The 2021 Black List has arrived. Featuring 73 screenplays and 71 writers/writing teams, the 17th annual list was decided by votes from more than 375 film execs and highlights the best-liked unproduced screenplays circulating Hollywood.
Coming in at #2 overall with 32 votes, the woman-penned script to receive the most votes is Lily Hollander’s “See How They Run,” the story of a blind mother who moves into a remote farmhouse with her young daughter. “The mystery of the home’s previous inhabitants intrudes upon her attempts to repair their relationship,” its logline hints.
Screenplays from women also claimed the #3 and #4 spots on the list: Rebecca Webb’s “Divorce Party” and Lillian Yu’s “Killer Instinct,” respectively. “Divorce Party,” which landed 25 votes, centers on a woman moving from South Boston to New York’s Upper East Side until everything goes awry. Her girlfriends throw her a Divorce Party at the home she’s about to lose, a celebration that goes totally off the rails. “Killer Instinct,” the recipient of 23 votes, centers on a Hollywood assistant who is fired for admitting while on a conference call that he’d love to kill his boss — and finds his boss dead in the office the next day.
Other offerings high on the list include Michelle Askew’s “Hot Girl Summer” and Shanrah Wakefield’s “Rabbit Season,” both of which received 13 votes. The former follows a 13-year-old girl who witnesses a drug deal gone wrong and consequently finds herself in the middle of an underground drug ring, and the latter is a supernatural horror story about a woman stalked by a manifestation of manhood on her walk home from her high school reunion.
Head over to Deadline to check out the rest of the Black List entries, including a Shania Twain biopic, Jessica Welsh’s “Shania!”
Sophie Hunter’s “Headhunter,” the story of a “high-functioning cannibal” who “selects his victims based on their Instagram popularity, but finds his habits shaken by a man who wants to be eaten,” topped last year’s list.