone finally mixed the oil and water genres (drama and sci-fi) together and it worked. Definitely one of the better scripts on the list.
5. Grizz by Connor Barry
Logline: A car accident strands a young paramedic in the rugged Pacific Northwest where she is hunted by a ravenous grizzly bear.
Votes: 15
Original Rank: 12 (Tie)
Thoughts: I love simple stories told well and this is the perfect example of that. There isn’t a ton of plot going on here. But the tension stays high throughout and we’re invested all the way til the last page.
4. Ballast by Justin Piasecki
Logline: A naval engineer and her crew find themselves trapped in a deadly game on a shipping vessel in the middle of the Atlantic when they learn a series of car bombs are hidden amongst the thousands of vehicles on board.
Votes: 8
Original Rank: 46 (Tie)
Thoughts: Easily one of the coolest concepts on the list. While I get what some people are saying about it being too serious and cerebral and not enough fun, I thought the writer did an ace job with the execution. Yeah, it does’t play like a Die Hard movie but that’s what I liked about it. One of the few scripts on this list that I was looking forward to and, which, also delivered!
3. Challengers by Justin Kuritzkes
Logline: Framed around a single tennis match at a low-level pro tournament, three players who knew each other when they were teenagers — a world-famous grand slam winner, his ambitious wife/coach, and their old friend who’s now a burnout ranked 201 in the world — reignite old rivalries on and off the court.
Votes: 9
Original Rank: 39 (Tie)
Thoughts: As a tennis guy, it took me a while to be able to imagine Zendaya as a tennis pro. The girl doesn’t have a single muscle in her body. And she looks clumsy as all getup. Tennis is a graceful sport. But, once I got past that, I really liked this. So much so that it grew on me in the weeks since. And I’m thinking we might actually get the first great tennis movie ever (and no, King Richard is not a great tennis movie).
2. Air Jordan by Alex Convery (newsletter review)
Logline: The wild true story of how an upstart shoe company named Nike landed the most influential endorsement in sports history: Michael Jordan
Votes: 13
Original Rank: 16 (Tie)
Actual Rank:
Thoughts: One of the most effortless reads on the list. Maybe any Black List. Damon and Affleck have been trying to make their Jerry Maguire for years. They finally have it in this script. A really fun main character. I expect this to be a great movie.
1. Mercury by Stefan Jaworski
Logline: 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.
Votes: 18
Original Rank: 8
Thoughts: Whatever the current trend in town is, readers will always hate it. Because every time they open a script, they’re reading another script in that trend. This gives writers an opportunity, though. Whatever the trend is, write something different. That reader will be so happy to finally be reading something fresh for once. This was just a really fun smartly-written enjoyable read. It felt like a movie from the very first page. This is why I continue to love reading screenplays. Because, every once in a while, you run into a “Mercury.”
Get a logline consultation from the guy who’s seen over 25,000+ loglines! What better way to see if yours stacks up. They’re just $25 and include a 150-200 word analysis and a logline rewrite! E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you have any questions. I also offer full screenplay consultations!