The 2012 Hollywood Black List Has Arrived!

As each year comes to a close, producer Franklin Leonard (late of Will Smith's Overbrook Entertainment as well as Universal) publishes The Black List, a compilation of the best unproduced screenplays bouncing around the Hollywood development system.  The list is voted on by hundreds of agents, producers and executives (290 this year), each of whom nominates ten of their favorite scripts.  Previous Black List success stories include Slumdog Millionaire, (500) Days Of Summer, Juno, and Looper.

Deadline Hollywood has the complete list, but below I've listed all the ones that really jumped out at me, either due to an interesting premise or because it's got some serious talent attached.  For instance, Transcendence will be long-time Christopher Nolan cinematographer Wally Pfister's directorial debut with Johnny Depp signed on to play the lead, and Come And Find Me is written by Zack Whedon.   On the other hand, Man Of Tomorrow sounds like something I HAVE TO READ.  Plus, I'm always a sucker for a good time travel story, so I copied pretty much all of those.

They're listed in descending order of rank, with Draft Day in the top spot with 65 votes.  (The lowest ranked scripts received six votes.)  Either way, keep in mind that inclusion on The Black List is hardly a guarantee of success.  Most of these scripts will never see the light of day.

DRAFT DAY
Rajiv Joseph, Scott Rothman On the day of the NFL Draft, Bills General Manager Sonny Weaver has the opportunity to save football in Buffalo when he trades for the number one pick. He must quickly decide what he’s willing to sacrifice in pursuit of perfection as the lines between his personal and professional life become blurred. SEUSS Eyal Podell, Jonathan Stewart As a young man, Ted Geisel meets his future wife Helen, who encourages his fanciful drawings, and in the 1950s when Ted is struggling professionally, Helen helps inspire the children’s book that will become his first big hit, “The Cat in the Hat.”

RODHAM Young Il Kim During the height of the Watergate scandal, rising star Hillary Rodham is the youngest lawyer chosen for the House Judiciary Committee to Impeach Nixon, but she soon finds herself forced to choose between a destined path to the White House and her unresolved feelings for Bill Clinton, her former boyfriend who now teaches law in Arkansas. WUNDERKIND Patrick Aison A Mossad employed father and his CIA agent son team up to hunt an escaped Nazi. IF THEY MOVE… KILL ‘EM! Kel Symons After losing his luster and respect in Hollywood, famed director Sam Peckinpah hopes to direct his next great film with financial backing from Colombian drug lords and brings along a novice screenwriter to write the film in Colombia. THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA Mark Hogan During WWII, a a fifteen year old German boy is sent to America to spy for the Fatherland by joining a politically-connected family as an English war orphan. Tension mounts when the boy gets the chance to assassinate President Roosevelt.. MAN OF TOMORROW Jeremy Slater In an alternate 1940s reality, the US Government makes a deal with an indestructible gangster to kill Hilter in exchange for the city of Chicago, which he will build into his own utopia. Unfortunately his model city never comes to fruition and both he and his Bureau liaison get much of the slack for destroying one of America’s greatest cities and now the government wants him dead. HEY, STELLA! Tom Shephard The story of how Marlon Brando won the role of Stanley Kowalski in Elia Kazan’s broadway play A Streetcar Named Desire. THE BROKEN John Glosser In 1967 Oklahoma, a war vet/farmer investigates the suspicious death of his estranged son in the next county. When he discovers his son’s brutal murder was a covered-up gay bashing, he goes on a one-man mission to take down the corrupt sheriff responsible. MCCARTHY Justin Kremer It is 1951. Junior Senator Joe McCarthy feels lost. He’s anonymous, just another suit on Capitol Hill. He craves attention and celebrity. He’s desperate to be noticed, to be adored. Inspired by the response of the American public to the House of Un-American Activities Committee, McCarthy decides that communism will be his defining issue. What follows is nearly unthinkable — national fame, a shocking conspiracy, a sitting President afraid to oppose him, and a torrid journey of self destruction and paranoia. WHO FRAMED TOMMY CALLAHAN? Harry Kellerman An elementary school student searches for the truth behind the candy bar ring conspiracy that got his brother expelled. OUR NAME IS ADAM T.S. Nowlin An astronaut travels back in time to enlist the help of his younger self. THE PORTLAND CONDITION Dan Cohn, Jeremy Miller Set against the backdrop of rainy Portland, Oregon, a young man finds himself falling in love for the first time – only to receive a letter from his future self, warning him of impending heartbreak. GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR TOM Jason Micallef After nine years, a NASA communications expert reconnects with the astronaut she believed to be dead and helps rescue him from space. HIBERNATION Will Frank, Geneva Robertson-Dworet A wrongly convicted inmate volunteers for a hibernation experiment in exchange for one day of parole every five years, which he uses to prove his innocence and search for his missing daughter across an increasingly futuristic landscape. THE HOOVERVILLE DEAD Brantley Aufill Set in St. Louis in the 1920s, washed up baseball player Will Cosgrove is a private eye with his older brother Ross. When Ross goes missing, Will stumbles upon a deep secret that the disease taking over the town is not quite what it seems and a mob boss turned Governor will do anything to keep the town’s secret from being revealed. TRANSCENDENCE Jack Paglen An epic love story set in a time where a dying scientist is able to upload his consciousness into the internet and, facing its global implications, must fight against the forces who are actively working against the existence of a singularity. ALMANAC Jason Pagan, Andrew Stark A group of high school kids discover how to time travel, but fail to recognize the potential consequences. COME AND FIND ME Zack Whedon When his girlfriend goes missing, David must track down her whereabouts after he realizes she’s not who she was pretending to be. KING OF HEISTS Will Staples Based on the book King of Heists: The Sensational Bank Robbery of 1878 That Shocked America, written by J. North Conway. An unassuming man in the elite New York society assembles a crew that pulls off the largest bank heist in American history in 1878. THE LIGHTHOUSE Eric Kirsten William Van Alen’s building of the Chrysler building and the competition to be the first to complete the world’s tallest building. TITANS OF PARK ROW Mitch Akselrad Young William Randolph Hearst goes to war against an aging Joseph Pulitzer as each tries to monopolize coverage of a mysterious homicide capturing New York’s imagination, birthing the modern concept of sensationalist media coverage.

