Right Now #10: James Gunn – The strange thing about this choice is that I go back and forth on Gunn. I’ve appreciated him from afar, but he’s been hit or miss for me. Guardians of the Galaxy 2, for example, was one of the biggest disappointments I’ve had in a theater in a while. With that said, Gunn is one of the most unique writers out there and has an amazing ability to infuse genuine weirdness into big budget mainstream movies. Most big movies are paint-by-numbers. Gunn’s movies are never that. Guardians of the Galaxy literally has a talking raccoon who’s best friends with a tree. But the project that tipped the scales for me and put Gunn on this list was Peacemaker, which is probably going to end up being my favorite TV show of the year. The dialogue in that show is exceptional. And Gunn continues to execute one of the hardest skills in screenwriting, which is to create multiple memorable characters in a single show or movie. That’s the true test of a screenwriter – their ability to create characters who resonate with audiences. Any screenwriter who’s given this craft any time at all knows how hard that is to do, and James Gunn makes it look effortless time and time again. The man gave a full-on heartfelt arc to a character named Polka-Dot Man.
The Replacement: The Daniels – Just like Gunn, these guys have created a writing language unto themselves. They operate in a reality that’s in a different time and space from our own. I mean, a literal quote from one of them is: “Anyone can make a good movie out of a good idea. We like to take the worst idea possible and make a great movie out of that.” That would certainly explain Swiss Army Man, whose main character is a dead farting corpse. I just saw their latest film, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and I’m still processing it. It’s like a candy coated sundae at the world’s funnest funeral shoved into 500 years of philosophy dangled on top of every Dr. Seuss book ever written until it dissolves into fairy dust that perpetually falls on you wherever you go. But it isn’t just its weirdness that makes it great. It’s that the Daniels are so committed to character development that even if you stripped away all the movie’s shenanigans, you’d still have yourself one of the most heartfelt movies of the year. My only question with whether these two become stars befitting their talent or not is if they’ll play by the Hollywood handbook. The Daniels were not meant for notes. And any time you make one of these Hollywood movies, you’re going to get notes. But I think they’re so talented that they’ll find a way into the system, much like Gunn eventually did.
Right Now #9: Christopher McQuarrie – Who can deny McQuarrie’s track record. He won an Oscar (for The Usual Suspects) at just 27 years old. While he would go on to have a somewhat rocky decade after that Oscar win, his career was resurrected with 2008’s Valkyrie. That led to Jack Reacher and one of the 10 best sci-fi scripts ever written, Edge of Tomorrow. Since then he’s become the general for the Mission Impossible franchise. What McQuarrie brings to the table is an exceptional understanding of the screenwriting matrix, all the hundreds of little things that make a script work. For example, he knows that if two tough people are talking in a room, that the scene becomes infinitely more tense if one of them is cleaning a gun (scene from Jack Reacher). And I love that he continues to grow as a writer, always adding new skills. The most recent addition to his repertoire is his set piece writing. He’s a guy who looks to deconstruct the set piece so that you get what you want in a way you don’t expect. Take a look at the bathroom fight scene in Mission Impossible Fallout to see what I’m talking about. Finally, just as a personality, he kind of reminds me of the feisty writers of old. He’s got a little bit of Hemingway in him. He’s got a little bit of Eszterhas in him. I know this firsthand as he’s come after me a few times! I think the easiest way to determine who the best screenwriters are is to ask, if you had two million bucks to hire a screenwriter for your movie, who would you hire? If I were making a big action movie, I’m calling Christopher McQuarrie’s agent faster than you can say ‘slugline.’
The Replacement: Shay Hatten – Shay Hatten is the youngest screenwriter on this list, at just 28 years old. He broke through back in 2017 (at 23!), when his script about a coked up Stephen King trying to direct his first movie, Maximum Overdrive, made the Black List. A year later he wrote a killer fun script called Ballerina. That got him a job to write John Wick 3. He’s since written John Wick 4 and 5. Ballerina is going to get made. He wrote Army of the Dead for Zack Snyder and also Snyder’s newest film, Rebel Moon. This is the hot young screenwriter that everybody wants for their big action movie and he hasn’t hit 30 yet. Of all the the big future screenwriters on this list, Hatten may become the biggest of all. I don’t remember this level of success this early for a screenwriter since another “Sha” writer, Shane Black, came onto the scene. Not a bad screenwriter to be compared to.
