CAA and Untitled Entertainment had the most scripts in the 20th edition of The Black List, the annual compilation of Hollywood’s best-liked unproduced screenplays.
CAA scored 15 executive mentions, leading on the agency side for the fourth year in a row, with Untitled landing nine. Leading the pack with by far the most mentions, at 60, is Travis Braun‘s One Night Only, about two strangers who scramble to find someone to sleep with on the one night of the year when premarital sex is legal. UTA and Echo Lake rep the scribe, who also topped the 2023 list with Bad Boy. Will Gluck’s Olive Bridge is on board to produce.
Untitled’s highest ranked script, at 38 mentions, is Natan Dotan’s Alignment, the hot AI-themed piece that Fifth Season recently secured in a seven-figure deal, with Makeready coming aboard to produce, as we were first to report. Securing 37 mentions, CAA’s top-ranked script is Julia Cox’s Love of Your Life, which Amazon MGM won in an October bidding war, as we were also first to tell you. The deal, in the $2M range, is one of the biggest for a spec in recent memory.
In not-so-great news for producers looking for that next great unproduced script, these are just two of 10 that have already been set up at studios. Ross Evans’ How to Save a Marriage sold to Sony at auction, with Robert Pattinson on board to produce, while Ryan Evans’ Clean Break sold on spec to Searchlight, with Scott Free producing. Lionsgate has both action comedy Three Hitmen and a Baby, from Dave Matalon & Matt Altman, and James Morosini’s psychological horror pic Mommy’s Home. Netflix and the Obamas’ Higher Ground prevailed in a mid-six-figure spec deal for the Will Hettinger-penned Dyersville, with Grant Singer inking to direct, while Paramount won a six-studio bidding war for Over Asking, the erotic revenge thriller spec from Caroline Dries. Lou Howe and Todd Bartels’ Anthony Bourdain biopic Tony is set up at A24 with BlackBerry‘s Matt Johnson to direct and Dominic Sessa starring, and then there’s Matt Venne’s Test Drive, an original action spec that sold to 20th in a competitive situation, with Safehouse boarding to produce. This isn’t to speak of all the other projects that have already lined up production company involvement.
Verve was second-ranked among agencies this year with 11 mentions, while Bellevue Productions took second on the management side with seven. The list featured a total of 83 scripts by 91 writers, which were selected by more than 500 film executives, a record number of voters for a Black List survey. Notably, in 33 out of 83 cases, there was a management company involved, but no agency. And of course, per usual, a handful of scripts had no representation at all.
“Twenty years can feel like a long time or a blink of an eye depending on the moment,” said Black List founder Franklin Leonard amid the rollout of today’s compendium. “Throughout that time, this is always the best part: Finding and sharing great stories well told with the rest of the community of folks who care about them. I look forward to these scripts finding the success and audience that previous annual Black List scripts have found and to watching these movies in theaters as soon as they’re available.”
See how all agencies and management companies fared in this year’s Black List mentions below.
SCRIPTS BY AGENCY
CAA
15
Verve
11
Independent Artist Group
2
Transatlantic Agency
1
SCRIPTS BY MANAGEMENT COMPANY
Untitled Entertainment
9
Bellevue Productions
7
Writ Large
6
Rain Management
5
Kaplan/Perrone Entertainment
5
Artists First
3
Entertainment 360
3
Heroes and Villains Entertainment
3
Housefire Management
3
Range Media Partners
3
Anonymous Content
3
Echo Lake Entertainment
2
Linden Entertainment
2
Empirical Evidence
2
3 Arts Entertainment
2
Brillstein Entertainment Partners
2
Project D
1
Traction
1
Fourth Wall
1
Redefine
1
Mosaic
1
Industry Entertainment
1
Time Train
1
LIT Entertainment
1
SpectreVision
1
First Story Entertainment
1
Epicenter
1
Underground Management
1
831 Entertainment
1
The Gotham Group
1
Stride
1
Art/Work Entertainment
1
Greenlight Management
1
Jen Au Management
1
English (US) ·