Best Movies Never Made

Image from Deadline Hollywood.

IT’S CALLED THE BLACK LIST — film executives’ favorite scripts written in, or somehow uniquely associated with this year but not be released in theaters during this calendar year.

In previous years, the list has catapulted dozens of scripts into production and screenwriters out of oblivion. Diablo Cody’s Juno, Nancy Oliver’s Lars And The Real Girl, Scott Neustader’s and Michael Weber’s 500 Days Of Summer, are just some of the scripts that were made after appearing on the list.

Ninety-seven screenplays appear on the just-released version, according to Deadline Hollywood. Here are the Top 10 (as summarized by the folks at Entertainment Weekly and Deadline Hollywood):

1. The Muppet Man, by Christopher Weekes. The life and times of the late Jim Henson, 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. Bonus: Currently in production by Sony, the film stars my beloved Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg. Justin Timberlake is also attached.
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. Now in production, the cast includes John C. Reilly, Anne Heche and Sigourney Weaver.
6. Londongrad, by David Scarpa. The writer of The Day The Earth Stood Still and co-writer of The Last Castle does 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 — Pleasantville meets High Noon. (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 — a lightning-paced, time travel adventure is Back to the Future meets Independence Day meets Demolition Man accompanied by a gargantuan production budget.

You can read the rest here.