Each year, a large committee of studio executives are invited to vote on the Black List, a selection of the year’s best unproduced film scripts. A plethora of Oscar-winning and -nominated films — Spotlight, Argo, The Imitation Game, and The King’s Speech — have gained traction by being included on the list. This year’s was just released, and you can pull out your leg warmers, because the list includes Blonde Ambition, a Madonna biopic that has been crowned the most promising of this year’s 73 scripts. The Elyse Hollander–penned script is described as a portrait of the artist struggling “to get her first album released while navigating fame, romance, and a music industry that views women as disposable.” Three very different scripts are tied for second place: a multigenerational, international drama from This Is Us’ Dan Fogelman dubbed Life Itself; The Olympian, a true story of an underdog rower trying to qualify for the 1984 Olympics, written by Tony Tost; and a Pentagon Papers drama called The Post by Liz Hannah. Produce away, studios!
