This weekend, I found myself checking the box office numbers for the weekend and noticing that the two top movies (Elemental and Spider-Verse) were holdovers, and that neither cracked 20 million. The big new release, No Hard Feelings, sputtered to the finish line with 15 million dollars.

We are in the middle of summer!  Summer is when everyone’s supposed to go to the movies!  And not a single film made 20 million bucks?  What’s going on here??

When I fell in love with movies, box office was everything.

Because box office was the unequivocal deciding factor on whether a movie mattered or not.

Some of the most exciting moments for a movie geek like myself were when a film would come out of nowhere and do these amazing things at the box office that had never been done before.

For example, I remember how The Sixth Sense made 26 million dollars its opening weekend. And then it made 25 million its second weekend. That had NEVER happened. Not for a movie that had already gone wide. A 1% drop? It was unheard of. Three weeks later, it actually made MORE money that weekend than the previous one.

Then you had the opening weekend record-setters. The Phantom Menace opening to 65 million. Harry Potter opening to 90 million. Spider-Man opening to 115 million. Dead Man’s Chest opening to 135 million. The Dark Knight opening to 160 million!

There was excitement in the air whenever a big movie opened. Everyone talked about how much it could possibly make.

But these days, the numbers don’t seem to matter to people anymore. I don’t say that in a sad way. I’ve just noticed that people don’t talk about box office like they used to.

Consider Avatar 2. The film made 2.3 billion dollars at the box office. That’s the third most money a movie has ever made. Have you heard anyone touting that number? Have you heard anyone care about it? “Hey! Did you see Avatar 2 crossed 2 billion?!” Nobody’s said that to me. The trades felt like they had a gun to their head every time they reported about the film’s box office success.

So, what’s causing this change?  Where is this apathy coming from?

The most obvious reason is the pandemic. Going to the movies was a habit people had. When you take that habit away for two years, it makes people evaluate whether that habit was valuable to them. Somewhere between 20-30% of the people who had that habit realized it wasn’t very valuable.  And now they’re not going to movies anymore.

Rise of streamers – I’m not one of these people who think that being able to watch a movie or a new show at home is automatically better than being able to watch a movie at the theater. Because a big reason you go to the theater is to get out of the house. It’s cheap entertainment. And it’s fun to meet a friend or to go on a date and watch a movie together. With that said, streamers have given us SO MUCH MORE content that theatrical movies face more competition than they ever have before.

Also, streamers re-introduced a notion that had been absent from the industry for 40 years – no box office reporting. When a movie came out on streaming, you literally had no idea how many people had seen it. I remember when I Care A Lot came out. That movie got people talking. But we still had no idea, relatively speaking, how many people cared. Was it a 20 million dollar opening level of interest or a 50 million dollar opening level of interest? After we got 30+ streaming releases without that box office answer, we started to get used to the idea that box office didn’t matter all that much.

Next we have the politicization of movies. Mainstream films have more politicized themes than at any other time in history and it’s definitely hurting the box office. If there’s even a whiff of a movie promoting some political angle that conservatives or liberals don’t like, you’ve lost half your audience right there. It’s put moviegoers on edge and made them less trusting. Anything that gives people pause about going to the movies is going to eat into the box office. Which makes you wonder why they’re doing it.

The King of The Box Office has already happened – Avengers Endgame ruined everything. The movie made 350 million dollars its opening weekend. Nobody’s going to beat that. One of the things that audiences used to get excited about was, “Will this movie beat The Dark Knight?” Or, “Will this movie beat The Force Awakens?” Avengers Endgame is Wilt Chamberlin’s 100 point game. It ended the discussion. Which takes a lot of the fun out of the box office. If we’ve already hit our limit, it implies that we’re not growing anymore.

The younger generation doesn’t care – The GenZ’ers don’t get excited about this stuff. They’re more interested in how many views a tiktok video got. Or how many subs a content creator has. Box office isn’t on their list. Also, since this generation is growing up on streaming, their world of content is more immediate, and less about going out and seeing a film. Especially because if you go out and see a film, you risk getting triggered on the way there. I kid. But seriously, content on devices is more important to this generation than content on giant screens.

