Studio execs vote each year on the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood, with the winners landing on Hollywood Blacklist. For seven years running, there’s been a Halloween counterpart, the Blood List, run by Kailey Marsh. Last year, the list featured Jennifer Lopez’s iconic The Boy Next Door in all its first-edition-copy-of-The-Iliad glory and the upcoming Blake Lively thriller, Into the Deep. Here are the 13 (yes, 13 because it’s spooky) scripts that make up the top — including the upcoming McG film, The Babysitter, and a film named De Niro that MUST star Robert De Niro, right?
TOP 13 FEATURES
1. ELI
Writer: David Chirchirillo
Genre: Horror
Logline: Having moved into a “clean house” to treat his autoimmune disorder, 11-year-old Eli begins to believe that the house is haunted. Unable to leave, Eli soon realizes that the house, and the doctor who runs it, are more sinister than they appear.
Management: Bellevue Productions
Agency: APA
Status: Sold to Broad Green Pictures with Bellevue Productions producing.
2. THE BOY
Writer: Owen Egerton
Genre: Supernatural horror
Logline: Sixteen years after stabbing a classmate to appease a legendary phantom known as the Boy, a repentant woman returns to her hometown to live with her sister and nephew. As the Boy continues to haunt her and the death count rises, she must face her deepest terror to discover the truth about the Boy before he claims her nephew.
Management: Epicenter
Agency: UTA
Status: Available.
3. THE BABYSITTER
Writer: Brian Duffield
Genre: Horror Comedy
Logline: A young boy gets more than he bargained for when he decides to stay up late and spy on his super-hot babysitter.
Management: Circle of Confusion
Agency: Gersh
Status: Set up at New Line with Wonderland Sound and Vision producing. McG is directing.
4. THE ACCURSED
Writer: Barbara Marshall
Genre: Gothic horror
Logline: Doomed to a life of depraved immorality, a woman finds herself targeted by a vengeful assassin hell-bent on wiping out her kind forever, but neither knows that something far more sinister is hunting them both.
Management: Industry Entertainment
Agency: APA
Status: Available.
5. WE SUMMON THE DARKNESS
Writer: Alan Trezza
Genre: Horror
Logline: Set at the height of the Satanic Panic craze of the 1980s, three twenty-something girls attend a heavy-metal concert where they quickly hit it off with three fun-loving dudes. As the night progresses, dark secrets are revealed and a night of fun spirals into a vicious fight for survival.
Management: Magnet Management
Agency: None
Status: Nightshade Entertainment is attached to produce.
6. THE SHAVE
Writers: Thomas White & Miles Hubley
Genre: Crime thriller
Logline: A dirty cop, exonerated in the murder of a high-school honor student, visits the boy’s father at his barbershop, and while receiving a straight-razor shave, listens to him recount the story of his son’s life.
Management: MXN
Agency: WME
Status: Lost City and Route One financing.
7. BED REST
Writer: Lori Evans Taylor
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A pregnant woman on bed rest is caught in a haunted house, but is it all in her mind or is the house actually haunted?
Management: Kaplan/Perrone
Agency: ICM
Status: Set up at MGM.
8. BUMP
Writers: Ori Guendelman & Rob McClelland
Genre: Crime Drama
Logline: After an accidental hit-and-run, a young lawyer’s entire life unravels over the span of one night as he attempts to dispose of a corpse that turns out to be way more than an innocent victim.
Management: 3 Arts
Agency: Paradigm
Status: Set up at Universal. Working Title is attached to produce.
9. THE BECOMING
Writers: Zach Donohue & Lauren Thompson
Genre: Horror
Logline: An immature teenage girl must protect her younger brother when their babysitter becomes infected by something in the woods.
Management: Management 360
Agency: UTA
Status: Available.
10. UNLAWFUL
Writer: Carver Gray
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A troubled detective operates outside the law when he strikes up a taboo relationship with an underage prostitute. But when a 16-year-old girl goes missing and he must use her diary to reconstruct the events that led to her disappearance, an unimaginable truth emerges. Think Prisoners meets Taxi Driver with hints of Gone Girl.
Management: Energy Entertainment/Markerstone
Agency: WME
Status: Romark Entertainment and Energy Entertainment are producing.
11. DAY 2
Writers: Jenna Wright & John Rocco
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Logline: The story of a Halloween party that goes very, very wrong for one of its Cinderella-like attendees.
Management: Silver Lake Entertainment
Agency: None
Status: Silver Lake Entertainment is producing and looking to partner.
12. PARABLE X
Writer: John Scott III
Logline: A mysterious man commits two brutal murders and then turns himself in to the police, asking to speak to a specific detective for whom he has an unbelievable message: “I was sent here from the future to kill the people responsible for a future tragedy, and you are the man who sent me.”
Management: Sly Predator
Agency: ICM
Status: Fubar Films is financing. John Scott III is also attached to direct. Currently casting.
13. DE NIRO
Writer: Paul Solet
Genre: Crime thriller
Logline: As three career criminals find themselves trapped in a warehouse with the law closing in and an even worse threat waiting inside, a series of intertwining narratives explores the love, fear, and conditioning that brought them there and keeps them from moving on. If they are to make it out alive, they’ll not only need to use all they’ve learned in a life of crime, they’ll need to find a way to let it all go.
Management: Principato Young Entertainment
Agency: Paradigm
Status: Set up at Millennium with Paul Solet directing. John Malkovich is in talks to star.
The full list including the best horror television pilots of 2015 are at the Blood List.
