Today’s screenplay tackles that age-old screenwriting question: How does an alien spy save planet earth?

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: Behind the scenes of a modern day earth, the leaders of the world learn that a faraway civilization is planning to wipe them out. So they send in a spy – one of the aliens who came to warn them – to extract information about the attack in order to defend against it.
About: This script sold at the end of last year in a minor bidding war that Sony won, paying $300,000. Nice! The writer, Daniel Kunka, has one produced credit to his name, the John Cena vehicle, 12 rounds, a 2009 film about a detective who must complete 12 challenges to save his kidnapped girlfriend.
Writer: Daniel Kunka
Details: 119 pages – March 3, 2011 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Hey, it may not be the bidding wars of the 90s, but grabbing $300,000 for a spec script is pretty darn sweet (correction – a commenter points out that this sold for much more than 300k.  300k is the amount Neal Moritz, the producer on the deal, personally paid in addition to the studio, to close the deal). And WHY did this particular spec script sell? Especially when it’s “just another alien invasion movie” (as some people have pointed out)?

Well, that’s the thing. It’s not just another alien invasion movie. We’re not talking Battle: Los Angeles here, where the only thing alien is the plot. This is an alien invasion movie about a spy who flies to another planet to save earth. Now I can’t definitively say that that’s why it sold, but I can tell you it’s THESE KIND OF UNIQUE ANGLES that set your script apart from every other spec out there. Go ahead, write your alien invasion flick. But just know that there are hundreds if not thousands of writers doing the same thing. So if you can find an angle that’s different, like Agent Ox, you may find yourself jumping up a few tax brackets.

That said, all that scribbling still has to dance. Just because the outfit’s original doesn’t mean you should wear it to the club. So does Agent Ox tear it up? Or fall on its ass?

Agent Ox is ambitious. It starts out by telling us everything we know is a lie. Remember that purported alien crash back in Roswell in the 40s? It turns out that really WAS an alien crash. Or, more specifically, an FUI’ing “Oxialitian,” who’d come to earth to warn us that in about 70 years, his people were going to come here and rape the earth of all of its energy, killing us all in the process.

As time went by, more Oxialitians (who look similar to humans in most respects) came, giving the leaders of the world secrets about their technology, enabling them to build an entire series of underground weaponry, the kind of stuff that makes nuclear missiles look like IEDs. The bulk of this technology was used for an immense super-cannon that would be placed on the far side of the moon, awaiting the arrival of the Oxialitians.

Since you don’t want to tell the entire human race that there’s a good chance they’ll be wiped out (I find that sort of thing never goes well), this development was all done on the sly. Only people in the highest positions of government knew about it.

And still, that isn’t enough. They need intel. They need someone on the inside. So a 20-something Oxialitian named Tim is asked to participate in the most ambitious mission in earth’s history. Go to the Oxialitian’s planet, secretly infiltrate their government, and keep Earth abreast of any new developments in their plan.

And that’s what the main storyline’s about. It’s the present day (on Earth at least) and Tim is living on this alien planet (which is about 100 years more advanced than ours), working for their government and quietly sending back intel to earth.

None of this is easy of course. Tim ends up falling for and living with another Oxialitian while there. And, as you would expect, the government begins to suspect that one of their own is a spy – although not necessarily Tim. This is terrible timing, as the Oxialitians decide to move on Earth sooner than expected. So Tim needs to be able to get that intel back to Earth ASAP but because everyone’s being watched so closely, it will be near impossible. As the attack nears and Tim keeps moving higher on the suspect list, he will have to pull off a miracle to save mankind.

This script was so unlike anything I’d read before that I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I mean it’s just kind of “out there,” and yet it’s all handled with just enough skill to keep you reading. Or at least keep sci-fi geeks like myself reading.

What’s funny is that I don’t like the spy genre. We just established this last week. But the second you put an alien spin on it, I’m interested. And actually, even though this takes place in a completely imaginary universe, it nailed every single structural component that previous abomination of a spy spec (Wencesles Square) did not. We have a goal (Find out when/where the attack will take place). We have stakes (if he screws up, the earth is destroyed) and we have urgency (there’s only a few days left before they attack). So from a structural standpoint, Agent Ox got everything right.

Where it starts to get a little wobbly though is in the characters and their relationships. This is EXTREMELY common in the sci-fi scripts I read, as writers interested in science fiction generally aren’t interested in the human component. So you get these murky characters, murky character flaws, and relationships that don’t have a lot going on in them.

Exhibition A – Tim. I knew nothing about him. Here this guy is, going off to this alien planet to be a spy, and I never got a sense of what he thought of this. I’m not even sure why he goes. He just seems to do it because people want him to. What’s his motivation?

And what’s his flaw? What’s holding him back in life? What is it from his past that he’s trying to resolve? What are his dreams/aspirations? His life goals? These are the things that tell us who characters are, that expand them beyond a two-dimensional piece of paper. Yet none of them were addressed save for maybe the backstory, which leaned on the cliché “father was a drunk” crutch that invariably indicates the writer either doesn’t know how to create an interesting backstory or is too lazy to come up with something original.

And if you have a murky character, it’s almost impossible to create a compelling relationship. The whole reason relationships are interesting is because they challenge who a character is, what they believe in, what they want, what their flaws are. If we don’t know any of these things, then you’re stuck doing something murky and generic with the relationship. The extent of Tim’s relationship with his girlfriend is that she’s a little concerned because he’s been distant lately. That’s not enough to carry an entire movie. Say what you will about Avatar but the relationship there was actually about something. He was ignorant. He didn’t care about anything beyond himself. She had to teach him how to appreciate and care about his surroundings.

So that was disappointing.

Still, because the structure was so solid and the stakes were so high, it kept you reading. There were also some cool inventive sci-fi things that were worth nerding out over. Watching this huge alien ring suck the cover off an alien planet was both awesome and terrifying. And I loved the idea of aliens cleaning themselves on a molecular level. A device literally turns you into trillions of molecules so it can clean your insides. I’d never read anything like that before. And I liked how Kunka worked that into a key plot point as well.

So could this be a good movie? That’s tough to say. The great thing about an original idea is that it gets industry attention. The bad thing about an original idea is that those same industry people are afraid to pull the trigger. Anything that hasn’t been done before is a gamble and an earth spy on an alien planet hasn’t been done before. So we’ll have to see what happens. I didn’t love Agent Ox, but I liked it enough to recommend to other sci-fi geeks.

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: One of the most compelling situations you can create in a movie is giving your hero two WRONG CHOICES. Think about it. Give a character an easy choice and there’s no drama. But give them two “wrong” choices and now things get interesting. (Spoiler) Late in the script, Tim’s girlfriend is misidentified as the traitor, which means she’ll be killed. So Tim has a choice – tell the truth, that he’s the real traitor, saving his girlfriend, or let his girlfriend die in order to save earth. No matter which one he chooses, the consequences are staggering. (note: They would’ve been a LOT more staggering though, had the relationship and characters, particularly the girlfriend, been better established – Just having a tough choice in theory isn’t good enough. We have to care about the people involved).

Screenwriting is hard. Every year I’m reminded of that. Most scripts can be divided into two categories. There’s the script that’s trying to tell the same old story as exceptionally as it can (something like Taken or Pretty Woman). And there’s the script that tries to do something different (District 9 or Pulp Fiction). The pitfall with the first option is that you have to nail every single rule in order to get the script right. And the pitfall with the second is that when you have to make up your own rules, which typically results in the script being all wrong. So it’s sort of like a “pick your poison” deal. That said, ten scripts rose above these complications to become my favorites of the year. As has been the case in the past, this lineup reflects my feelings at this specific moment. In other words, the list may not coincide with my Top 25. I wouldn’t say anything truly blew me away in 2011, but a few scripts came close. Let’s take a look.

