2006 Blacklist: The Top 10 Unproduced Screenplays

Last year, it surfaced on a couple of sites and was featured in Entertainment Weekly. The Black List is a top 10 best unproduced screenplays complied by (you fill in the blank) insiders at talent agencies, management companies, and film studios.

2 of last year’s top 3 are far from being shelved under a pile of other scripts – Things We Lost in the Fire is in post prod and the number 3 consensus pick Lars And The Real Girl is being produced by Sidney Kimmel Entertainment and is currently filming. Juno is lining up for a January shoot in Vancouver.

Posted on the blog site www.spinandstir.com, this year the Top 10 list surfaces once again, however many of the scripts are already being produced by big studios. Since it comes from an undisclosed source it’s hard to take it at face value, but for the pure fun of it we’ll look at some of these project in further depth.

New Line is well underway with Rendition. Gavin Hood is directing Kelley Sane’s script with names like Alan Arkin, Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Meryl Streep and Reese Witherspoon onboard. This is a multilayered story centers on a CIA analyst (Gyllenhaal) based in Cairo who finds his world spinning out of control after he witnesses the interrogation of a foreign national by the Egyptian secret police.

Warner Bros. Pictures bought The Brigands of Rattleborge – Craig Zahler’s script with Vertigo Entertainment’s Roy Lee and Doug Davison to produce. Aaron Ryder is also producing. The dark Western revolves around three ruthless men who rob, rape and maim the town’s wealthiest residents during a torrential rainstorm; the local sheriff and a vengeful doctor seek retribution.

Brad Pitt is circling State of Play. Universal Pictures has teamed with Andrew Hauptman’s Mission Pictures to develop the project, Written by Matthew Carnahan, the Americanized adaptation of the acclaimed British miniseries is about two friends, one a member of Parliament and the other a journalist, who find themselves on opposite sides of an investigation into two seemingly unrelated murders.

To be directed by John Stockwell, Villain is looking to start production early next year. 2929 will produce the film with Lynette Howell and Doug Dey of Silverwood Films. Scripted by Joshua Zetumer, a forest-fire spotter with a secret is visited by his crazy brother in the remote, frozen wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.

New Line will try finding a director for The Grackle, but they have already found their star. In the script, by Mike Arnold and Chris Poole, Matthew McConaughey plays a barroom fighter in New Orleans who hires himself out for $250 to settle disputes for people who can’t afford a lawyer. Harsh language and quick fists are his weapons of choice.

Universal Pictures has acquired Jamie Moss’ spec script for Ron Howard to direct. Last Man Home is set in the days just before President George W. Bush launched full-scale war in 2003, the story revolves around a covert U.S. military unit that is on the hunt for an AWOL American soldier in Iraq. The soldier is looking for his brother, who went missing when fighting in the first Gulf War.

The Richard Pryor biopic will be directed by Walter Hill – who directed directed Pryor in Brewster’s Millions. Mike Epps stars in the Caleb Kane screenplay. Kane also has These City Walls as part of the top ten.

Written by Grant Nieporte, the story centers on a man who inadvertently falls in love with a woman while attempting to kill himself. Apparently Will Smith is attached to star in Seven Pounds – a Columbia Pictures and Escape Artists project to be produced alongside his Overbrook Entertainment partner James Lassiter.

Wb has got their hands on Himmelfarb. The script by Andrew Mogel and Jarrod Paul is a comedy about mixed-signals on a first date that leads a young man to follow his date to Nebraska, where he ingratiates himself into her life.