Analysis: 2017 Black List
A deep dive into the scripts named to this year’s annual Black List.
A deep dive into the scripts named to this year’s annual Black List.
The 2017 Black List rolled out last week — you can find titles, writers and loglines for all of the selected scripts here — and as promised, today we have some statistics and analysis for you.
First some interesting stats about this year’s Black List:
- There are 76 screenplays on the 2017 Black List (There were 73 screenplays on the 2016 Black List)
- Over 275 working film executives at major Hollywood financiers and production companies contributed to the 2017 Black List
- 27.6% of the scripts on the 2017 Black List have a financier attached (31.5% on 2016 Black List)
- 65.7% of the scripts on 2016 Black List have a producer attached (71.2% on the 201 Black List)
- There are 25 scripts written at least in part by a female writer on the 2017 Black List and 34 scripts featuring a female protagonist (based on their loglines.) This represents twice as many scripts on both fronts as the Black List’s historical average. The previous high was last year (2016): 18 scripts from female writers and 28 scripts with female protagonists.
- 5 writers (or teams) on the 2017 Black List do not have an agent (12 in 2016)
- 11 writers (or teams) on 2017 Black List do not have a manager (7 on 2016 Black List)
- 26 scripts are based on nonfiction source material or real life individuals (35 on 2016 Black List)
- One writing team has multiple scripts on the 2017 Black List: Hayley Schore & Roshan Sethi (Call Jane, Little Boy)
Drilling down into the scripts, here are some interesting notes:
World War II and the Holocaust
- THE BOXER by Justine Juel Gillmer
- GEORGE by Jeremy Michael Cohen
- KEEPER OF THE DIARY by Samuel Franco & Evan Kilgore
- LIBERATION by Darby Kealey
- RUIN by Matthew Firpo & Ryan Firpo
- WYLER by Michael Moskowitz
Female Assassins
- BALLERINA by Shay Hatten
- KATE by Umair Aleem
- MAD BAD AND DANGEROUS TO KNOW by Jade Bartlett
- THE MOTHER by Misha Green
- RUTHLESS by John Swetnam
Scripts about Hollywood
- HUGHES by Andrew Rothschild
- STRONGMAN by Nicholas Jacobson-Larson & Dalton Leeb
- WHEN IN DOUBT, SEDUCE by Allie Hagan
- WYLER by Michael Moskowitz
Writing about writers
- GEORGE by Jeremy Michael Cohen
- INNOCENT MONSTERS by Elaina Perpelitt
- V.I.N. by Chiara Towne
- WHEN LIGHTNING STRIKES by Anna Klassen
Abortion
- CALL JANE by Hayley Schore & Roshan Sethi
- LET HER SPEAK by Mario Correa
- THIS IS JANE by Daniel Loflin
Scripts about race
- ARC OF JUSTICE by Max Borenstein & Rodney Barnes
- VIN by Chiara Towne
- THE WHITE DEVILS by Leon Hendrix III
2017 Nicholl Fellowship Winners on the 2017 Black List
- THE GREAT NOTHING by Cesar Vitale
- JELLYFISH SUMMER by Sarah Jane Inwards
A Man and his Dog
- BIOS by Craig Luck & Ivor Powell
- HEART OF THE BEAST by Cameron Alexander
The News Game
- AMERICAN TABLOID by Adam Morrison
- NEWSFLASH by Ben Jacoby
Technologist Biopics
- THE MAN FROM TOMORROW by Jordan Barel (Elon Musk)
- DON’T BE EVIL by Gabriel Diani, Etta Devine, Evan Bates (Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt)
Here is a word cloud created from all of the 2017 Black List script loglines:
What to make of all this?
- Nonfiction stories continue to be a strong presence on the Black List, although the number this year (26 compared to 35 in 2016) represents a fairly significant drop
- Of the biopic projects, none of them are in the traditional ‘cradle to grave’ mode, rather in the vein of the recent trend toward what are known as ‘snapshot bios’, focusing on a specific period or event in a real individual’s life (e.g., Keeper of the Diary, When Lightning Strikes, The Prospect)
- The upward trendline of scripts featuring female protagonists is four years running. Same goes with scripts written at least in part by writers identifying as women.
- Five female assassin projects. Coincidence or something else going on?
Nominations By Agency
CAA — 17
Verve — 14
WME — 14
UTA — 12
Paradigm — 4
APA — 3
ICM Partners — 2
ESA — 1
Gersh — 1
RGM Artists — 1
Nominations By Management Company
Grandview — 9
Madhouse Entertainment — 6
Kaplan/Perrone — 5
Lee Stobby Entertainment — 5
Bellevue Productions — 4.5
LBI Entertainment — 3
The Gotham Group — 2.5
Good Fear Film + Management — 2
Heroes and Villains Entertainment — 2
Industry Entertainment — 2
Lighthouse Entertainment — 2
Management 360–2
Plattform — 2
Anonymous Content — 1.5
Brillstein Entertainment — 1
Echo Lake — 1
Energy Entertainment — 1
Fictional Entity — 1
Heller Highwater — 1
Ken Gross Entertainment — 1
Link Entertainment — 1
Mindframe Entertainment — 1
Rosa Entertainment — 1
Think Tank Entertainment — 1
Untitled Entertainment — 1
Zero Gravity — 1
Principato Young — 0.5
Tunnel Post — 0.5
Writ Large — 0.5
Note: Shared representation counts as a half-point.
There you have it: Another annual Black List put to bed. For the writers who made the List this year, it’s up and at ’em time, a whole slew of meetings on Hollywood’s perpetual bottled water tour in the offing… only now these writers will be perceived as having a lot more heat than before.
Industry news coverage of the 2017 Black List:
/film
The Atlantic
AV Club
Deadline
Entertainment Weekly
The Hollywood Reporter
Indiewire
The Playlist
Slate
Uproxx
Variety
Vulture
Vox
Women and Hollywood
The Wrap
For GITS analyses of previous Black Lists:
As always, I encourage people to read as many of these Black List scripts as possible. These 76scripts represent, as best as we can know at this moment in time, where development execs’ heads are at and most importantly what types of stories resonate with them in a positive way.