10) Reunion by Adam Zopf
Premise: At their ten-year reunion, a formerly bullied outcast decides to enact revenge on the cool kids who made his life miserable.
I’d read 60 straight Amateur Friday scripts before Reunion, and while a few of them were decent, there was nothing I would’ve told a producer he had to check out. Reunion was the first script to buck that trend. And what I loved about it most was the character exploration. 99 out of 100 amateur horror writers would’ve chosen to ignore what made their characters tick. Adam was the one who realized that no matter what genre you’re writing, the thing that the audience cares about the most, whether they know it or not, is what’s going on inside of the people. That’s what makes you care about them. And that’s what makes you care about what happens to them. I don’t think this script has been picked up yet so if you’re a producer looking for some great material, check out Reunion now.

9) The Imitation Game by Graham Moore (based on “Alan Turing: The Enigma” By Andrew Hodges)
Premise: The story of how Alan Turing cracked the impossible “Enigma” code, which helped the Allies win World War 2.
It’s rare that I get e-mails from people saying, “You have to read this now.” I get plenty of e-mails saying I should “check this out when you get a chance.” But people so excited they want me to stop what I’m doing *this minute* to read a script? That doesn’t happen often. The Imitation Game is a spec script that proves if you write a compelling main character dealing with an extraordinary situation, your script will sell. That’s because every producer in town knows that if they find a script with a challenging main character, every A-Lister in town will want to play him. I also loved how this biopic was a story, with a goal, stakes, and urgency. Not just a highlight reel of Turing’s life. I didn’t expect to like this one. But boy did I ever.

8) Your Bridesmaid Is A Bitch by Brian Duffield
Premise: After agreeing to groomsman duties at his sister’s wedding, Noah Palmer realizes he may have made the mistake of his life after finding out that the woman who broke his heart is also part of the bridal party.
This is going to be a running theme throughout the Top 10. The reason this script is elevated beyond your run-of-the-mill rom-com is because the characters are so great. Not only do you feel the main character’s pain, insecurity, flaws, fears, and history here, but I loved what Brian did with Anna, the girl Noah is hopelessly still in love with. I think most writers would’ve made her a complete bitch. But Brian makes her cool, makes us understand why Noah fell in love with her. That steered us away from black and white – which is where 99% of romantic comedies exist – and into grey, where the world is way more interesting. It would be easy for us if Anna was a bitch. But because she isn’t, we don’t know what we want. I wish I read more rom-coms that made interesting choices like this.

7) Inherit the Earth by JT Petty (based on the graphic novel by Chris Ryall & Ashley Wood)
Premise: The last human on earth, a young girl, is protected by an army of robots against an even bigger army of zombies.
With the sub-par box office showing of Cowboys and Aliens, it’s looking less and less like this film will ever get made. But the reason I liked it so much was because it actually asked the question, “What would a ten year old girl really be feeling during this experience?” That may seem unimportant. But when you have zombies and robots battling for world supremacy, you need something honest anchoring the story. A little girl who just wants to be loved, who wants a mother and a father – that’s something real people can identify with and understand. For those of you paying attention, that’s four scripts so far, and four examples of me ogling over the character exploration. Have I convinced you to do more character development in your next script yet?

6) The Mighty Flynn by Lorene Scafaria
Premise: After a cruel heartless efficiency expert gets fired, he meets a strange 16 year old girl who unexpectedly helps him turn his life around.
This script is Jerry Maguire for a new generation. People keep saying it will never get made because of Up In The Air, but it’s so damn different from that movie. I mean, does Up In The Air remind YOU of Jerry Maguire? No, because Jerry Maguire is a lot more fun, and that’s the feeling I got from this script. It’s fun. Scafaria, besides being cute and having a cool last name, is really good at mixing drama with comedy. And I love the unexpected pairing she came up with here, not only because it’s different, but because she didn’t take the obvious route and create some sleazy romantic relationship between the older guy and the younger girl. It’s just a unique friendship. The only fix that needs to be made here is the ending and this script could be perfect.

5) Nautica (Riptide) by Richard McBrien
Premise: An investigator tries to solve a murder case on a ship which involves a handyman, a stock broker and the stock broker’s girlfriend, which won’t be easy since each suspect has a different version of the story.
This script has had a long journey and a lot of close calls and for whatever reason, still hasn’t been made. This is Dead Calm but with a more complicated backstory. There have obviously been a fair share of Rashamon-inspired films, but this is one of the few that lives up to the technique. I remember going into this with no idea what it was then coming out exhilarated after all the twists and turns. The characters here are interesting. The story is interesting. I can’t see anyone not wanting to be involved with this project. So let’s boot this out of development hell already.

4) How It Ends by Brooks McLaren
Premise: A man must race across the US to save his pregnant wife as the apocalypse rains down around him.
Here I am, trumpeting the importance of character development for six straight entries, yet my number 4 script barely peeks beneath the surface of its characters. I think that’s what turned people off and made them wonder why I ranked it so high on my Top 25. Commenter JakeMLB responded to this critique best. Brooks decided to take a realistic approach to his story. He wanted to put you right there in the action, attempting to mirror how it would really be. When you take that approach, an artificially constructed character flaw can feel forced and artificial. For example, it’s okay for Han Solo to finally overcome his flaw of being selfish at the end of Star Wars. But had we done the same with Will, it starts feeling like a Hollywood movie as opposed to a real situation. It’s a fine line and I almost always lean towards creating a flaw, but in this rare case, it worked. Not to mention, this is about as intense a script as you’ll read all year.

3) When The Streetlights Go On by Chris Hutton & Eddie O’Keefe
Premise: (from Black List) In the early 1980s, a town suffers through the aftermath of a brutal murder of a high school girl and a teacher.
Let the controversy continue! “Streetlights” inspired some of the more intense debate over a script’s quality as we’ve had all year. Some people were moved by it. And some people wanted to move it into their toilet. Count me among the former. I’m a big believer in this script and more than a week after reading it, I’m still moved by its haunting tone and chilling ending. At the beginning of this article I talked about the two types of scripts you can write, the predictable one and the chance-taking one. “Streetlights” takes chances almost every step of the way. An ongoing voice-over. Lack of a clear protagonist. A period piece. A love story that doesn’t emerge until the final act. And yet, somehow, it all comes together. If anyone can tell me how these guys are only 21 years old, I’d love to know.

2) Seeking A Friend At The End Of The World (no link)
Premise: As a life ending asteroid shoots towards Earth, a lonely man befriends a strange woman and the two embark on a road trip to say their goodbyes to their loved ones.
Writer: Lorene Scafaria
This is another one that just stayed with me. I love Scafaria’s knack for going quirky, yet still making her choices relevant to the story. For example, one might complain that Keira Knightly’s character’s sleep issues (the girl can sleep through the world falling apart) are a bit on the “Ooh, look how different I can make this character” side. Yet her sleep issues turn out to be a big set up for a later payoff during the climax. On top of this, I’m just a sucker for stories where two misunderstood people find each other. I never reviewed this script on the site but Scafaria, in her directing debut, finished shooting it earlier this year, so we should get a trailer soon.

1) After Hailey by Scott Frank (based on the novel by Johnathan Tropper)
Premise: After a newlywed war photographer’s wife dies, he must decide whether to help out her troubled son from a previous marriage or move on and start a new life.
What can you say about After Hailey? It’s one of those scripts where every character is perfectly written. It walks that inexact line between comedy and drama exceptionally. It’s got a great central unresolved relationship at its core, and one we’re not used to seeing – a man stuck with parenting a stepson he barely knows after his wife dies. I know I talk a lot about “heart” on this site and maybe I don’t explain it all that well. But if you want to know what heart reads like, check out this script. It just makes you feel good inside and it tackles a lot of identifiable situations we all deal with in our everyday lives, but in an amusing and heartwarming way.

Now that 2011 is over, I want to set a personal challenge to all of Scriptshadow Nation: Let’s dominate this list next year. We got one on the list. Let’s try for 3 or 4 in 2012. The things I preach on Scriptshadow aren’t revolutionary. But I believe that the people who follow this site understand the essentials of storytelling way better than the people who don’t. So let’s do this. Get out there and start writing. Create something great. I’ll be here to celebrate it when you’re finished.