Dueling Apocalyptic Trailers! Obvlivion vs After Earth

Every couple of years Hollywood churns out two very similar films that hit theaters at virtually the same time. Notable past match-ups include A Bug's Life vs. Antz, Capote vs. Infamous and, of course, Armageddon vs. Deep Impact.  When this happens there is almost always a clear winner and loser; one movie makes piles of money and/or is fondly remembered for years, while the other is forgotten almost instantly.

Next summer we'll get Oblivion and After Earth, both of which center on men (Tom Cruise and Will Smith, respectively) who return to Earth long after it has been abandoned by humanity.  While their release dates are almost two months apart, both trailers were released within 48 hours, so they're practically begging to be compared and contrasted.

First up is Oblivion from writer/director Joseph Kosinski, aka the man responsible for Tron: Legacy.  While that sequel was massively disappointing, you have to admit that it's visually stunning.  Oblivion looks to be all that and then some, plus I'm curious to see what he can do with a palate that involves more than four colors. Aside from the fact that the plot seems to have an interesting conspiracy element, I prefer the setting of a world only a few hundred years after the global cataclysm, with the echos of humanity still present.  As opposed to...

...After Earth, set 1000 years after mankind has left town.  Here we have real life father and son Will and Jaden Smith playing a father and son team who crash on a savage Earth filled with wild animals and plant life.    As Smith the elder (seen here sporting a bizarre sort of half-accent) is injured in the crash, Smith the younger is left to venture into the wild world and protect the two while trying to get them airborne once again.  The mastermind here is M. Night Shyamalan, who hasn't made a decent movie in over a decade now.  It's been lots of fun watching Twitter folks guess as to what ridiculous sort of twist ending the movie is sure to have, with most surmising that it'll turn out they were on a pre-historic Earth the whole time.  I really hope that doesn't turn out to be true, especially in a movie called AFTER EARTH.

I'm not totally sold on either of these projects.  There's no arguing with the riveting screen presence of both Cruise and Smith, but both filmmakers have track records that are more than a little spotty; while they can each shoot the hell out of a movie, at the end of the day a film is only as good as its story.  Fortunately each has some serious scripting talent on board to counterbalance their uneven directors.  Oblivion boasts a screenplay co-written by William Monahan, who gave us the incredible script for The Departed while After Earth lists Stephen Gaghan of Traffic and Syriana fame.

We'll see how it all plays out.  While they could both prove to be disappointments, my money is on Oblivion as at least being the more interesting of the two.  At the end of the day, at least we're getting more original sci-fi movies in theaters, which is always something to celebrate.

Men In Black III Trailer: Yes, This Is Really Happening

I was a big fan of the first Men In Black.  I think it's an extremely strong premise for a franchise and, interestingly, the blend of bright, cartoonish sci-fi spectacle and teflon humor actually sets it apart in today's "gritty" world of hyper-realistic Transformers and darkly serious Dark Knights.  The first film benefited greatly from catching Will Smith right at the beginning of his rise to international super-stardom, but before his very presence in a film rewriting half the script to fit his public image.  On the other hand, Men In Black II suffered from an extremely subpar script that was an absolute mess on screen.  I literally walked out of the theater feeling like I had somehow missed fifteen minutes of the movie somewhere.

Now, fifteen years after the franchise began, we've got a glimpse of the impending third go-round:

I actually rather like this teaser, which is obviously drawing heavily from the movie's first act in an attempt to set up the big idea here, that Agent J must travel back in time to the 1969 to find the younger version of Tommy Lee Jones' Agent K, played with impeccable inflection by Josh Brolin.  (At least, I hope that's Brolin's voice.  I think it is.  If they chose to have Jones dub all Brolin's dialogue...BOO!)

One of my problems with MIB II was that Tommy Lee Jones spent half the movie as an amnesiac and without the counter-weight of Agent K, the movie became too much about Will Smith wishing he had a girlfriend.  While Jones looks to be AWOL for much of the movie, I have faith in Josh Brolin to necessarily reign in Smith. Plus I love the idea of seeing all of MIB's "advanced technology" from the 1960s.  Talk about a fantastic sandbox to play in.

That being said, the movie's budget and production has notably spun WAY out of control, so I wouldn't be entirely surprised if this turned out to be just as messy as the last one.  We'll find out next Memorial Day weekend.