Finally, movies are no longer our zeitgeist moments – Back in the day, if a big movie came out and everyone was seeing it, you felt like you needed to see it too so you were in the know, so you were a part of the cool club. Movies aren’t like that anymore. The best example of this is the fact that we don’t have people quoting movies anymore. Everybody in the world knew the line “I’ll be back,” after The Terminator. Does anybody know one memorable line from last summer’s biggest movie, Top Gun? They’re more likely to know Paul Rudd’s line from his Hot Ones interview (“Look at us”).

This is because interest has been specialized. Instead of us all liking one big thing, our interest is divided into 20 smaller more specialized things. I love The Bear. But I just tried to have a conversation about it with my neighbor and they thought I was talking about a traveling circus. “No, it’s a show about a fast food restaurant in Chicago.” “I’m confused. When does the bear come in exactly?”

This used to be the reason why everyone would watch the same things. Cause they all interacted with each other and wanted common ground to talk about. But the internet and, more specifically, social media, changed that. If your neighbor or chem class partner didn’t watch The Bear, no problem. You can go online and talk to your pal, Choi, from Hong Kong, who loves The Bear so much he’s redecorated his place to look like the inside of Carmy’s apartment.

So what does it all mean? Is this a bad thing?

Sort of. Yeah.

In a way, the industry set themselves up for this. They’re the ones that celebrated the numbers. They’re the ones that touted from the rooftops that a Hollywood film had made 350 million dollars in a single weekend.

So now when Transformers Battle of the Armadillos makes 60 million dollars its opening weekend, you’ve conditioned the masses not to care about that. It’s literally one-sixth of what Avengers made. Why would I watch that film? Or Fast X at 67 million. Or No Time to Die at 55 million. Even when The Batman came out and made 134 million, I remember thinking, “Is that good for a Batman movie? Is it bad?” I didn’t know!

But the discussion is broader than that. Because I don’t think people care even when a movie does make a lot of money. The discussion is less about the money and more about the movie. When Top Gun became such a big hit, I didn’t hear anyone discuss how much money it was making. I heard people talking about how fun it was. How it was the perfect summer movie.  But nobody was like, “Top Gun just passed 400 million!”

Which may be the silver lining here. Maybe now that we don’t have box office chains wrapped around our wrists and ankles, we can just appreciate that a movie is good. I’m fine with that. Box office has been a camouflage for bad movies for too long. Doing away with that unnecessary distraction allows us to see more clearly. I think I’m going to like a post box office Hollywood.

Hey, Jordan didn’t make the cut of his high school team either.  So if you’re on this list, it may be a good thing!

This is a reminder that on the second to last Friday of every month, we’ll have a logline showdown here on the site. Send your title, genre, and logline to me at carsonreeves3@gmail.com. I’ll vet the best five, put them up on the site for competition. Winner gets a review the following Friday (so your script has to be written!). The next deadline is Thursday, February 16th, 10pm Pacific Time.

Unfortunately, not every logline can be a winner. So in the spirit of both teaching and making sure that everyone doesn’t keep sending me loglines that have no chance, I’m featuring 7 loglines that will not make the Amateur Showdown cut. If you entered with one of these, learn from your mistakes, and enter another showdown with a fresh concept. We’re doing these all year long so you have time!

Title: HAVE YOU SEEN ME?
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Disturbed by the disappearance of a pretty blond white girl overshadowing that of her black best friend, an 11-year-old white girl fakes her own disappearance in hopes of it leading authorities to her friend.

Analysis: I sort of understand what’s going on here but it’s one of those ideas that’s not quite formulated when you lay it out. And this is a challenge that a lot of writers run up against. These ideas that *kind of* sound like movie ideas. But if you actually break down the logline, they don’t make sense. In this case, we’re exploring the well-documented phenomena that the news only reports on pretty young white girls that go missing, never black girls. So our hero fakes her disappearance… to make people look for her black friend. Wait, hold on, what?? How does her going missing get people to look for her friend? Aren’t they only going to look for her? And doesn’t that only solidify the ‘missing young white girl’ phenomena? Maybe she leaves messages for the cops like, “Don’t forget my friend who’s also missing!” I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me. And a logline MUST MAKE SENSE. Let me say that again. A logline MUST MAKE SENSE. You don’t get to explain your logline to someone. They just read the logline. So IT MUST MAKE SENSE.