Hey everyone.  Doing something a little different today.  Tom Benedek, the writer of Cocoon, interviewed me for his class last week at Screenwriting Master Class.  Since I put so much into the interview and covered a wide range of screenwriting topics, I thought you guys might want to read it.  Enjoy!

How did you get started? What has your professional journey been like?
I started out wanting to be one of those filmmakers who does everything – the Robert Rodriquez type – write, direct, edit, produce. So when I first came to LA, I got a job at a postproduction house with the hopes of using it as a place to edit my films. Unfortunately I ended up accidentally destroying a $100,000 piece of machinery and they never let me into an editing bay again. That was the first roadblock to me achieving my dreams, of which there were many more.

How did the Script Shadow blog evolve?
It evolved when I realized how much there was to learn through reading screenplays. I was sitting there thinking, “I wish there was somebody out there when I first started out to tell me how important this was because if there had been, I could’ve saved myself a lot bad scripts and a lot of heartache.” At some point, I realized that I could become that person to other young screenwriters, and that’s how Scriptshadow was born.

Did you study filmmaking?
I did study filmmaking. The problem was I studied it at the single worst filmmaking school in the entire country, Columbia Film School in Chicago. One of my professors was an alcoholic. Over the course of the semester he played Full Metal Jacket 9 times, believing each time that it was the first time he was showing it. Another professor would spend the first 20 minutes of every class telling us how he wished he was anywhere else but here. One of my professors was five years younger than me (I was 23 at the time) and she would break down into hysterics at least once a month. And trying to get a camera to shoot on there was the equivalent of fighting in the Serbian-Bosnian war. It was just not a pleasant experience.

Describe your relationship with managers and agents.
A unique one. In many ways, I do exactly what they do, the difference being that I don’t have a horse in the race. All of us are looking for the best material out there. All of us want to read something that makes us excited and that we can tell other people about. The difference with me is that I might celebrate something that’s not as commercially viable as the agents and managers because the agents and managers have to go out there and sell the script whereas I just have to enjoy it.

Are you dealing with managers as much as agents in seeking material?
I would say moreso with managers than with agents. Agents don’t really develop material. They just try and sell it. Whereas managers are very interested in making scripts better, which is why they like the site, because that’s the kind of stuff I talk about – what needs work in a script.

What is your process for writing notes on scripts you read?
I have a very specific way I approach critiquing a screenplay. When I open a script, the last thing I’m thinking about is all the rules of screenwriting. I’m not sitting there going, “Nuh nuh nuh, it’s already page 15 and you haven’t gotten to your inciting incident yet. You lose.” All I care about is being swept away, being entertained. It’s only after I’m finished with the script that I go back and try to figure out why a script did or did not work. For instance, I might say, “Man, that second act was really slow. Let’s go back and try to figure out why.” And I might find out that the hero wasn’t active enough. He may have been sitting around and waiting for things to happen too much. That’s how I analyze screenplays.

Is it gratifying to see scripts get better through the development process?
Oh definitely. I think it’s one of the most rewarding things about what I do. One thing I’ve learned is that the majority of writers out there, even the good ones and the ones with talent, aren’t always able to navigate the problems in their screenplays. They need the guidance of people who have read thousands of screenplays or made tons of movies. And with the right guidance, even inexperienced writers can write great scripts. That’s what happened with Oscar winners Diablo Cody, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. None of them really understood how to write a screenplay when they wrote those scripts, but they had some great people guiding them, telling them what to get rid of and telling them how to improve what already worked.

Are they getting better most of the time as they are developed?
No, unfortunately not. You’re at the mercy of the writer’s talent as well as how the writer chooses to execute your notes. If someone has bad instincts, or simply instincts that are different from what you intended with a note, they can easily make a script worse rather than better. Oscar winner Christopher McQuarrie self admittedly did this for an entire decade before he got back in the game with Valkyrie. Either he didn’t understand the producer’s notes or the notes themselves weren’t very good and he just ended up writing scripts in circles that never ended up being good enough.

Are you reading many spec scripts each week? Or just projects in development?
I read unsold spec scripts, sold spec scripts, as well as projects in development. I mainly try and read spec scripts because those give the best education for the writers that read my site. They get to see a review of the actual material that a writer came up with on their own that sold. That’s a completely different process from a studio developing something in-house.

How does the spec market look from your side?
Well right now it looks great. There’ve been double the amount of sales this year than each of the last two years. So people are out there buying for sure. It isn’t like the 90s of course, but it’s still pretty darn good relatively speaking.

Are the films better than the scripts once they are shot?
Personally, it seems that the scripts themselves are usually better and I think that’s because making a film is so hard. You have to compromise so much in terms of money and time that you usually just don’t have what you need to live up to the script. The exception would be the really big budget movies like Transformers 8 and Pirates Of The Carribean 13 where the scripts are so bad that it’s impossible not to come up with something better.

What are the most important criteria in your evaluation process?
Character and structure. Those are the two things that are butchered time and time again and that’s because it takes a really long time to learn how to create great characters and plot your movie in such a way that it doesn’t drag. There are plenty of other super important things of course, but those two are the biggest in my eyes.

Do you have conversations or contact with other people who you consider great readers?
Yes, all the time. That’s one of the great things about my blog is that it allows me to meet a lot of other people who do what I do – read a lot of scripts. Needless to say, we always end up complaining about the same issues that we see over and over again in screenplays.

Can anyone read/evaluate a script?
Of course! A Scriptshadow reader sent me a review once, timidly disclosing that it was the first time he’d ever read a script. He gave his opinion and bookended it by saying it was probably pointless because he was so inexperienced. But some of the most honest critiques come from people who know nothing about screenplays. They say things like, “That one scene where he killed the guy was so stupid.” It may not have any fancy-schmancy screenwriting terms in it, but this is the kind of thing an average movie goer is going to say. It then becomes my job to go back and ask “Why did he think that scene was stupid?” It may be because it was cliché. It may be because it wasn’t set up well. It may be because both of the characters were boring. But everybody’s opinion is valid. Now can anyone read a script and give thoughtful critical analysis that can help a writer improve his material? No. That takes a lot of skill and experience.

Is style as important as story?
Definitely not. I would say not even close. I always tell people that screenwriting is not a writing competition. It’s a storytelling competition. That said, you do have to have some style to your writing. You can’t write like a robot or the reader’s going to be bored.

Can style make a script work even if the structure and characters end up being shaky?
No way in hell. Actually, I take that back. I’ve read like three scripts (out of thousands) where the style was so fun that even though the story was kind of stupid, I enjoyed them. I reviewed one of them on the site. It was called “Fiasco Heights.” Here’s the log: “A gunman returns to the crime-ridden city of Fiasco Heights and teams with a degenerate gambler/private eye on the run from a syndicate to look for a beautiful femme fatale.” But this is a very rare exception. Style almost never makes up for lack of substance.

Do the scripts you see trend in any direction in terms of areas that seem to work?
Yes. The scripts that tend to do the best on the market are scripts that have a lot of urgency. So if you have a movie about a guy who needs to do something in 72 hours, that’s probably going to have a better chance on the spec market than if you have a movie about a guy who has to do something in 72 years. As scary as it sounds, a movie like The Proposal, which takes place over a single weekend, would have a better chance on the spec market than a script like When Harry Met Sally, which takes place over like 15 years.

Should every writer have a two sentence logline in their head before they start writing a script?
I think it’s helpful and I’ll tell you why. When you write out a logline, you give yourself a focused synopsis that helps you control your story. One of the biggest mistakes I see in a lot of amateur screenplays is stories that wander all over the place. If you come up with a very specific logline that has a clear direction for your main character with clear stakes and clear conflict, then you’ll never be at a loss as to what to write next. When people don’t know what to write next or get lost in their story, it’s almost always because their central idea is muddled and unclear.

