Corona | Coming Attractions

While The Black List may be getting most of the press from entertainment news circles when it's announced in December, there's another compilation of the best new ideas and writing being offered to Hollywood movie studios and producers. It's called The Hit List (THL), and it differs from The Black List in one fundamental way: whereas The Black List (TBL) is a list of the top unproduced screenplays in Hollywood, several of the screenplays on that list have been purchased or are in development.

Take a look at last year's Black List (Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here) and here we are, one year later, and several of the scripts that made the 2009 list will be coming out in 2011 -- or have already been released (like The Social Network or Due Date). The Hit List is different in that it seeks to give attention to spec screenplays -- that is, screenplays that haven't sold yet -- that the voters deem worthy of receiving greater attention. Most of the specs on The Hit List (THL) have producers working on them, but they have yet to find homes at studios. Some don't even have the interest of agents yet.

The Hit List is a creation of The Tracking Board, a website that cultivates all of the breaking information about screenplays that have sold. This year the owners of the site decided to make The Hit List public, which is why I'm spreading the word about it and telling you about these projects that deserve a little extra push in getting known. After reading the logline of a script listed on THL, you may think that it has the makings of a movie that you want to see. In the case of other specs on THL, maybe not. Regardless of your personal taste in films, The Hit List is interesting because this may be the only time that you ever hear this project mentioned -- or it may be the first time that you hear about a blockbuster that you'll be seeing and that everyone will be talking about in three, four or five years down the road.

You can read more about what went into the making of the 2010 Hit List on The Tracking Board. The more votes that a screenplay had, the more people thought that it was among the best, so for that reason I'm listing the Hit List from the least number of votes to the highest number.

Because of the length of The Hit List, I've broken it up into two parts: the lower portion (scripts that received 6 votes to 14 votes) and the upper portion (scripts that received 15 votes to 113 votes, the most that any screenplay received.) If you wish, you can skip on and read the second portion of the 2010 Hit List.

6 VOTES:

CONTAINMENT by Chris Bullet  (Action/Thriller)

Researching defense against bio-weapons, the army conducts confidential experiemnts on prisoners at Fort Leavenworth military base. But when one of the prisoners leads an escape, the military is forced to hunt the men down before the virus they're carrying or the truth about the testing can spread.

D-DAY AT THE LOT by Nick Kreiss (Comedy)

Female SUPERBAD following three high school senior girls in a single day as they struggle with the past and present of their friendship, and look toward their future.

THE FIRING SQUAD by Jonathan Gruber and Dave Matalon (Sci-Fi/Action)

In a future where corporations own their employees as well as their produts, a low-rent extraction team is hired to break out and relate a scientist only to disocver that the mission they're on was meant to be a one-way trip.

GAME THEORY by Michael Lerner (Action/Thriller)

A college professor who studies game theory gets sucked into a large-scale global incident.

Summit Entertainment/Temple Hill producing.

GRUNT by Wesley Clark (Sci-Fi/Action)

Stuck in a dead end situation after high school, a young man finds himself connect into joining an interstellar army and fighting a vicious planet devouring alien race with their eye on Earth.

HELD BACK by Josh Cagan (Comedy)

a high school athlete who goes from big-man-on-campus to outcast must rely on his unlikely new nerdy friends who help him learn that there's more to life than the big game.

HELLS PASS by David Parkin (Action/Thriller)

A kidnapper, killed ina  gunfight between a drug cartel and a biker gang, must go head to head with all of them once again in a rally race through Hell that offers the winner a second shot at life.

JUST GET HOME by Bridge Foley (Action/Thriller)

A young single mother who has reluctantly left her daughter at home with the babysitter the might of a devastating earthquake must now find her way across the ruins of Los Angeles to get back to her child.

LOST HILLS by Adam Aresty (Action/Adventure)

An outdoor adventurer sets out to find her estranged father that has gone missing in the jungles surrounding the mysterious research favility of the Lost Hills.