Title: Office Murder Mystery
Genre: Mystery
Logline: Waking up in a locked office next to the dead body of his boss, a man suffering from a schizophrenic disorder must find the real murderer by the end of the business day with the help of his five favorite dead mystery writers that only he can see, hear or speak to.

Analysis: This one comes from a longtime reader of the site, Alex, who I really like. But this logline doesn’t work for me. It definitely has a high-concept feel to it. But two things are keeping me away. One, whenever you start talking about schizophrenics, the writing level needs to be 10 times that of a normal writer. It’s a very specific disease and in order for it to come off as authentic, the writer really has to understand it, and in my experience, 999 writers out of 1000 don’t. So it always ends up being lame. Also, the “dead mystery writers” thing comes out of nowhere. One second we have a dead body of a boss and the next we have mystery writers??? Where did these mystery writers come from exactly? I know. They’re in his head. But they’re not set up well. We weren’t told that our hero was a vociferous reader or an aspiring novelist. Just a “man.”  So there’s zero connection to the mystery writers component.  For these reasons, the logline doesn’t work.

Title: Eagle Heart
Genre: Period drama – WWII
Logline: When his father comes home from war without legs and without hope, a nine year old boy believes that by saving a dying bird he can stop his family from falling apart.

Analysis: These are always hard for me to turn down because I can tell the writer has written a very heartfelt story that he cares deeply about. But the logline still has to work. A big problem I’ll see in a lot of loglines is that the writer makes a HUGE leap from one dot to the next. A ton of necessary information in between is skipped over, making the logline seem awkward and disconnected. We start out with a dad coming home from war, injured and hopeless. Okay, so far so good. Then we’re saving a bird. Wait, what??? What about saving dad?? Then we find out he’s saving the bird so that his family doesn’t fall apart. What about saving the bird to save his dad!!?? All three sections of the logline do not operate in harmony, which is why I passed this one over.

Title: SINNERMAN
Genre: Horror
Logline: When a home invasion ends in murder a mother of two young children is ‘haunted’ by the intruder’s malevolent spirit but she soon discovers that she’s the undead and is being held in purgatory…

Analysis: First of all, when a writer hits me up with 4 or 5 submissions, I pretty much don’t trust those entries. As writers, we typically have 1 or 2 screenplays that are RIGHT NOW our best work. We do not have five equally good scripts. Three of those are older work and not nearly representative of what we’re capable of now. So if you’re just spamming people with your five most recent screenplays, chances are you’re not really trying to show someone your best work. Hence, I wouldn’t use this strategy (on my site or anywhere else). As for the logline, it has a bunch of those buzzwords that make it sound like a movie (home invasion, haunted, undead, purgatory) but nothing unique to help it stand out from the pack. A script idea usually needs a unique attractor of some sort. This one doesn’t have one.

Title: WEIRD WAR
Genre: Epic Vietnam War Era Supernatural thriller
Logline: A young grunt in denial about his psychic ability is assigned to an elite squad of spirit hunters and is forced to come to terms with his family’s own supernatural past.

Analysis: If you follow my site, you know that extended genre descriptions take you out of the running immediately. You want one genre descriptor, two at most. In very rare situations, three. But whatever you do, you don’t want to add things into the genre description (Epic, Vietnam Ear Era) that aren’t accepted known genres. Not only does it come off as unprofessional, but it indicates that the script is all over the place. So, what do we see with this logline? Well, it sounds all over the place. Psychic abilities. Spirit hunters. It sounds out there and, based on my extensive experience reading scripts, like it’s going to have a very wonky and muddled mythology. Now, could I be wrong? Of course. But this is what my experience tells me is coming, which is why the script didn’t make the showdown.

Title: Edge of Humanity
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: Earth faces the final stages of environmental collapse from climate change. The global government secretly commits genocide to avert human extinction, while rival factions fight to uncover the truth.

Analysis: First of all, this writer sent a nice e-mail saying that he recently received his first “RECOMMEND.” So good on him! But, when it comes to Logline Showdown, the recommends are rarer than snow in Los Angeles. We’re tough graders here, and the problem with Edge of Humanity is that the logline is way too broad. There isn’t a single mention of a character. So who do we connect to? And what’s the actual story, since presumably we’re going to be following someone on a journey? On top of that, the broad strokes are too generalized and don’t set the script apart. More generic buzzwords: “environmental collapse,” “climate change,” “global government,” “genocide,” “human extinction.” It just sounds like a million other scripts, movies, and tv shows. This is your monthly reminder that a logline should not be about what makes your movie SIMILAR to others. It should be about what makes your movie DIFFERENT from others.