Are some reads more alive, spontaneous though flawed in certain ways?
Yes. I actually run into a lot of these types of screenplays where there’s definitely an energy and uniqueness to the story that makes you want to keep reading, but the structure might be all over the place, the plot might be muddled, a few of the characters might be lame. I usually see this with really talented writers who are just starting out. They obviously have an interesting imagination and a unique way they see the world, but they haven’t yet learned how to write a screenplay. What new screenwriters have to realize is that writing in different mediums is like speaking in different languages. And out of every storytelling medium out there (novels, plays, video games, short stories, poems), screenwriting is the hardest. It’s the Chinese language of storytelling. So it just takes a really long time to learn how to speak that language, no matter how talented you are. It took me a long time to realize that but boy is it true.

How many “uncommercial” “non-genre specific” script projects are there in the studio system vs. the more mainstream projects?
I was just reading that leaked e-mail exchange between Scott Rudin, the producer of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and the critic who jumped the review embargo on the film. In it, the critic expressed frustration that the studio system only made 8 good movies a year and they were all crammed into the last two weeks of the year. And he’s right. So that’s my answer. Eight. And the worst part about that stat is that none of them are ever spec scripts. They’re always some sort of adaptation. The good news is that there are plenty of opportunities for uncommercial or non-genre specific projects outside of the studio system.

Can you feel the writer’s passion for their project in the writing?
Definitely. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always mean that the script itself will be good. I just read this sprawling period epic from somebody who had clearly worked on the script for years, and I could feel his love for the subject matter on every page. But the script itself was boring. The subject matter was too confusing, too sprawling and too ambitious. And I told him that. It’s really hard to make movies like that unless you’re already entrenched inside of the studio system with a high level production deal. But the simple answer to your question is yes. And it should be noted that it’s even easier to tell when a writer has no passion for what they’re writing about.

What are your top 10 favorite movies?
This list will change depending on the week but…
Star Wars
Back To The Future
The Fugitive
The Shawshank Redemption
When Harry Met Sally
Rosemary’s Baby
Aliens
Rocky
Good Will Hunting
The Princess Bride

Top 10 favorite scripts?
It’s pretty similar to the movies I listed above. But as far as unproduced material, I have a top 25 list on the right side of my blog that lists all of my favorite screenplays.

Are there great movies that didn’t come from great scripts?
I think it’s a rare but it does happen. I mean I love Terrence Malick’s movies but trying to get through one of his scripts is like trying to read the dictionary. The best movies that come from subpar scripts tend to come from visionary directors, guys like Malick and Aronfsky.

Are there great scripts that just did not work as movies? Why?
Yes, a lot of them. And I actually just learned this lesson to a severe degree this year. Two of my favorite scripts were Everything Must Go and Happy Thank You More Please. Unfortunately, both of them were bad movies, especially Happy Thank You More Please. Now a big reason why “Happy” was so bad was because the budget was so limited and the director was a first timer who was shooting everything like he was in his first week of film school. But I think what I learned in both instances was that movies that are solely based around character development can work really well on the page, but once they get up on screen, they sit there. Movies are visual. So if all you see is the same thing over and over again, your brain starts to get bored. Will Ferrell is sitting down in his backyard for 80 percent of Everything Must Go. That didn’t really bother me when I read it. But once I saw it up on screen, I just wanted to scream, “Go somewhere!” There are other factors involved of course (I’m not sure Ferrell was right for the part) but if there’s too much of a stillness to your movie, if all that’s happening is characters sitting around talking to each other, you might be in trouble when it comes time to film.

How important is great dialogue?
Really important and not really important. I say that because 45 percent of screenwriting is getting the structure right and 45 percent is getting the characters right. Dialogue is just that last 10 percent and it doesn’t matter how good it is if you didn’t nail those first two things. I actually laugh whenever actors say they “rewrote a script” by changing a lot of the dialogue. The only reason you were able to change the dialogue was because a writer did a year of work building up your characters and all the scenes surrounding your characters to a point where they’d be entertaining. Once you’ve done that, dialogue is fairly easy. Having said that, if dialogue is really bad, for example stilted and on the nose, then that can really bring a script down.

Are there great scripts without great dialogue?
It depends on what you mean by “great.” There are certain genres that depend on dialogue and there are genres that don’t. Comedies for example require a real ear for twisted, funny, cute, clever dialogue. Thrillers on the other hand are much more about tension and suspense. The audience doesn’t care if the writer can write a line like, “Oh my blog” in Black Swan. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t still love Black Swan.

What do you want screenwriters to do better, to work on, in general? What is missing
in the scripts you are reading?
Just a clear commitment to your script. One of the biggest problems I see with young writers is that they’re okay with 60 or 65 percent. They don’t push themselves to make every single scene as good as it can possibly be, every single character as good as they can possibly be. They have this mentality of, “well this is good enough”. So I read a lot of average scripts and it’s because the writer isn’t pushing themselves or trying something unique or adding a new spin or trying to make every scene pop. Now some of that has to do with the writer not yet understanding how to do that stuff yet. But no matter what stage you’re at, you should be giving 100 percent effort.

Any other advice?
Write as much as you can, read as many screenplays as you can, and learn as much as you can about screenwriting. The more time you put into those three facets the better you’re going to get.

Would you like to produce films?
On the development end? Definitely. But certainly not on the production end. I can barely schedule my day, much less the days of 250 other people!

What are the most important things you have learned about Hollywood from your work?
That the gatekeepers aren’t these mystical wizards who wave a magic wand over a script to either let it come through or not. It’s much more black and white than that. The people who run Hollywood are people who have jobs, just like you have a job. And they want to keep that job. And the only way they can keep that job is if they find movies that are going to make money. I don’t see enough screenwriters recognizing that fact. They hold onto this delusional ideal that they can write a coming-of-age film about an albino pastor living in 1782 Germany and that somebody out there is actually going to buy that. Think about that for second. If you were a producer with a $2,000,000 discretionary fund tasked with finding 4 or 5 scripts a year to turn into movies that will make the company money so they can KEEP making films, would you bet on your script? I’m not talking in the fun dreamworld scenario where you have nothing on the line by saying “yes.” I’m asking if you were a real producer who had the power to buy a few scripts a year, and you knew that if you screwed up even one of those purchases and bought something that had no chance of being made because it had no financial potential, that you would get fired, would you buy your script? That’s how you have to think of this business, and writers are shooting themselves in the foot by not seeing it that way.

What are the most surprising things you have learned?
How long it takes the average screenwriter to make it. I always assumed that if you were a good screenwriters you would make it in Hollywood in less than a year. But it takes most screenwriters 7 to 10 years to really figure out how to write a good script. I know that’s terrifying but that’s what I’ve found to be true. If you can make it in five or less, you are way ahead of the game.

Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: Finding it more difficult to kill himself than he thought it would be, a depressed man offers a cash-strapped woman his life insurance money if she’ll marry him and make sure the suicide succeeds.
About: This spec sold to Lionsgate last year. The writer, Corinne Kingsbury, was actually an actress and had a small part in Old School back in 2003. She’s since moved on to writing. Derick Martini, who directed 2008’s Lymelife, was attached to direct at one point. But at last count, the project was trying to reel in Tom Vaughan (What Happens In Vegas) which, no offense because I know how difficult it is to get movies greenlit and part of the challenge is finding a director the studios are willing to fund a movie with, but I really hope this doesn’t happen. This needs a director with a little darkness in him. Martini was a more appropriate choice.
Writer: Corinne Kingsbury
Details: 110 pages – undated (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Wait a minute. WHAT?? This script wasn’t on last year’s Black List?? I guess that’s what happens when you sell your script in January. People kind of forget about it 11 months later. I wonder if the screenplay market will ever become like the movie market where everyone will try to get their script sold in the last two weeks of November, so they can make the December Black List. Oh well, it’s a good thing that the Black List isn’t the only place to learn about great undiscovered screenplays!

Now I can already hear the commenters chirping away about the manufactured setup of this movie (marry me to help me kill myself and I’ll give you my life insurance money) and I can’t argue with you because I admit it’s the weakest part of the screenplay. But if you can get past that, you’ll find a really well-written story with some great characters.