MISSED CONNECTIONS by Brad Vassar (Drama)

Incapable of creating his own moments, a young man decides to steal others' as he tries to find the one.

MOMSTER by Kerry Harris, Tracy McArdie and Corey Roederer (Comedy)

A mother finds herself becoming more ruthless and cutthroat when she relocates her family to Los Angeles and gets sucked into the world of milk-obsessed, hyper-competitive, overachieving uber moms.

PAPER AIRPLANE by Sid Karger (Drama/Comedy)

After sabotaging another family vacation, a travel agent who's afraid to fly battles his irrational phobias in order to win back his wife and daughter.

ROCKET MEN by Jacob Fleisher (Comedy)

When a group of nerdy rocket engineers are given the ultimate challenge of putting a man on the Moon, their biggest obstacle ends up being the belligerent astronauts they have to send.

SPRAWL by Jordan Goldberg, Alex Paraskevas (Horror/Thriller)

Teenage suburban misfits out for  awild Hollywood night throw a bottle at a car and provoke the wrath of a faceless psycho who hunts them down through the urban sprawl of Los Angeles.

STRAIN by Jeff Howard, Mike Flanagan (Horror/Thriller)

Reunited for a destination wedding at a lush tropical resort, a group of friends accidentally come into contact with a monstrous new predator virus. As the strain overtakes them, they must face the awful dilemma of having to kill each friend who has become "infected," to prevent the virus from leaping onto others.

Accelerate Entertainment producing.

THIS USED TO BE AMERICA by Luke Kasdan (Drama/Thriller)

In a near future where environmental catastrophe has rendered the Southeastern United States uninhabitable, a hardboiled detective fights a corrupt system and his checkered past in order to find a killer whose identity threatens to incite a revolution.

7 VOTES:

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AND THE LOST CITY OF ATLANTIS by Robinson Young (Action/Adventure)

A shashbuckling Christopher Columbus and several cohorts struggle to find the three keys that will unlock Poseidon's Trident and save the Lost City of Atlantis from destruction.

THE CLAIM by Damien Chazelle (Thriller)

A father with a criminal past must save his kidnapped daughter even as he fights the claim of another couple that insists the girl is theirs.

Route One Films producing.

FANTASY DADS by Jon Guerra, Eugene O'Neil (Comedy)

Banned from fantasy football by their wives, a group of dads form an underground fantasy league around their sons' pee-wee football games.

FRENEMIES by Marissa Joline Cerar (Comedy)

Two life long friends, endlessly locked into competition, pack up their families and embark on a winner-takes-all, cross-country race to win the ultimate family vacation.

FUNEMPLOYMENT by Jay Arnold (Comedy)

Centers on five jobless misfits who create a fake company so that they can fire each other and collect unemployment benefits. But when an unemployment officr starts to suspect theur scheme, the only way out of it is to make the company real.

GHOST LIGHTS by Michael Canales (Horror/Thriller)

A team of paranormal investigators, shooting the pilot episode of a reality television series, capture on film indisputable evidence of deadly supernatural forces loose in our world.

IN THE BLOOD by Bennett Yellin, James Johnston (Action/Thriller)

After her husband disappears on their Dominican Republic honeymoon, a young woman with a mysterious past goes after the men she believes are responsible.

LAUNCHING THE PATTERSONS by Amy Snow (Comedy)

An ex-astronaut slacker dad is given a second change at his dream of space when NASA announces they will launch one lucky family into space. Now he must whip his dysfunctional family into shape in order to compete with four over-achieving families, ready to prove they have the right stuff.

THE PROOFREADER by Joel Thomas (Action/Comedy)

When a reclusive proofreader for a spy novel publisher becomes an unwilling accomplice to a real assassin, he must use his second-hand knowledge of the spy world to outwit the master-spy and prevent the assassination of a United States Senator.

R.S.V.P. by Eileen Walls (Drama/Comedy)

A couple that has just broken up agrees to attend their family and friends' Fourth of July parties in an attemp to keep up appearances. They day forces them to confront the real issues that drove them apart.

