One of the nice things about the Black List is that it tells us where the industry is trending. These are the scripts causing managers and agents to sign writers. These are the scripts managers and agents are encouraging their writers to write. And since reps have a direct pipeline into what the studios (both large and small) are looking for, this means the scripts are giving you clues about what you should be writing yourself.
To help you out, I broke the scripts down into genres. It should be noted that the Black List doesn’t include “genre” on its list which makes guessing some of these scripts tough, especially if they’re crossovers. Whenever that was the case, I went with the more dominant genre inherent in the idea. For example, for “Max And Tony’s Epic One Night Stand,” which has this as its logline: “A disastrous Grindr hookup goes from bad to worse when a meteor unleashes a horde of aliens on New York and the two ill-matched men must depend on each other to make it through the night alive,” I went with “Comedy” over “Sci-Fi” because comedy is the dominant genre within the premise.
Okay, before I share the results, can you guess which genres finished at the top? The answers might surprise you. We’ll start with the lowest and go up from there.
Western – 0
Musical – 1
Romantic Comedy – 2
Children’s – 2
True Story – 4
Biopic – 5
Horror/Supernatural – 6
Action/Thriller – 7
Sci-Fi – 8
Thriller – 10
Drama – 11
Comedy – 17
Okay! What information can we gather from this tally? Let’s start at the bottom. I’m surprised there were no Westerns on this list! The Black List usually has a few of them every year. Westerns are a weird genre in that general audiences don’t like them much but people within the industry love them because they harken back to the Hollywood of old. It seems like everyone in the movie business wants to be involved in a Western at least once in their life. So that was a surprise.
I was also shocked that there were only two romantic comedies. I thought romantic comedies were making a comeback! For a while there, there was a new one every week on Netflix. But this may simply be a case of what Netflix wants and what cool industry voters want not always lining up. I do think most industry types feel that they’re above romantic comedies. Also, it’s hard to come up with a fresh rom-com idea with the formula being so generic. So maybe that’s why their recent resurgence wasn’t reflected in this year’s list.
Only four true story entries this time around! Feels like it was double that last year. Maybe the industry is getting “true storied” out. I can only hope. Also, we’ve got five biopics. Since we can all agree that biopics are evil, I am exceedingly happy about this development. As much as I detest both these categories – true story and biopic – I readily admit they are industry mainstays and will never go away. So if you have a passion for either, go and write it. That should be your approach to whatever you write, by the way. As long as you’re passionate about it, you’ll write something good. I’ve loved plenty of biopic screenplays where the writer was obsessed with the subject matter.
Horror is next with six entries, which seems about right. Horror is the most popular screenplay genre out there but most horror scripts tend to be silly and lack depth, which is probably why the Black List doesn’t reflect the industry ratio. They think of themselves as above it. Suffice it to say, there was only one social issues horror script on the list, which was surprising. That would be Shanrah Wakefield’s, Rabbit Season: “Supernatural horror about a woman stalked through a dark city park by the most monstrous manifestation of manhood during her walk home from her high school reunion.”
Next up we have Action-Thriller, which isn’t really a surprise. The industry is still obsessed with finding the next John Wick because if you can create one cool character with a gun, you can set yourself up for five movies over the next decade. It’s almost too tempting. If I were considering writing one of these, I’d focus less on the plot and instead on the main character. Try to come up with someone who’s really unique. Who’s odd or different or unexpected in some way. Most of these “John Wick” scripts have the same main character. He’s got a military or CIA past. He hung up his cleats. He’s a secret badass. Those elements are the obvious. Now you gotta come up with things about him that are not obvious. And no, making him a woman is no longer an acceptable twist.
Well, it just warms my heart that there are a full eight sci-fi scripts on the list. Sci-fi traditionally does well on the Black List. But they usually get around five entries. I’d guess that the uptick is due to the success of The Tomorrow War on Amazon. Everyone wants that cool new sci-fi concept. Between purposefully constructed time loops, killer sounds, saving soldiers in the afterlife, and curated VR deaths, maybe we’ve found some.
Thrillers remain right behind horror as the most written genre and it’s easy to understand why. Unlike horror, which requires special effects and therefore, money, thrillers don’t require anything other than a dead body. That makes them perfect for a cheap production. Sure, they’re not as marketable as horror. But they make up for it with their microscopic budget. Netflix is making a ton of these and they absolutely love them. Which is another great thing about the genre. You can go high-brow, like Gone Girl. Or you can go low-brow, like Deadly Illusions.
Next up we have drama. Now this category is a little misleading. When you think of drama, you think of Moonlight or The House of Fog. And I’ve included scripts like that in the tally. But drama can also be a catch-all genre for concepts that aren’t easy to label. For example, Lady Chrylon’s logline is, “Two rival graffiti artists engage in a series of street battles, culminating in an otherworldy duel after the art starts bleeding into the real world.” Is that a drama? I don’t know. I think it may be. So I put it in the drama category.
I only bring this up because I don’t want people to think that writing Nomadland is going to get you a lot of reads. Straight dramas are still a tough sell. Which is why you need to add some pizazz to them! Like this graffiti artist concept.
And finally, we have the surprise top category on the list: COMEDY! Or is it surprising? Something I learned a long time ago is that when the world is going through hell, write comedy. Yes, you all want to write deep meaningful existential narratives about how YOU SEE the pandemic, confident in the belief that your main character, Mossad, and his narration about his young sister who is on a ventilator, is going to bring Hollywood to its knees and leave the LA river overrunning with a city’s tears.
BALONEY!
All it’s going to do is bore us to death. You want to write about the pandemic? MAKE IT A COMEDY! I guarantee you you will get 100x the read requests from a pandemic comedy than from a pandemic drama. That’s why comedy did so well this year. People want to laugh. COMEDY IS BACK, BABY! Also, nothing beats a snappy comedy logline. They tend to have a significant advantage over their competition.
How bout you? Did you notice any trends in this year’s Black List? Share them in the comments section!
Also, continue to RANK YOUR BLACK LIST READS in the comments. If you liked something, tell us. If you hated something, tell us. It’ll let me know which scripts to review and which I can place on the back burner.