Larry is 29 years old, depressed as all get-up that his girlfriend left him, and has resorted to suicide to make the pain go away. The problem is, he’s not very good at it. While trying to hose carbon monoxide into his car, the trash guys come by and tell him to move so they can get his trash. Later, when he tries to drop a toaster into his bathtub, the plug comes out just a few inches shy of the water. To make matters worse, Larry writes these really lame suicide poems to his ex-girlfriend right before the deed, usually analogies to really geeky movies, like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. In the end, he comes to the realization that he needs help. No, not like psychiatric help. Help offing himself.

Penelope Fletcher is 24 years old and smoking hot. But she’s also smoking poor due to her obsession with expensive footwear. Her credit debt has eventually caught up with her and if she doesn’t come up with $13,000 soon, she’s going to jail.

Every day at work, Penelope and her best friend Amy watch as Larry stumbles around outside, drooling while staring in at Penelope. It’s creepy but they know he’s harmless so it’s more of an annoyance than anything. But after one staring session too many, Penelope goes out and tries to scare Larry off. It turns out that Larry has overheard about her money problems and thinks he has a solution.

He tells her he needs somebody around to make sure his suicide attempt is successful and is willing to put her on his life insurance policy for 250 grand if she’ll do it. Penelope is game but the two find out that in order for her to be on the policy, they need to be married, and more specifically married for at least 31 days. So the two head over to the courthouse, do the deed, and then basically wait for 31 days to expire.

When Penelope finds out that Larry has to pass some health exam to validate the insurance, she forces him to get off his ass and start exercising – not easy for Larry since a typical day for him involves the marijuana merry-go-round. But pretty soon, Penelope finds herself helping Larry in other ways as well – getting his apartment cleaned up, getting him a better wardrobe. In a couple of weeks, Larry actually starts looking like a presentable person.

Of course because they’re spending so much time together, they become close. But like a lot of this script, it doesn’t go exactly how you think it’s going to go. There’s an unpredictability to this story because of Kingsbury’s unique sense of humor and knack for finding the less traveled path. So will Larry end up killing himself at the end? Or will he and Penelope create the single most unlikely pairing in relationship history?

I really liked this. Yes, there’s the issue with the formulaic setup that’s going to send people running. Maybe even back to “The Call Up,” gasp. But I’d implore you to stick with it. Why? Because the characters are pretty damn awesome, that’s why.

I thought Larry’s failed attempts at killing himself were hilarious, reminiscent of a certain cult classic, Better Off Dead, and so I immediately liked him. And Kingsbury somehow made the impossible possible – she made a smoking hot chick who could have anything she wants, sympathetic. So before we get to the clunky conceit of the concept, we get to know and like both these characters enough so that we sort of don’t care.

The thing that really puts this above so many romantic comedies I read though is that it doesn’t go for the predictable lame fairytale approach. It’s not so much that I hate that type of romantic comedy, so much as I know exactly what’s going to happen every step of the way so they bore me to hell.

31 Days Of Larry is a dark script. It’s about a guy trying to commit suicide. And as forced as the marriage thing is, you don’t see many romantic comedies where one half of the couple is trying to end their life. Darkness elevates comedy in such a way that it feels real. We’re not pretending to live in a world that doesn’t exist. Bad things happen on this spinning rock and to see a romantic comedy recognize that is refreshing.

Not only that, but it just offers up choices we’ve never seen before. I mean the female lead here is waiting for the male lead to kill himself so she can get her money. That brings up the kind of conversations that you DO NOT SEE in rom-coms. NEW conversations. DIFFERENT conversations. In a world where we know the exact dialogue exchange that’s coming up 15 minutes before our couple does, how refreshing is that? It’s something I’ve preached on the site and will continue to preach. You have to find a different angle into a familiar story. Because pretty much all the stories have been told. They just haven’t been told from your unique point of view.

And I just love when stories place their romantic leads on completely opposite ends of the spectrum to the point where you think there’s no chance in hell they’ll get together. I love when writers explore that challenge because when I was introduced to these two people, I thought, “How in the hell is this writer going to convince us that these two would ever end up together?” And most writers fail (they eventually start forcing things so that the relationship feels unnatural) but in this specific universe that Kingsbury created, she somehow did it. I believed that these two fell for each other.

There’s really very little that I didn’t like here. It was only that forced set up. If Kingsbury can find a way to smooth that out, this script will be bulletproof. I hope somebody figures that out and yanks this thing out of development hell.

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

What I learned: I know this is going to sound nuts, but when I see a slugline with “I/E.” at the beginning (as I saw in “31 Days Of Larry,”) I know I’m usually dealing with a good writer. “I./E.” is short for “INT./EXT.” which is short for “INTERIOR/EXTERIOR.” Why? Because I know it takes most writers five or six scripts before they encounter a situation where they need to be both inside and outside on a location and know how to actually represent that. And then it takes even longer to learn about the abbreviated version (I./E.). So it’s just a very advanced location indicator.

 Ahhhhhh!  I’m so excited!  The 2011 Black List is here (I have no idea what’s going on with their website by the way)!  And I don’t have time to snark today.  So many interesting loglines!  People keep e-mailing to ask me for links.  I have some of these but not nearly all of them.  If you have any of the scripts, agents, managers, writers, please send!  I want to start reading them all right now!  So happy to see Sarah Conradt (script about the daughter and step mother trapped in the mountains) make the list. I think all of your love helped out.  They even used the logline in my review. Oh, and what’s with the huge voting totals this year??  Imitation Game with 133 votes??!!  I think the last couple of years it was like 45 votes for the winner.  More people voting?  So much mystery here.  Ahhhhhhhhhhh!

133
THE IMITATION GAME by Graham Moore
The story of British WWII cryptographer Alan Turing, who cracked the German Enigma code and later poisoned himself after being criminally pros¬ecuted for being a homosexual..
AGENCY:  CAA
AGENT: JP Evans, Jacqueline Sacerio
MANAGEMENT:  The Safran Company
MANAGER:  Tom Drumm
FINANCIER:  Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: Ido Ostrowsky, Nora Grossman

84
WHEN THE STREET LIGHTS GO ON by Chris Hutton, Eddie O’Keefe
In the early 1980s, a town suffers through the aftermath of a brutal murder of a high school girl and a teacher.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Simon Faber, Sarah Self
MANAGEMENT: Tariq Merhab Management
MANAGER: Tariq Merhab
PRODUCER: Imagine Entertainment

59
CHEWIE by Evan Susser, Van Robichaux
A satirical behind the scenes look at the making of Star Wars through the eyes of Peter Mayhew who played Chewbacca.
AGENCY:  WME
AGENT: Mike Esola
MANAGEMENT: Industry Entertainment
MANAGER: Jess Rosenthal

53
THE OUTSIDER by Andrew Baldwin
In post World War II Japan, an American former prisoner-of-war rises in the yakuza.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Jay Baker, John Garvey
MANAGEMENT: Anonymous Content
MANAGER: Bard Dorros, David Kanter
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: Linson Entertainment

43
FATHER DAUGHTER TIME: A TALE OF ARMED ROBBERY AND ESKIMO KISSES by Matthew Aldrich
A man goes on a three state crime spree with an
accomplice, his eleven year old daughter.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: John Garvey, Stuart Manashil
MANAGEMENT: Silent R Management
MANAGER: Jewerl Ross
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: Pearl Street Productions

33
IN THE EVENT OF A MOON DISASTER by Mike Jones
An alternate telling of the historic APOLLO 11 mission to land on the moon that examines what might have happened if the astronauts had crash landed there.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: David Kopple, JP Evans, Matt Rosen
MANAGEMENT: The Gotham Group
MANAGER: Lindsay Williams
PRODUCER: FilmNation

30
MAGGIE by John Scott 3
As a “walking dead” virus spreads across the country, a farm family helps their eldest daughter come to terms with her infection as she slowly becomes a flesh-eating zombie.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Billy Hawkins, Dan Rabinow
MANAGEMENT: Sly Predator
MANAGER: Trevor Kaufman
FINANCIER: Pierre-Ange Le Pogam
PRODUCER: Pierre-Ange Le Pogam, Trevor Kaufman, Matthew Baer