SHOTGUN CINDERELLA by Alex Hollister (Action/Thriller)

When her daughter is kidnapped by her former boss, an expert bank thief is forced to commit her biggest heist on New Year's Eve, stealing information from inside the world's tallest building - The Burj Khalifa. It's a plan destined to succeed until she leaves something important behind: her shoe.

WAR OF THE WORMS by Andrew Kurtzman (Comedy)

Realizing that the three girls they want wouldn't sleep with them unless they were the last men on Earth, three hapless nerds set out to convince the ladies that the world has ended in a zombie apocalypse.

8 VOTES:

THE DRAKE INCIDENT by Kirsten Elms  (Thriller)

Stumbling across a cold case involving a haunting, a detective in the missing person's division realizes that this very case could be linked to his wife's disappearance 16 years earlier. Obsessibely putting the pieces together, he starts to become uncertain as to whether he is being pursued by a dark entity or if he himself is descending into madness.

EXPULSION by Gregg Hurtwitz (Sci-Fi/Adventure)

A group of survivors escape to a planet beyond the solar system when the Earth is destroyed after a cataclysmic event.

Warner Bros. developing project.

I AM ROSE FATOU by Ted Melfi  (Romance/Drama/Comedy)

A lonely California man responds to an exotic woman's phishing email and an unlikely romance blossoms.

I F***ED YOUR MOTHER by Phil Dornfeld (Comedy)

The story of two lifelong pals whose friendship is put to the test when one of them turns out to be a Mother Fucker.

KIYO by Alex Daltas (Horror)

After going through a divorce, a family is further challenged when their youngest daughter brings home an antique doll that conmtains a vengeful spirit.

MECHANICSVILLE by Jason Thornton, Chris Thornton (Action/Thriller)

When an AWOL soldier's delinguent brother ropes him into a desperate plan to rob their local bank, the boys get more than they bargained for as an inside jon is also into the works.

9 VOTES:

THE FOLLOWER by Tony Giglio (Thriller)

A recovering alcoholic becomes addicted to the thrill of stalking strangers. He discovers that this newfound obsession may perhaps be more dangerous than it appears.

GOOD SAMARITAN by Jeffrey Reddick (Horror/Thriller)

Based on the true story of the brutal attack and murder of one citizen and the failture of those around them to help, who now find themselves slowly being picked off one-by-one.

S.T.E.A.L. by Pat Hegarty (Thriller)

An American hiding in Brazil is blackmailed back into his life of cirme to steal back loot from "The Sao Paulo Seven", a multi-national gang of expert thieves.

STOKER by Ted Foulke (a.k.a. Wentworth Miller) (Thriller)

An 18-year-old girl must sort out the truth about her sinister but charismatic uncle who has been absent for the past 30 years, arriving suddenly on the eve of her father's death.

Fox Searchlight/Scott Free producing.

THE VISITATION by Anthony Jaswinski (Sci-Fi/Action/Thriller)

Centers on a mysterious supernatural visitor who uses a violent storm as cover for slaughtering the population of a small town in order to sustain his immortality.

YOU'RE DEAD MEAT, PIPOWSKI by Alex Drummond (Action/Comedy)

To turn their lives around, three friends become bounty hunters so they can track the bully who tormented them as kids and who is now on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.

10 VOTES:

21 AND OVER by Jon Lucas, Scott Moore (Comedy)

Two college seniors get their best friend drink on his 21st birthday and then must race to get him to his medical school exam the next morning.

Relativeity Media/Broadway Video producing.

THE ARCHITECT by Craig Stiles (Thriller)

A hot-shot New York architect is given the opportunity of a lifetime when he is chosen to construct his dream building in Dubai. however, once there, his life is turned upside down when his wife is kidnapped and he uncovers he is now part of a major conspiracy.

RKPO Pictures producing.