Right Now #8: Jordan Peele – Am I still so blown away by the amazing script for Get Out that I can’t see Peele’s work objectively? Maybe. But let me explain why I included Peele. First, he celebrates the big juicy high concept idea like no other. And to me, the big juicy high concept idea is the heart and soul of the movie business. It’s that “what if” idea that’s led to so many of the most memorable experiences of my life. And two, Peele is one of only a handful of writers who can get people revved up about a movie that isn’t gigantic studio-owned IP. He has access to that rare vein that goes from his brain directly to the zeitgeist. Guys like Spielberg had it. M. Night had it for a brief period. JJ had it. Anyone who gains access to this vein is a best-of contender. If I were Peele, though, I would take a page out of Tarantino’s book and make a movie once every three years instead of once every other year. Also, get out of the TV business. You’re not seriously dedicating yourself to it so it’s only stealing time away from writing new drafts of your feature scripts. “Us” was three to four drafts away from being a horror classic. You would’ve had the time to write those drafts had you not been producing questionable television like, “Weird City.” Despite this, I remain a Peele fan. We’re just a couple of months away from “Nope.” That movie will prove whether I’m right or wrong about including Peele on this list.
The Replacement: Emerald Fennell – Was it Kathleen Kennedy who got a lot of flack for saying, “The Future is Female?” I think she was just echoing what everyone in the studio hallways were already saying. Indeed, there are some killer female screenwriters on the rise. Emerald Fennell probably wrote the best script (Promising Young Woman) I read in 2019, when it made the Black List. Just like Jordan Peele provided us with those ‘wow’ moments in Get Out, so did Fennel In “Promising.” That opening scene when our drunk main character instantly sobers up still gives me shivers. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that Fennell was recruited into the DC universe as soon as Promising Young Woman hit theaters. She will write the origin story of Zantanna, a female magician who is known to appear in the Justice League Dark series (that of which JJ Abrams is shepherding). Fennell’s voice is so distinct that I can’t imagine a future where she isn’t a writing superstar.
Right Now #7: The Coen Bros – I went back and forth on whether to include this dynamic duo because while they’ve had an amazing career, which includes two screenwriting Oscars, they haven’t had a hit movie in over a decade. Even the recently announced “Drive Away Dykes,” which was hilarious, is a script Ethan and his wife wrote 15 years ago. The thing that tipped the scales for me, however, was their 2018 Netflix collection of shorts, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. There are three genius short films in that collection (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Meal Ticket, and The Gal Who Got Rattled), all of which are exceptionally written. It reminded me that the Coens can still take over a game whenever they want to. Plus it’s hard to think of any writers who can go toe-to-toe with these guys in a screenwriting challenge. They’re always going to write you a stand-out character. They’re always going to come up with the most unique way into a scene. They’re always going to take things in a direction you didn’t think they were going to go in. You bet your screenwriting tushy they’re one of the ten best.
The Replacement: Sam Esmail – I was impressed with Sam’s screenwriting long before he broke onto the scene with Mr. Robot. He just always had interesting concepts and played with screenwriting formula in interesting ways. Much like the Coens, you never truly knew where his stories were going. And I like that Sam is always looking forward, trying to find the hot new thing. When everyone else was staring at podcasts cross-eyed, it was Esmail who, hot off the success of Mr. Robot, decided to adapt podcast, “Homecoming,” for Amazon Prime. The show was a hit for Amazon and even got Julia Roberts to commit to her first TV starring role. Up next he has the high concept, “Leave the World Behind,” which I recently reviewed on the site. Esmail is going to be a force for a long time to come.