30
THE CURRENT WAR by Michael Mitnick
Based on the true story of the race between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse to develop a practical system of electricity and sell their respective inventions to the country and the world.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Simon Faber
MANAGEMENT: Fourth Floor Productions
MANAGER: Jeff Silver

28
THE END by Aron Eli Coleite
Four people – a veteran broadcaster in London, a sixteen year old girl and her boyfriend in Ann Arbor, and a devoted family man in Shanghai – each try to make peace with their lives before an interstellar event ends the world in six hours.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Matt Rosen, Martin Spencer
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers

27
BEYOND THE PALE by Chad Feehan
Teenage siblings suspect they’ve been ripped off by the town undertaker, but what they discover is much more sinister than either imagined.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Matt Rosen, Jacqueline Sacerio
MANAGEMENT: Management 360
MANAGER: Guymon Casady, Mary Lee
FINANCIER: Vendome Pictures
PRODUCER: The Fort

27
EZEKIEL MOSS by Keith Bunin
A mysterious stranger who possibly has the power to channel the souls of the dead changes the lives of everyone in a small Nebraska town, especially a young widow and her 11-year-old son.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Rowena Arguelles
MANAGEMENT: Kaplan/Perrone
MANAGER: Alex Lerner, Sean Perrone
PRODUCER: A Likely Story, Mandalay Pictures

24
GRACE OF MONACO by Arash Amel
Grace Kelly, age 33 and having given up her acting career to focus on being a full time princess, uses her political maneuvering behind the scenes to save Monaco while French Leader Charles de Gaulle and Monaco’s Prince Rainier III are at odds over the princi¬pality’s standing as a tax haven.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Rich Green, Matt Rosen
FINANCIER: Pierre-Ange Le Pogam
PRODUCER: Pierre-Ange Le Pogam

24
HE’S FUCKIN’ PERFECT by Lauryn Kahn
A social media savvy girl who is pessimistic about love finds the perfect guy and decides to use her internet research skills to turn herself into his perfect match.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Cliff Roberts
FINANCIER: Fox 2000
PRODUCER: Gary Sanchez

23
BETHLEHEM by Larry Brenner
A group of people struggling to survive a zombie apocalypse make an alliance with a vampire, trading themselves as food in exchange for protection since zombies don’t eat vampire.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Martin Spencer, Jacqueline Sacerio
MANAGEMENT: Magnet Management
MANAGER: Mitch Solomon
PRODUCER: Roth Films

20
THE THREE MISFORTUNES OF GEPPETTO: by Michael Vukadinovich
A prequel to the story of Pinocchio in which
Geppetto endures a life of misfortune, war, and ad¬venture, all to be with Julia Moon, his true love.
AGENCY: ICM
AGENT: Ava Jamshidi
FINANCIER: Fox
PRODUCER: 21 Laps Entertainment

20
POWELL by Ed Whitworth
Based on the true story of Colin Powell questioning the Bush administration leading up to his United Nations presentation where he made the case for going to war with Iraq.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: David Karp, Cliff Roberts, Dan Cohan
MANAGEMENT: Circle of Confusion
MANAGER: Ashley Berns
PRODUCER: Spirit Dance Entertainment

19
THE KNOLL: by Christopher Cantwell, Christopher Rogers
A rookie cop and his potential flame witness JFK gunned down from the grassy knoll on November 22, 1963. Within hours, they’re on the run from the murderers who desperately need them silenced.
AGENCY: ICM
AGENT: Aaron Hart
MANAGEMENT: Management 360
MANAGER: Jennifer Graham, Chris Huvane
PRODUCER: Management 360

17
HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY: by Ed Solomon
A child prodigy tries to take control of his life away from his demanding parents.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Jay Baker, Todd Feldman, David O’Connor
FINANCIER: Sony
PRODUCER: Escape Artists

DESPERATE HOURS by E Nicholas Mariani
A small town crippled by WWI and the Spanish flu finds itself facing major moral questions and a brutal invading force when a young girl shows up on a rancher’s doorstep covered in blood.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Charles Ferraro, Jenny Maryasis
MANAGEMENT: Circle of Confusion
MANAGER: Britton Rizzio
FINANCIER: GK Films
PRODUCER: Infinitum Nihil

A MANY SPLINTERED THING by Chris Shafer, Paul Vicknair
When a charming heartbreaker finally meets a girl he can’t have, he discovers the true meaning of love by living out other people’s love stories and writing his own.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Jon Huddle, Jason Burns, Max Michael
MANAGEMENT: Brillstein Entertainment Partners
MANAGER: Missy Malkin
PRODUCER: Wonderland Sound and Vision

FLARSKY by Daniel Sterling
A political journalist courts his old babysitter, who is now the United States secretary of state.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Julien Thuan
PRODUCER: Point Grey Pictures

BLOOD MOUNTAIN by Jonathan Stokes After his team is ambushed and killed in Pakistan, a young army ranger must escort the world’s most wanted terrorist over dangerous terrain in order to bring him to justice. While being hunted by both of their enemies, they must find a way to work together in order to survive.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Ramses Ishak, Michael Sheresky, Geoff Morley
MANAGEMENT: Energy Entertainment
MANAGER: Brooklyn Weaver

BASTARDS by Justin Malen
Two brothers, raised to believe their biological father died, find out their mother slept with many powerful and famous men in the 1970s, and the siblings hit the road to find their real father.
AGENCY: Verve
AGENT: Bill Weinstein, Rob Herting
MANAGEMENT: H2F
MANAGER: Chris Fenton
FINANCIER: Paramount
PRODUCER: The Montecito Picture Company

CRAZY FOR THE STORM by Will Fetters The true story of Norman Ollestad’s relationship with his father, who thrust the boy into the world of extreme surfing and competitive downhill skiing at the age of three. But it was that experience that allowed an 11-year old Norman to survive a plane crash amidst a blizzard in the San Gabriel mountains.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Elia Infascelli-Smith
MANAGEMENT: 3 Arts Entertainment
MANAGER: Oliver Obst
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: Billy Gerber

16
THE SLACKFI PROJECT by Howard Overman
A hapless and broken hearted barista is visited by two bad-ass soldiers from the future who tell him mankind is doomed, and he alone can save them.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Julien Thuan
FINANCIER: Sony
PRODUCER: Matt Tolmach Productions

14
THE MUSEUM OF BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS by Natalie Krinsky
Lucy, a twenty-eight year old junior curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, is sleeping with her boss. When he dumps her she begins a collection of “break up items” and starts a blog which goes viral.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Jessica Matthews
MANAGEMENT: The Gotham Group
MANAGER: Jim Garavente, Jeremy Bell

ST VINCENT DE VAN NUYS by Ted Melfi
When a twelve year old boy in need of a babysitter moves in next door to a misanthropic aging retiree whose life mainly consists of gambling, hookers, and drinking, the elder becomes an unlikely mentor to the boy.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Ramses Ishak, Michael Sheresky
MANAGEMENT: Infinity Management International
MANAGER: Jon Karas
FINANCIER: Fox
PRODUCER: Chernin Entertainment, Crescendo Productions

DJANGO UNCHAINED by Quentin Tarantino
A freed slave named Django is trained as a bounty hunter by a German dentist named Schultz, and the two men set out to find Django’s enslaved wife.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Mike Simpson
FINANCIER: The Weinstein Company, Sony
PRODUCER: Double Feature Films, The Weinstein Company

13
THE ACCOUNTANT by Bill Dubuque
The Treasury Department pursues a brilliant, autistic accountant who doubles as an assassin and “problem-solves” with precision in more ways than one.
AGENCY: Paradigm
AGENT: Trevor Astbury
MANAGEMENT: Zero Gravity Management
MANAGER: Eric Williams
PRODUCER: Silverwood Films