Title: Controller
Genre:  Sci-Fi
Logline:  A young fugitive, still traumatized from a high school assault, uses an experimental mind-control device to save a new lover from a jealous techno thief.

Analysis: This logline has several problems. For starters, the high school assault should not be in the logline. That’s backstory. It doesn’t add anything relevant that we *need* to know to understand the story. From there, you have “experimental mind-control” and “techno thief.” These are two major aspects of the logline and they don’t go together at all. The featured words in a logline MUST CONNECT for your logline to feel whole. So, for example, if you say your hero is a vegan, then it works well if, later in the logline, they find themselves in a slaughterhouse. Finally, I don’t really know what a techno thief is. You mean like they steal bitcoin? It feels like a dated word and it’s not clear enough all on its own. If any word in your logline has a chance of being even mildly misunderstood, you don’t want to use it.

Carson gives logline consultations for $25 a pop.  E-mail him at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if interested. 

The most important movie to the long-term health of the movie business is finally here! Does it deliver??

Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Premise: Jake Sulley must relocate his family to a far away water tribe on Pandora in an effort to hide from the humans, who are determined to find and kill him.
About: Avatar 2 is finally here. From the time it was conceived til today, the entertainment landscape has changed drastically. Superstar director James Cameron has never had to deal with this particular box office landscape yet. So everyone’s holding their breath to see if his newest film can bring people to the theaters in droves, like the old days. The film started out slightly underperforming with 135 million. But we won’t know how this film is going to do until the numbers come back for next weekend. Cameron is famous for having movies that can play in theaters for months. If the hold is 25% or less, expect Avatar 2 to be a monster hit. If the drop is 40% or more, we’re probably only getting one more Avatar film. — Avatar 2 was conceived in a writer’s room with a group of writers (like television). Cameron had them all break the stories for 2, 3, 4, and 5 together. Only after they figured out the details of what was going to happen in each movie did he assign the writers to their respective sequels, as he wanted to make sure they were invested in the entire story arc before assigning them individual movies. Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) were assigned the first sequel, this movie.
Writers: James Cameron and Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver
Details: 3 hours and 2 minutes (according to Cameron)

Whatever your opinion is on James Cameron, you gotta admire the guy’s chutzpah. A billion dollars of production costs all in. 800 pages of notes. Thirteen years. Five writers. Four sequels. Reinventing special effects. The guy doesn’t just want to make a movie. He wants to change the very experience one has while watching a movie. It’s amazing to watch and my admiration for him has only grown during these interviews he’s given to the lead-up of this film.

But you know the rule here at Scriptshadow. Doesn’t matter if I hate the story behind the movie or love it. It all comes down to one question: IS THE MOVIE ANY GOOD?

Is Avatar 2 any good?

Let’s find out.

It’s been about 15 years since we left Pandora. Jake Sulley is now a permanent Na’vi. He and Neytiri have a full family on their hands. And it’s a weird one. They’ve got two teenaged boys, Lo’ak and Neteyam. They’ve got a weird pre-teen girl, Kiri. They’ve got a young girl, Tuk. And they’ve got an adopted human son, Spider.

When a reborn Colonel Miles Quaritch, who’s been placed in a Na’vi body, arrives on Pandora, his sole mission is to destroy the leader of the Pandora resistance, his old nemesis, Jake Sulley. After he locates Jake, Jake and Neytiri decide to take their family and hide out on the other side of the planet, with a tribe of water aliens called the Metkayina.

Once there, the family learns the ways of the Metkayina, mainly how to live within and around water. The majority of this section belongs to Lo’Ak, who has a series of spats with the local teenagers, turning him into a bit of a lone wolf. He eventually finds friendship with a mysterious beat-up whale creature named Payakan.

Kiri seems to love her new surroundings although she’s such an oddball that she’s often caught staring into the horizon. But you get the sense that, in future movies, she’s going to become a bigger deal, because she has an almost superhuman ability to connect with the planet, which gives her extreme control over her surroundings.