Right Now #6: Eric Roth – Roth has an incredible resume that includes films like Forrest Gump, Benjamin Button, A Star is Born, Dune, Ali, and Munich. But that isn’t even a fraction of the number of unproduced projects he’s written that haven’t been made yet. He’s the first guy the studios call when they have a big movie that needs a level of gravitas, gravitas these candy-coated Marvel screenwriters couldn’t find if they were placed in the middle of the Library of Alexandria. Roth’s secret sauce is his unique approach to screenwriting. As he was never formally taught (there were no screenwriting books published when he started), he doesn’t write with structure or character arcs or dialogue tricks in mind. He writes completely on instinct. When asked what he does when he runs into a story problem, Roth famously answered, “I change the weather.” This is why you rarely feel any gears grinding beneath a Roth script. They’re written on gut and therefore there’s no artificial sweetener giving the story that stale aftertaste. His creativity goes directly from his mind to the page without stopping. There’s nobody out there like Roth. Nobody.
The Replacement: Alex Garland – One of the ways you identify the truly good writers is that when you read their scripts, they feel unlike anything else out there. Garland’s reflective tortured stories exhibit a pain that goes way deeper than your average screenplay. Check out Devs on Hulu if you want a dose of this. Garland manages to transition the series’ central villain, tech giant, Forest, into its protagonist by the end of the show. It’s these types of weird industry-challenging creative choices that make Garland’s work so powerful. He’s thoughtful. He’s calculated. He’s brave. He might be the most intelligent person on this list. I know it’s weird to include a 51 year old on any “future of” list, but ever since Garland started taking control of his career as a writer-director (something he did not do because he wanted to direct, but rather he realized it was the only way to protect his writing), he’s elevated himself to a new level. His next film, “Men,” looks creepy as hell. After that, he’ll be tackling a movie about civil war in the US.
Right Now #5: Taika Waititi – If there’s a theme to today’s screenwriting superheroes, it’s that they all have their own unique voice. Voice, as a reminder to newbies, is the unique personality a writer inserts into both his prose and the story itself, and almost always centers around the writer’s unique brand of humor. Taika arguably uses humor in a more interesting way than all of today’s writers. Just look at what he does with Hitler in JoJo Rabbit. A quick diversion if you will allow me: Whenever I read a great screenplay, the movie never lives up to it. For that reason, I’ve gotten into the habit of avoiding watching movies for scripts I loved. This is what I did when JoJo Rabbit came out. I said, the movie can’t possibly be as good as the screenplay, which I felt was perfect. So I didn’t see the movie when it came out. I didn’t see the movie when it came to digital either. I’d honestly planned on never seeing it. But one day it popped up on a streaming service and I thought, what the hell. JoJo Rabbit turned out to be the only film I’ve watched where the movie was actually better than the great screenplay. I was fucking bawling by the end of that movie even though I knew everything that was going to happen. Such is the effect Taika has on me. Between the feature version of What We Do In the Shadows to Hunt for the Wilderpeople to his older stuff like Eagle Vs. Shark, this guy is a superstar. And now that Hollywood has given him the keys to the city, we’re going to see just how high his star can rise. Next up on his list? Saving Star Wars!
The Replacement: Phoebe Waller-Bridge – Okay, so I admit this is a little confusing because Taika’s probably going to be around for a while. But sticking with the theme of our list, we have to provide him with a replacement, and what better replacement than Waller-Bridge? Like Taika, Waller-Bridge’s writing effortlessly shifts between making you spit-take and making you cry your eyes out. Go watch the opening scene of Fleabag Season 1 then the first episode of Season 2 to see what I’m talking about. After Waller-Bridge’s shockingly open introduction into her titular character’s sex life, we get an episode that contains a secret miscarriage during a family dinner. Waller-Bridge had one of those rare double-hit debuts, when she came out with both Fleabag and Killing Eve at the same time. Now she’s got two new big shows coming up, Mr & Mrs Smith and her next under-wraps Amazon show.
Right Now #4: Christopher Nolan – While people have had legitimate gripes with Nolan’s writing, which can vacillate between bombastic and over-expository, he remains one of a select few who can write an original idea with absolutely zero ties to IP, and get 200 million dollars to make it. Trust me, we don’t want to live in a world where that gets taken away. Because that means the only big-budget movies we’ll get are Marvel, DC, Fast and Furious, and Star Wars. If you’re okay with that, fine. I’m not. Despite his missteps, I still think Nolan is the number one writer in the world for exploring big ideas. From Memento to The Prestige to Inception, he takes these gigantic concepts and plays with them in such interesting ways. I love, for example, that he didn’t stop in Inception at one dream. That you could go to dreams within dreams. It’s that sort of dedication to concept exploration that sets Nolan apart. And, to this day, I still think Memento is a Top 5 ever screenplay. I went back and watched it recently and the complex narrative is so cleverly simplified. Nolan is definitely a superstar.
