Katie Crocker - Associate Editor
‘The Black List’, an annual compilation of the year’s hottest unproduced screenplays (which has given birth to such films as “(500) Days of Summer”, “Juno” and “The King’s Speech”), has released it’s 2012 roll.
Topping the list this year is “Draft Day”, a Rajiv Joseph and Scott Rothman football drama that was recently put into turnaround by Paramount Pictures. Despite the attachment of actor Kevin Costner and “Ghostbusters” director Ivan Reitman, the studio considered it too tough a sell so let it go. It’s likely that the script’s inclusion on The Black List will have the studio rethinking their decision to drop the film. Either way, the project – about the general manager of a football team whose professional and personal life starts to overlap – will likely raise eyebrows elsewhere now that it’s made the top spot on the heavily-of-interest register.
Other scripts that made The Black List this year include biopics on Hilary Clinton, Dr. Seuss and Pablo Escobar, The feature adaptation of “The Equalizer” (which Nicholas Winding Refn has since been assigned the mission to steer to cinemas). science-fiction/gangster yarn “Man of Tomorrow”; time-travel piece “Our Name is Adam”, which has sort of a “Looper” vibe about it, Zack Whedon’s “Come and Find Me”, and “If They Move… Kill ‘Em”, about filmmaker Sam Peckinpah’s plight to receive film funding via cashed-up drug lords.