When the kids are finally caught by Quaritch, he uses them as bait to lure Jake and Neytiri to his giant battleship. The Metkayina agree to help Jake, and it’s another Na’vi versus humans showdown. What follows is one of the greatest action sequences ever put to film, one that rivals the ending of Return of the Jedi. But do Jake and Neytiri rescue all their children? Or is the military too strong this time around?

Years ago, when HD televisions first started showing up at TV stores, the makers of these TVs had a phenomenal promotional stunt. They floated this story whereby someone came in to look at the first HD TV in action, and was so thrown by how clear it was, that he vomited on the spot. He wasn’t prepared for that level of realism.

This was back in the day where you could just make things up and nobody would fact-check you so, no doubt, this was a made-up story. At least, that’s what I thought until Friday, when I saw Avatar 2.

I watched the movie in IMAX 3-D over at the Grove and within the first two minutes, I considered leaving the theater because the 3-D and the level of clarity and the 48 fps (which makes the image look super-smooth) was such a potent combination that I initially couldn’t handle it. I literally felt like I was going to throw up.

Luckily, I got used to it. But there was a fork in the road moment there where I was at risk of missing a movie that I’ve been waiting 13 years to see. Needless to say, Avatar 2 is unlike any movie you’re ever going to see in your life. It’s its own thing. And when people talk about it being more of an experience rather than a movie, I don’t begrudge them that assessment.

I think what surprised me about Avatar 2 was that it was kind of a soft reboot of Avatar 1. Just like we had this character who’s been thrown into this new world and he has to learn about the world before dealing with the military threat late, now we have this entire family who’s thrown into this new world which they must learn about before dealing with the military threat late.

Your final opinion on Avatar 2 is probably going to come down to whether you enjoy that “learning about” section of the story. Because it’s the entire second act and it’s, mostly, conflict-free. It’s more about experiencing what living this “water-focused” tribal life is like. In that sense, it mimics real life for anyone who’s ever had to move somewhere new. You’re thrown into this uncertainty but you gradually figure out how to exist in your new environment.

I thought all of that was good. I do, however, wish there had been more conflict in this section. Because if you’re going to have a 90 minute middle act, it’s hard to keep an audience engaged for that long by only showing them your characters learning about their world. Audiences need more. There’s no doubt Avatar 2 lost some story momentum in that section.

With that said, there were several cool subplots in the second act that kept things afloat, the most successful of which was Payakan, the injured whale creature who befriends Lo’ak. You immediately fall in love with the gentleness of the creature and are devastated when you learn his history. I got so attached to this thing that I was ready to riot if he was killed. Honestly, I was going to walk out (for a second time!). The friendship between Payakan and Lo’ak almost made up for the lack of conflict in the second act all by itself.

Quaritch’s hunt for Jack Sulley was the one area of genuine conflict in the second act. This was actually a clever screenwriting move on Fox and Silver’spart. Whenever you place your characters in a safe area where conflict is light – you’ll sometimes see this in narratives where characters are in a witness protection situation – you want to intercut the bad guy getting closer and closer to finding them.

At least, that way, the audience gets the feeling that the safe habitat is only temporary. They know a reckoning is coming. And if an audience knows a reckoning is coming, they don’t care as much that the A-story is a slow burn.

Another way to stave off a slow burn is to give the audience a great show in the third act. And boy does Cameron deliver in that department. The third act battle is insane. I’ve never seen anything like it. When I made the grand declaration that Cameron was going to show Marvel what special effects could be when they’re not rushed – when they’re given the proper amount of care and attention – this is what I imagined.

There wasn’t a single muddy shot. Everything was clear. The geography of the action scenes was flawless. I was never once confused about where I was or what was going on, which happens constantly in Marvel films these days. And the level of creativity in the final action scene was light years ahead of all the Marvel stuff.

That moment where Payakan jumps onto the boat and flails around – wrecking everything, allowing the Na’vi to attack – was just so cool. That moment where they try and shoot a grenade-rocket at him he puts his head down, deflecting the grenade up and over to another part of the ship, which explodes. The battle felt so alive in a way I haven’t seen action set pieces feel alive in a long time.

It really was top-level stuff and it was confirmation that your money was well spent. Yes, the middle of the movie is a little slow. But that ending showdown completely makes up for it.