The Replacement: Greta Gerwig – What’s the secondary theme of this list? The future is female! Here we have Nolan, his hard edges, his big handsome male movie stars, his love of guys expressing themselves externally, in the most masculine of ways. And on the other end of the spectrum we’ve got Greta Gerwig, with her soft feminine approach to storytelling. She focuses on the internal, on the angst and emotions going on inside the individual. You can’t discount the one two punch of Ladybird and Little Women, both of which had major awards pushes. Gerwig’s melancholy view of existence feels right for anyone who’s been overwhelmed by the demands of day-to-day life. Since those two films, Hollywood has now gone all in on Greta, giving her access to the single most feminine property in Hollywood – Barbie. I don’t know what’s going to happen with Barbie. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t have the potential to be disastrous. But what that tells me is if Greta pulls a “Lord and Miller” and makes a great movie out of subpar subject matter, she will truly be one of the most powerful forces Hollywood.
Right Now #3: Taylor Sheridan – Not unlike Nolan, Sheridan recognized that as the culture shifted, there was an opportunity to exploit the counter-culture. As Hollywood sprinted towards social issues and politically correct causes, an avenue for masculinity in its purest form became available. That is the DNA of Sheridan’s success. He gives you back the heroes of yesteryear, men who were traumatized by wars as opposed to tweets. While Hell or High Water is the screenplay that put him on the map, and Sicario the movie that first introduced us to his back-to-basics American perspective, it’s been his growing Yellowstone empire at Paramount that is making him one of the most formidable players in show business. Think about that for a second. Taylor Sheridan went from a nobody to a Hollywood titan IN JUST SEVEN YEARS! That’s how long it took him from his Black List debut. Sheridan’s rise is also a look into the future of writing. Sheridan started out with features but eventually moved to the much more lucrative world of television. It isn’t Sicario that’s going to put him in the 9 figure earning bracket. It’s Yellowstone. It’s why I couldn’t ignore television when curating this list.
The Replacement: Christy Hall – Uh, Carson. What could Christy Hall and Taylor Sheridan possibly have in common? First off, for those who don’t know who Christy Hall is, she came onto the scene in 2017 when her script, Daddio, finished in the top 10 of that year’s Black List. The script, about a conversation that occurs between a passenger and a taxi driver from the airport to the hotel, is one of the most honest genuine realistic scripts I’ve ever read. It’s almost as if it was transcribed from a real cab ride. Hall followed that up with the most controversial script of 2018, “Get Home Safe,” a nuclear attack on toxic masculinity. And that, my friends, is why I paired her up with Sheridan. Hollywood would prefer to hide any celebration of masculinity going forward. It wants femininity, especially the kind Hall brings to the table, the kind that isn’t afraid to poke, push, prod, and provoke. Get Home Safe was like the screenwriting national anthem for pissing off dudes. Am I fan of that type of writing? Not really. I’m one of those “dudes.” But I can’t deny the fact that Hall is amazingly talented and in our push, as an industry, to become as divisive as possible, Hall is the poster woman for these types of stories. Her first big credit was Netflix’s, “I Am Not Okay With This,” a unique take on the superhero genre. Next up she’s got Kat Coiro’s (She-Hulk), “The Husband’s Secret,” which will star Blake Lively.