SAVING MR. BANKS by Kelly Marcel
The story of how Walt Disney got the rights for Mary Poppins.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Phil Raskind, David Karp
PRODUCER: Ruby Films

12
BRIDGES ON THE FORT POINT CHANNEL by Chuck Maclean
An Irish family in the 1970s, dealing with the loss of their father and the busing of black kids into white neighbor-hoods, decides to blow up all the bridges in Boston.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Billy Hawkins
MANAGEMENT: Oasis Media Group
MANAGER: Allison Doyle, Ben Rowe

THE BIG STONE GRID by Craig Zahler
A cop is pulled into an underworld organization that brutally murders people to extort money out of others.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Julien Thuan, Emerson Davis
MANAGEMENT: Caliber Media
MANAGER: Dallas Sonnier
FINANCIER: Sony
PRODUCER: Michael De Luca Productions

CITIES OF REFUGE by Brandon Willer
A former FBI psychologist is called in to investigate when a young girl goes missing after the apparent murder of her father and brother by two strangers in a small Oklahoma town.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Phil D’amecourt, Jeff Gorin
MANAGEMENT: Benderspink
MANAGER: Jake Weiner
PRODUCER: Tower Hill, Benderspink, Charlize Theron

GOOD KIDS by Chris McCoy
Four overachieving high school students in Cape Cod reinvent themselves during the summer after graduation.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Simon Faber, Jeff Gorin, Sharon Jackson
MANAGEMENT: The Gotham Group
MANAGER: Shawn Simon
PRODUCER: Depth of Field

11
LEAVING PETE by Ali Waller, Morgan Murphy
A recently divorced author is stunned when his ex writes a popular book about their breakup, and he has to keep that fact secret from his new girlfriend, who works for the book’s publisher.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Bill Zotti, Andy Elkins

HIDDEN by Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer
An elevated horror-thriller about a family hiding in a bomb shelter after escaping a mysterious outbreak.
AGENCY: Paradigm
AGENT: Chris Smith
MANAGEMENT: MXN
MANAGER: Mason Novick
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: Mason Novick, Roy Lee, Lawrence Grey

DIRTY GRANDPA by John Phillips
A young groom engaged to a demanding woman is forced to spend the week before his wedding with his half-blind, half-crazy, and wholly horny grandfather. Through this wild journey, his grandfather shows him how to take life by the balls and lead with his heart.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Jon Huddle, Steven Fisher
FINANCIER: Universal
PRODUCER: Josephson Entertainment

GRIM NIGHT by Allen Bey, Brandon Bestenheider
A family has to defend themselves from the Grims, strange creatures who attack Earth and kill thousands one night every year.
AGENCY: Verve
AGENT: Bryan Besser
FINANCIER: Universal
PRODUCER: Marc Platt Productions, Unbroken Pictures

10
WATCH ROGER DO HIS THING by Michael Starrbury
A retired hitman gets roped back into his old trade in order to save his friend’s life and quickly finds himself caught in a struggle trying to finish the job, and get his family out of Chicago alive at the same time.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Bill Zotti, Dan Rabinow
MANAGEMENT: Caliber Media
MANAGER: Dallas Sonnier, Julian Rosenberg
PRODUCER: Tripp Vinson, One Race Films

THE FLAMINGO THIEF by Mike Lesieur
Grief stricken over his wife leaving him, a man finds solace in an odd activity…swiping figurines of flamingos.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Rich Green, Adam Kanter
MANAGEMENT: Kaplan/Perrone
MANAGER: Sean Perrone
PRODUCER: Kaplan/Perrone, Red Hour

TWO NIGHT STAND by Mark Hammer
After an extremely regrettable one night stand, two strangers wake up to find themselves snowed in after sleeping through a blizzard that put all of Manhattan on ice. They’re now trapped together in a tiny apartment, forced to get to know each other way more than any one night stand should.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Carolyn Sivitz
MANAGEMENT: The Safran Company
MANAGER: Tom Drumm

SEX TAPE by Kate Angelo
When a married couple make a sex tape to spice up their relationship, it disappears, and they are frantic to get it back.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Jason Burns
FINANCIER: Sony
PRODUCER: Escape Artists

THE GUN EATERS by Alex Paraskevas, Jordan Goldberg
Four hardened New York detectives race to apprehend a relentless spree-killer who’s executing victims from Queens to Southampton in the span of a single day.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Rebecca Ewing, Keya Khayatian
MANAGEMENT: Oasis Media Group
MANAGER: Ben Rowe
PRODUCER: Oasis Media Group

LITTLE WHITE CORVETTE by Michael Diliberti
A down and out brother and sister go to Miami to sell a duffel bag of cocaine that they found in the trunk of a corvette left them by their dead father.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Phil Raskind, Simon Faber
MANAGEMENT: New School Media
MANAGER: Brian Levy
PRODUCER: Scott Aversano Productions

9
JANE GOT A GUN by Brian Duffield
After her outlaw husband returns home shot with eight bullets and barely alive, Jane reluctantly reaches out to an ex-lover who she hasn’t seen in over ten years to help her defend her farm when the time comes that her husband’s gang eventually tracks him down to finish the job.
AGENCY: Gersh
AGENT: Devra Lieb, Bob Hohman, Bayard Maybank
MANAGEMENT: Circle of Confusion
MANAGER: Zach Cox, Noah Rosen

THE LAST WITNESS by Stefan Jaworski
An FBI Agent interrogates an amnesiac, sole survivor of a Boston bombing in order to prevent future terrorist attacks.
AGENCY: Paradigm
AGENT: Trevor Astbury, Valarie Phillips, Ida Ziniti
FINANCIER: Fox
PRODUCER: Davis Entertainment

MURDERS & ACQUISITIONS by Jonathan Stokes
The world of high-stakes finance collides with that of high-priced hitmen when an ousted CEO decides to hire an assassin to kill the corporate raider who stole his company.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Ramses Ishak, Michael Sheresky, Geoff Morley
MANAGEMENT: Energy Entertainment
MANAGER: Brooklyn Weaver
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: KatzSmith Productions

FLASHBACK by Will Honley
A former NASA pilot with amnesia — also the first person to travel the speed of light — realizes he has the ability to travel back in time and along the way rediscovers his love for his wife.
AGENCY: Verve
AGENT: Adam Levine
MANAGEMENT: Nuclear Entertainment
MANAGER: Nick Fariabi, Jesse Silver

THE LAST DROP by Brandon Murphy, Phil Murphy
A fully functioning alcoholic meets the girl of his dreams and soon discovers that there’s a lot more at stake than love if he doesn’t clean up his act.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Rich Cook
MANAGEMENT: Mosaic
MANAGER: Langley Perer
FINANCIER: Mandate Pictures
PRODUCER: Greg Shapiro

FRIEND OF BILL by Harper Dill
After a humiliating episode in New York, a young woman returns to her hometown and tries to deal with her alcoholism.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Sarah Self, Jeff Gorin, Sharon Jackson
MANAGER: Mike Dill
PRODUCER: Marc Platt Productions, Neda Armian

8
DEAD OF WINTER by Sarah Conradt
A teenage girl heads to a remote cabin in the moun¬tains with her father and new stepmother – an expe¬rience the father hopes will bond the two ladies. But when a mysterious wounded Park Ranger shows up, family bonding will be the least of their concerns.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Jacqueline Sacerio
MANAGEMENT: Hopscotch Pictures
MANAGER: Sukee Chew
FINANCIER: Lionsgate (distrib), Wind Dancer (financing)
PRODUCER: Sherryl Clark, Hopscotch Pictures

ON A CLEAR DAY by Ryan Engle
When a powerful and mysterious force invades an American city, a young father must traverse the battle-torn city in an effort to save his wounded wife and rescue their stranded children. In the process, our hero becomes the target of an enemy who will stop at nothing to kill him.
AGENCY: Original Artists
AGENT: Chris Sablan, Matt Leipzig
MANAGEMENT: Mosaic
MANAGER: Michael Lasker, Langley Perer
PRODUCER: Ombra Films