Despite the amazing experience I had going back to Pandora, Cameron made one critical mistake that kept this from being an “impressive.” Which is that he doesn’t have a main character in the movie. He doesn’t have an entry-point for the audience, someone we can latch onto and root for as our own avatar in this adventure.

Jake and Neytiri are sidelined in this movie, so much so that it actually shocked me. They don’t have much to do once we move to the water village. The story is more about the kids. And in Cameron’s technically correct choice to build up all the characters, he lost sight of the fact that we’re not sure who this movie is really about. Who has the most important journey? It’s not clear because of how spread out the focus is.

That really hurt the film, in my opinion, because after the final battle, when we start getting into the personal stuff, I found myself unclear on what the ultimate goal was here. And the reason for that is because we didn’t have a main character with a main goal.

It’s frustrating because there are some characters who come out of this fairly memorable. Spider comes to mind. Lo’ak to a certain degree. But I would argue that the character who’s the most memorable in the movie is Payakan, the whale. And as much as I loved that darned whale, I don’t think your best character in an Avatar movie can be a whale. It’s got to be one of the Na’vi or humans.

This issue pre-dates the movie because Jake Sulley and Neytiri were never standout characters, even in the first one. So the sequel kind of came in handicapped in that sense. But as a collective experience, it was still an amazing adventure. You can truly say that, if you watched Avatar 2 in 3-D, that you’ve never, in your life, seen anything like it. And that’s saying something.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If you focus on everyone, you focus on no one. Movies are not TV shows. They need a clear main character. Heck, even TV shows need a main character. They’re just better equipped to spread the wealth. But movies need that one person we can latch onto so that we feel like we can navigate this large intimidating adventure. By jumping around to so many different characters, the audience was left with no one to truly connect with. And that, ultimately, prevented us from emotionally connecting with the film.

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.”

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Is this JJ Abram’s big return to prominence? Or is it a five car pile-up waiting to happen?

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: After losing his older brother in a fatal racing wreck, a just out of high school Speed Racer attempts to pick up where his bro left off.
About: As Mr. Crawford informed me, this 1994 draft was intended to be directed by Julien Temple, with a pre-Amber Heard Johnny Depp starring.  It was deemed too expensive to produce.  Alfonso Cuaron was attached to direct in 1997 but that didn’t work either. The Wachowskis would develop a different script and shoot that back in 2005. The movie did not do well and Speed Racer was quickly forgotten. But JJ never let go of his love for the property and has decided almost 30 years later to turn it into a TV show for Apple. What’s his vision for that show? I assume it’s something akin to his feature treatment, which we’re going to look at today.
Writer: JJ Abrams
Details: 126 pages

I am so torn by what I’m about to experience.

I love JJ.

I hate anime.

JJ. Anime. Anime. JJ.

Even as a kid, when you have zero storytelling discernment – if it’s flashing colors, you’re happy – even as a KID I watched this show and thought it was nonsensical. You can’t turn something nonsensical into a movie and expect good things. You need a base. You need a story. To this day, Speed Racer will be known as the movie that officially slammed the coffin shut on the Wachowskis being considered serious filmmakers.

Is JJ about to make that same mistake? Or has he cracked the code for making live-action anime actually good?

The year is the 50s. We watch as a young man named Rex Racer is racing in a high-stakes race where the tracks are long and weird and have jumps over mountains and stuff. During a particularly difficult section of the track, Rex crashes and DIES! The entire Racer family, including his younger brother Speed, are devastated.

Cut to 12 years later and Speed is now 18. All he wants to do is race but his family is still so devastated by Rex’s death that they don’t even talk about racing. Speed graduates high school and watches, longingly, as his crush, Trixie, heads to London to enter into helicopter school.

Speed finally gets the courage to ask his father if he can race because racing is in his blood and his father shocks him when he takes him to a remote garage and introduces him to the car he’s been building over the last decade. The Mach 5!!! Speed is so excited that he wants to race this weekend. But you haven’t even practiced, his father says. Speed proves that he can handle professional racing by easily beating the lap record at the local speedway.

Just as he’s about to race, he’s cornered by the mysterious Racer-X, who always wears a tinted visor. Racer-X says to him, “Don’t race,” in a very sinister manner. But Speed doesn’t listen, races, and finishes second to Racer-X, which turns him into an overnight superstar, due in no small part to being the younger brother of the deceased Rex.