Right Now #2: Aaron Sorkin – Is there anyone else on the planet who can make a 180 page script read like it’s 90 pages? Sorkin, who’s a playwright at heart, eschews the belief that movies should be about showing and not telling. Instead, whether it’s on purpose or not, Sorkin tells, tells, and then tells some more. Of course, when your dialogue is as good as Sorkin’s, it’s easy to break the most harrowed rule in screenwriting. I’m sure some will say Sorkin’s passed his ‘used by’ date but I think as long as this guy is writing, he’s one of the best. Both Steve Jobs and Molly’s Game are decidedly underrated scripts. To date, Steve Jobs is probably the most clever biopic ever written. The choice to condense Jobs’s life into his three biggest Apple presentations was a stroke of genius. If there’s a knock on Sorkin, it’s that his scripts tend to feel the same. Lots of walking and talking. They have a very “play”-like feel to them. But dude, come on. Who doesn’t want to read the next Aaron Sorkin script? His scripts are literal teaching manuals for how to approach dialogue. Hell yeah Sorkin makes this list.
The Replacement: Jesse Armstrong – This might be the biggest no-brainer in the history of lists. Jesse Armstrong, the writer of Succession, whose first two seasons of that show were two of the best seasons of television in the last ten years, probably owes his recent rise to Sorkin. They love to play in that same walking-and-talking powerful people conversing sandbox. The one big difference is that while Sorkin leans towards sweet, Armstrong bathes in salty. He is the king of the expletive-laden insult. Now my British audience will laugh at this pick as Armstrong has 30-some writing credits dating back to 2000. One of those, Peep Show, is iconic over the pond. The future? Really, Carson? But sometimes it takes a while for a writer to find their calling, to hit their breakout “zeitgeist” show. And once you do, you become a force. Armstrong will now try something different as his next project is a movie starring Michael Cera called, “Jonty,” about a coddled kid who joins forces with an old friend to produce a terrible Broadway play.
Right Now #1: Quentin Tarantino – There is nobody on this list who holds a candle to Tarantino’s dialogue. There is nobody on this list who holds a candle to Tarantino’s scene-writing. And when it comes to characters, well, most writers on this list haven’t created more memorable characters in their entire career than Tarantino has in a single one of his movies. He takes more chances than anyone else. He created his own genre. You never know where his stories are going. This guy doesn’t have any rivals. Two personal experiences stand out to me whenever I think of Tarantino’s greatness. Experience 1: I was sitting in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which is a movie about an actor whose career is on the downslide, and smack dab in the middle of the movie Tarantino switches over into another universe and gives us an amazing 20 minute short horror film! He just switched genres for 20 minutes!!! Then went right back to the story he was telling. Who else can pull that off besides Tarantino? Experience 2: I tried to watch The Hateful Eight once, got bored, and gave up on it, figuring it was a rare dud from the established writer-director. But I checked it out several months later and discovered I turned it off right before the major twist happened that turned it into one of the coolest and most fun movies of the year. It reminded me that you never count Tarantino out. He’s always got a plan, even when it appears he doesn’t. In my opinion, this guy is the best screenwriter in all of Hollywood and nobody else comes close.
The Replacement: The Safdie Brothers – I remember when I first saw Good Time in an advance screening with no heads up on what I was getting into. I was blown away. I was even more blown away, two years later, by the directors’ writing habits, which included over 100 drafts of Uncut Gems. Their movies may seem improvised and unscripted, but that’s only because they do an ungodly amount of preparation, on both the writing and directing end, to make it seem that way. That’s when you know you’re a great screenwriter, when your dialogue is imperceptible from real life. These two bring an energy to the page that I don’t know if anyone in the next 20 years is going to be able to rival. Go check out Good Time. There’s a scene about 60 minutes in where this random drug dealer shows up and we go into this wild ten minute flashback of how this drug dealer ends up in our protagonists’ car. The randomness of that sequence combined with the fast-talking character combined with the non-linear flashback combined with the excessive focus on a character who, technically, had nothing to do with the movie, reminded me of early Tarantino. While I still don’t think anybody can hold a candle to Tarantino, I have a feeling these two can satisfy the same audience.
The ‘Almost Made It’ List: Donald Glover, James Cameron, Judd Apatow, Derek Kolstad, Chris Morgan, David O Russel, Martin McDonaugh, Tina Fey, Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy, Steven Zallian, Woody Allen, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, Greg Daniels, Dan Harmon, Mike White, Isa Rae, John Logan, David Koepp, Charlie Kaufman, Brian Duffield, Adam McKay, Guillermo del Toro, Noah Baumbach, Noah Hawley, Charlie Brooker, and Alan Yang.