BEST NIGHT EVER by Jonny Umansky, Zach Hyat (Comedy/Drama)

On the eve of their high school graduation, three best friends compete in an all-night scavenger hunt across Los Angeles while confronting their love lives and coming to terms with their futures.

HAPPY FOR YOU by Elissa Matsueda (Comedy/Drama)

Story follows three interconnected characters who all have to feign joy at their friends' successes while their own lives start to stumble.

YOU COMPLETE US by Brian Kehoe, Jim Kehoe (Romance/Comedy)

When a married couple who loves to cut loose with another married couple discover that those friends are divorcing, their own marriage begins to suffer. After unsuccessful attempts to "date" other couples, they realize for the health of their own relationshiop that they must get their best friends back together.

Endgame Entertainment/Offspring Entertainment producing.

11 VOTES:

FOR A GOOD TIME CALL... by Lauren Miller, Katie Naylon (Comedy)

An R-rated buddy comedy about two girls who decide to start a phone sex line.

LONDON ROCKS by Malcolm Needs (Action/Adventure)

After discovering that the missing French Crown Jewels are actually hidden beneath Trafalgar Square, the busiest intersection in all of England, an American conman begins his plot to steal them.

PLAY BY PLAY by Deborah Kaplan, Harry Elfont (Comedy)

A career girl competes for her dream job at an ESPN-type TV station against a retired hall of fame quarterback.

12 VOTES:

EVERLY by Yale Hannon (Action/Thriller)

A woman trapped in her apartment must defend herself against waves of vicious attacks from a ruthless army of Yakuza henchmen.

HELL TO PAY by Vlas Parlapanides, Charles Parlapanides (Thriller)

Centers on a man back from serving his time in the Air Force and who now must do everything in his power to settle a debt that his family owes before they are harmed.

Mandate Pictures producing.

SHEEP MEADOW by Chris Sparling (Sci-Fi/Thriller)

While in the middle of investigating several highly unusual missing persons cases, a troubled NYPD detective is relived of duty only to have his young son be the next person to go missing.

STEP DAWG by Jeff Tetreault (Comedy)

Centers on a man in his 30's who returns home to visit his single mom, only to discover she's fallen in love with, and plans to marry, his best friend from high school.

Morgan Creek Productions producing.

13 VOTES:

GOLIATH by J.D. Payne, Patrick McKay (Action/Adventure/Fantasy)

A retelling of the story of David and Goliath.

Relativity Media/Temple Hill producing.

HALLOWEEN NIGHT by Michael Cooney (Action/Comedy)

A group of kids turn into superheroes when their costumes come to life on Halloween night.

THE LAST SON OF ISSAC LEMAY by Greg Johnson (Western/Drama/Action)

A mysterious rider searches across the unforgiving harsh winter of the Sierra Nevada Mountains hunting and killing his kin.

14 VOTES:

BARELY LETHAL by John D'Arco  (Action/Comedy)

A 17-year-old international assassin yearning for  anormal adolescence fakes her own death and enrolls as a senior in a suburban high school. But when her old employers come calling it's more extracurriculars than any other teenage can handle.

THE BRIDGE by Dominic Morgan, Matthew Harvey (Action/Thriller)

A convict and a construction crew inadvertently spark a gun battle when they rescue a woman on the run from her violent husband and his dangerous associates. Trapped on a mile-long bridge and cut off from the outside world, they have to band together to survive a 5 hour siege.

CHINESE FOOD AND PORN by Jeff Howard, Travis Knox  (Comedy)

An adult spin on RISKY BUSINESS.

COSTUME by Carter Blanchard (Horror)

A grisly costume surfaces on Halloween night, possessing anyone who wears it.

Crime Scene Pictures producing.

LAUREN PEMBERTON IS NO LONGER IN A RELATIONSHIP by Issac Aptaker, Elizabeth Berger (Comedy)

A young professional's life is turned upside down when he reads the new Facebook relationship status of the girl who broke his heart as a teenager. he decides to try and win her back.

Part 2 of the 2010 Hit List continues here.