The next race is a big one and it’s in England! Which means, guess what? He’s going to see Trixie! Except now that he’s a big popular racer, all the women want him, including the seductive Tatiana, who puts all her cards on the table and says she wants to “get naked” with him ASAP.

During the race, Speed realizes that the big time is a lot bigger than he thought. The race is way tougher. And during it, out of nowhere, a giant tree lands in the middle of the speedway and Speed crashes and his car catches fire. To everyone’s shock, Racer-X slams to a stop and runs over to save Speed (BIG SPOILER). When he lifts his helmet momentarily, it’s revealed that Racer-X is actually…. REX! His brother!

But how can this be!?? Later that night, Rex secretly informs Speed that there are higher powers fixing these races, which is why he tried to warn him off them. If you don’t play by the rules, they make you disappear. Is Speed going to give up? Or is he going to keep racing? Something tells me you can’t keep Speedy in the corner. And that both him and his brother are going to rule the racing world together!

Word on the street is that the development process for this project has been agonizingly slow. And I can see why. There are certain tones that have virtually no wiggle room. When you have, say, a romantic comedy, you can develop something that’s goofy, like The Lost City, or romantic, like Love Actually.

But with this… you need to nail a very specific type of humor along with porting what was meant to be animation into live-action, which is a whole other ball of wax that requires an adjustment so sensitive, it’s like trying to land a 747 on a runway the width of a balance beam.

Look no further than Cowboy Bebop to see how quickly things can go south.

With that said, JJ wins again.

This isn’t a great script. But what JJ is really good at, at least as a screenwriter, is telling a simple story well. Which is the foundation of screenwriting. You’re not trying to tell a complex story well. But a simple story. Which is what this is. It’s a kid whose brother died racing but he still wants to be a racer. And that’s it. He races and the races are all fun because they have a bunch of fun wacky car setups.

However, I understand that saying, “He tells a story well” is a vague statement that helps no one. So let me give you an example of what I mean. At the beginning of the second act, Speed reveals to his father that he dreams of being a race car driver, like his brother. So his father gives him his first racing car. Speed then says, “I want to race in the big race this weekend.”

Now most screenwriters would’ve just cut to the race. That’s what this movie is about right? A guy who’s a racer. Let’s put him in races! But the smart screenwriter understands that it doesn’t make a lot of sense for someone to race when they’ve never even practiced before. In these scenarios, YOU MUST MAKE YOUR HERO EARN IT.

So Speed says to his dad, if I can beat the lap record at the local speedway, can I race? And his dad says sure because, “that’s impossible.” Of course, Speed Racer does the impossible and sets the record. This is standard good storytelling. You can’t hand your hero anything. Make them earn it. Especially if they’re making a big leap in the script.

I also liked the big twist (SPOILERS FOLLOW). I’m not familiar with the Speed Racer show so I don’t know if this was JJ’s idea or not. But I loved that Racer-X turned out to be the dead brother. That moment jolted me out of an appreciate reading malaise and turned the script into something I actually wanted to finish.

Because now I could tell the writer actually cared. They thought about the story. Most writers will just kill off the brother in that opening scene to create sympathy. They don’t think beyond: I NEED TO MAKE MY HERO SYMPATHETIC. To bring that storyline back in a powerful way conveys a way higher desire to tell an enjoyable story.

I think I have a better idea of Speed Racer after this script. I always thought of it is as random weird anime. But now I realize it’s like the car version of Inspector Gadget. The cars can do all these fun things and there’s this deeper sci-fi spy story involved. It’s still going to be a hell of a tightrope to walk tone-wise. But if JJ is heavily involved and doesn’t leave it to one of these dime-a-dozen showrunners, I think it might actually be good. And that’s something I was not expecting to say going into this review.

Screenplay Link: Speed Racer

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: The correction of “who” to “whom” is used in a dialogue scene in Speed Racer. You know what? Never use the word “whom.” Between the years 1993 and 1999, everybody was obsessed with the difference between the word “who” and “whom.” It became such an obsession that it began appearing in numerous movie dialogues, including films as big as The Phantom Menace. To this day, these silly debates have rattled, mobilized, and confused people to feel passionately about this debate yet I am here to tell you that “whom” is a stupid word that nobody who isn’t trying to sound pretentious uses and you can literally use “who” in its place every time and no one will care. I’m glad we can all agree on this.