HOME BY CHRISTMAS – BOB HOPE IN KOREA by Ben Schwartz
Young Larry Gelbart goes on tour with his idol Bob Hope in the middle of the Korean War and learns the true price of patriotism.
AGENCY: The Nethercott Agency
AGENT: Gayla Nethercott
PRODUCER: Jon Shestack Productions, Pink Slip Productions

THE PRETTY ONE by Jenee LaMarque
When a woman’s identical “prettier” twin sister dies, the woman assumes her sister’s identity, moving into her apartment and the big city.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Carolyn Sivitz
MANAGEMENT: Management 360
MANAGER: Mary Lee, Daniel Rappaport
PRODUCER: RCR Pictures, Steven J Berger

BAD WORDS by Andrew Dodge
The bastard child of the organizer of the national spelling bee gets his revenge by finding a loophole and attempting to win the bee as an adult, only to find friendship in a young Indian contestant.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Carolyn Sivitz
MANAGEMENT: Fourth Floor Productions
MANAGER: Jeff Silver
FINANCIER: Darko
PRODUCER: MXN

JURASSIC PARK by Imran Zaidi
A high school couple and two of their friends ditch school to catch a special preview screening of JURASSIC PARK.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Jason Burns, Jenny Maryasis
MANAGEMENT: Management 360
MANAGER: Darin Friedman

GASLIGHT by Ian Fried
Secretly imprisoned in a London insane asylum, the infamous Jack the Ripper helps Scotland Yard investigators solve a series of grisly murders whose victims all share one thing in common: dual puncture wounds to the neck.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Dan Cohan, Mike Esola
MANAGEMENT: Prolific
MANAGER: Will Rowbotham

7
SUBJECT ZERO by Dave Cohen
A Frankenstein-like tale of a scientist who develops a powerful new drug that brings his son back to life after he dies in a terrible car accident. Unfortunately, the desperate experiment of a loving father leads to the creation of a flesh-eating zombie epidemic with horrific consequences.
AGENCY: ICM
AGENT: Kathleen Remington, Emile Gladstone
MANAGEMENT: Generate
MANAGER: Jeremy Platt

THE HITMAN’S BODYGUARD by Tom O’Connor
The world’s best bodyguard must protect his arch nemesis, the world’s top assassin…so he can testify against a brutal dictator and save his wife.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Charles Ferraro, Barbara Dreyfus, Emerson Davis
MANAGEMENT: Industry Entertainment
MANAGER: Andrew Deane, Jess Rosenthal
PRODUCER: Skydance Productions

CRISTO by Ian Shorr
A man is unlawfully sentenced to an infamous prison and escapes, then transforms himself into the mysterious Cristo and systematically destroys the men who manipulated and enslaved him.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Charles Ferraro, Jason Burns
MANAGEMENT: Mosaic
MANAGER: Langley Perer
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: Bellevue Productions, Langley Park Pictures

UNTITLED HLAVIN HEIST by John Hlavin
An American thief living in Paris is coerced into pulling off a complex heist in order to save his kidnapped wife.
AGENCY: UTA
AGENT: Jason Burns
FINANCIER: DreamWorks
PRODUCER: Film Rites

LINE OF SIGHT by F Scott Frazier
After a military coup takes out the executive branch of government, the country’s survival depends on a Navy Seal sniper extraction team getting the Speaker of the House from Washington DC to New York.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Dan Cohan, Mike Esola
MANAGEMENT: H2F
MANAGER: Chris Fenton, Chris Cowles
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: Silver Pictures

PINOCCHIO by Bryan Fuller
A wooden puppet, Pinocchio, dreams of becoming a real boy.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Phil D’amecourt
FINANCIER: Warner Brothers
PRODUCER: Dan Jinks Company

THE WEDDING by Andrew Goldberg
A group of couples deal with their respective issues as they attend a wedding.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Rich Cook
MANAGEMENT: Underground Films and Management
MANAGER: Josh Turner Maguire
FINANCIER: CBS Films

77 by David Matthews
Two stories from 1974 are linked together – the unsolved murder of an LAPD officer and the nationally televised shootout in South Central Los Angeles between the Symbionese Liberation Army and the LAPD where 50,000 rounds of gunfire was exchanged. The events will be seen through the eyes of a pair of police partners, one black and one white.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Roger Green, Elia Infascelli-Smith
MANAGEMENT: The Schiff Company
MANAGER: Nicole Romano
PRODUCER: Wolf Films

6
GUYS NIGHT by Christopher Baldi
Sick of brunches, bosses, and light beer, four co-workers set out on the mother of all guys nights in an attempt to rediscover their manhood.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Bill Zotti
MANAGEMENT: New Wave
MANAGER: Mike Goldberg, Josh Adler
FINANCIER: Millenium Films
PRODUCER: Jim Valdez, Matt Bass

SELF/LESS by Alex Pastor, David Pastor
An extremely wealthy elderly man dying from cancer undergoes a radical medical procedure that transfers his consciousness to the body of a healthy young man but everything may not be as good as it seems when he starts to uncover the mystery of the body’s origins and the secret organization that will kill to keep its secrets.
AGENCY: CAA
AGENT: Stuart Manashil, John Garvey
MANAGEMENT: Kaplan/Perrone
MANAGER: Alex Lerner
FINANCIER: FilmDistrict (distrib), Endgame Entertainment (financing)
PRODUCER: Ram Bergman

HYPERDRIVE by Alex Ankeles, Morgan Jurgenson
When a tough cop recruits a geeky sci-fi author to help him track down a mysterious murder witness, they find themselves in the middle of a space opera playing out here on Earth.
AGENCY: CAA/APA
AGENT: Bill Zotti (Ankeles), Ryan Saul (Jurgenson)
MANAGEMENT: Kaplan/Perrone (Ankeles)
MANAGER: Aaron Kaplan (Ankeles), Jonathan Hung (Jurgenson)
FINANCIER: Paramount
PRODUCER: Disruption Entertainment

BEFORE I FALL by Maria Maggenti
When a popular teen girl is killed in a car crash, she relives the critical day seven times and makes changes in an attempt to affect the outcome; in the process, she herself changes as she tries to make up for previous heartless, self-absorbed behavior and gains a better understanding of herself and others. As she evolves and makes the connections necessary to save a bullied, depressed girl’s life, she comes to accept her own fate.
AGENCY: Paradigm
AGENT: David Boxerbaum
MANAGEMENT: Madhouse Entertainment
MANAGER: Robyn Meisinger
FINANCIER: Fox 2000
PRODUCER: Jon Shestack Productions

BREYTON AVE by J Daniel Shaffer
A group of teens living without adults and under their own social order in a small fenced-in neighborhood are forced to face what they fear is the inevitable physical danger beyond the fence.
AGENCY: Verve
AGENT: Bryan Besser, Rob Herting
MANAGEMENT: Management 360
MANAGER: Mary Lee, Jill McElroy
PRODUCER: Unbroken Films

EL FUEGO CALIENTE by Ben Schwartz
A remake of SOAPDISH, a desperate telenovela star dreaming of Hollywood stardom has her life implode, making her real life crazier than the insane show she made famous.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Rich Cook
MANAGEMENT: Tom Sawyer Entertainment
MANAGER: Jesse Hara, Rachel Miller
FINANCIER: Paramount
PRODUCER: Reiner-Greisman

THE DUFF by Josh Cagan
Adapted from Kody Keplinger’s novel THE DUFF, the travails of a seventeen year old girl who believes she is the “designated ugly fat friend.”
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Rich Cook
MANAGEMENT: H2F
MANAGER: Chris Fenton
PRODUCER: Wonderland Sound and Vision

UNTITLED ARIZONA PROJECT by Luke Del Tredici
A satirically dark comedy about a homicidal foreclosure victim kidnapping a real estate agent and planning to kill her in the housing development where she finagled money from customers like him.
AGENCY: WME
AGENT: Roger Green
MANAGEMENT: Mosaic
MANAGER: Christie Smith
PRODUCER: Rough House Pictures