2009 Black List: Most Liked Scripts in Hollywood

Published by Jeff Leins on: December 12th, 2009

Since 2004, Franklin Leonard — now an exec at Universal — has compiled a list of the “most liked” scripts in Hollywood.  What started as a means to find good reading material for the Christmas holiday has become an annual tradition in December.  Players from various Hollywood businesses (this year the number of people grew to 311) select their top 10 favorite scripts and the votes shake out into “The Black List.”

These elite scripts typically get noticed by agencies and studios around town and wind up on the screen or the Academy category for “Best Original/Adapted Screenplay.”  In an industry where unoriginality means financial blockbuster, “The Black List” is a reminder that talented screenwriters still exist.

The number one script (out of 97) with 47 mentions is newcomer Christopher Weekes’ The Muppet Man, a biopic about late puppeteer Jim Henson.  The Jim Henson Company has purchased the rights and is producing.

The second script is Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network, otherwise known as “the Facebook movie.”  David Fincher is directing (photography is already underway) and Jesse Eisenberg plays Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.  Rashida Jones and Justin Timberlake will also star.

Fourth is Prisoners, set up at Alcon Entertainment.  It’s a great script about a man who takes matters into his own hands after his daughter is kidnapped.  Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) is directing.  Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale were attached to star at one point, but have since left the project.

Buried is also on the list with 10 mentions, which stars Ryan Reynolds, has wrapped production, and is playing at Sundance next month.

Shaun Cross’ If I Stay that Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke is set to direct.

Garden State writer/director Zach Braff’s latest script Swingles is near the bottom, but made the list.  He’s starring with Cameron Diaz.

You’ll find the top 11 from the 2009 “Black List” below, but if you want all 97 go to the official website and download the PDF:

1. The Muppet Man, by Christopher Weekes “The life and times of the late Jim Henson (pictured), the man behind Sesame Street and The Muppets.”

2. The Social Network, by Aaron Sorkin “Chronicles Mark Zuckerberg’s complicated journey towards creating Facebook. Sorkin depicts both the founder’s motivations for starting the largest social network in the world and the human casualties that came with his profound success.”

3. The Voices, by Michael R. Perry “Jerry, a schizophrenic worker at a bathtub factory, accidentally kills an attractive woman from accounting. While trying to cover his bloody tracks, Jerry starts taking advice from his talking (and foul-mouthed) cat and dog.”

4. Prisoners, by Aaron Guzikowski “When his young daughter and her best friend vanish on Thanksgiving Day, a Christian survivalist named Keller Dover takes matters into his own hands, imprisoning and torturing a suspect whom the police have set free. But does Dover have the wrong man? And if he does, who really has his little girl?”

5. Cedar Rapids, by Phil Johnston “Tim Lippy is a small-town insurance man who’s somehow made it to middle age without having quite done anything. Everything changes when he unexpectedly gets the chance to represent his company at the Cedar Rapids insurance convention, where comedy ensues, of course.”

6. Londongrad, by David Scarpa “An adaptation of Alan Cowell’s 2008 book The Terminal Spy: A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal and Murder, chronicling the life and strange death of Alexander Litvinenko. Remember in 2006, when that ex-Soviet spy was allegedly poisoned with radioactive tea at a London sushi joint? That’s him.”

7. L.A.Rex, by Will Beall (based on his novel of the same name) “Rookie LAPD officer Ben Halloran gets partnered with scarred and tobacco-spitting Officer Marquez, and the unlikely team hit the streets of L.A. on the brink of a gang-rivalry explosion. Amid run-ins with the Mexican mafia, brutal gang murders, and corrupt cops, we soon find that Halloran may not be as squeaky clean as his brand new badge.”

8. Desperados, by Ellen Rapoport “Wesley Robbins, a 30-something single attorney with an unhealthy obsession with coupling up, thinks she’s found the perfect man. But when he doesn’t call for days after the first time they sleep together she freaks out and sends him a scathing email, only to learn he’s been laid up in a Mexican hospital with some broken bones. On a whim, she and her girlfriends travel down south to erase the email before she ruins what she believes could be her one true love.”

9. The Gunslinger, by John Hlavin “When a Texas Ranger is horrifically tortured and killed, his sharp-shooter older brother, Sam Lee Hensley, plots revenge against the mysterious, sadistic leader of a notorious drug cartel. Sam Lee’s quest for vengeance will cost him seven years in prison, his right hand and one eye. It will imperil his young nephew and wreak havoc on the lives of those who love him. And it will not bring him peace.”

10. (tie) By Way of Helena, by Matt Cook “Set in the south at the turn of the century, Texas Ranger David Kingston and his Mexican bride are sent down to the mysterious town of Helena to investigate the multiple Mexican bodies washing up in the river. What they discover is an idyllic-like town where everything is not as it seems.”

10. (tie) The Days Before, by Chad St. John “A man from the future keeps hopping one successive day into the past desperate to stop a vicious race of time-traveling aliens from wiping out humanity.”