The cool kids.  You know ’em.  The ones that know all the bands…that haven’t been signed yet.  The artists that are so underground even MICA doesn’t know they exist.  The movies that haven’t made it to production yet, but everyone’s talking about.

Well, I can’t do anything about those first two — I am so totally not cool enough — but I do have an in for the third.  Behold, The Black List.  It’s a yearly grouping of all the screenplays that folks in the know would love to have seen green-lit this year.

Earlier Black Lists have seen the likes of Juno and Lars and the Real Girl.  So this year’s list could have a few films that will have everyone talking next year.  And I’ve gotta say there are quite a few I’d like to see Right Now.

Here’s a taste of what could be coming to a multiplex near you, if we can be so lucky.  As the folks over at The Black List will tell you, this isn’t a Who’s Who, a “Best of” or “Sure-Fire Epic” list.  It is, to quote ’em, ‘at best, a “most liked” list’.  But with the folks they’ve got doing the picking, I’m good with that.

FYI: the numbers alongside the title?  That’s the number of folks making the List that say they’ve liked it.  There’s over 300 people that vote, and films must get at least six votes to make the list.

133 THE IMITATION GAME
by Graham Moore
The story of British WWII cryptographer Alan Turing, who cracked the German Enigma code and later poisoned himself after being criminally prosecuted for being a homosexual..

59 CHEWIE
by Evan Susser, Van Robichaux
A satirical behind the scenes look at the making of Star Wars through the eyes of Peter Mayhew who played Chewbacca. [NOTE: because who doesn’t love Chewie?]

53 THE OUTSIDER
by Andrew Baldwin
In post World War II Japan, an American former prisoner-of-war rises in the yakuza.

30 MAGGIE
by John Scott 3
As a “walking dead” virus spreads across the country, a farm family helps their eldest daughter come to terms with her infection as she  slowly becomes a flesh-eating zombie. [NOTE: would work well with World War Z coming soon….]

28 THE END
by Aron Eli Coleite
Four people – a veteran broadcaster in London, a sixteen year old girl and her boyfriend in Ann Arbor, and a devoted family man in Shanghai – each try to make peace with their lives before an interstellar event ends the world in six hours.

27 BEYOND THE PALE
by Chad Feehan
Teenage siblings suspect they’ve been ripped off by the town undertaker, but what they discover is much more sinister than either imagined.

24 GRACE OF MONACO
by Arash Amel
Grace Kelly, age 33 and having given up her acting career to focus on being a full time princess, uses her political maneuvering behind the scenes to save Monaco while French Leader Charles de Gaulle and Monaco’s Prince Rainier III are at odds over the principality’s standing as a tax haven. [NOTE: OMG, Princess Grace! A biopic of her life is long overdue.]

24 HE’S FUCKIN’ PERFECT
by Lauryn Kahn
A social media savvy girl who is pessimistic about love finds the perfect guy and decides to use her internet research skills to turn herself into his perfect match.

17 BASTARDS
by Justin Malen
Two brothers, raised to believe their biological father died, find out their mother slept with many powerful and famous men in the 1970s, and the siblings hit the road to find their real father.

14 DJANGO UNCHAINED
by Quentin Tarantino
A freed slave named Django is trained as a bounty hunter by a German dentist named Schultz, and and the two men set out to find Django’s enslaved wife. [NOTE: Quentin?  My money’s on this one to definitely get a green light.]

13 SAVING MR. BANKS
by Kelly Marcel
The story of how Walt Disney got the rights for Mary Poppins. [NOTE: wait, there’s a backstory here?  I wanna know it!]

11 HIDDEN
by Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer
An elevated horror-thriller about a family hiding in a bomb shelter after escaping a mysterious outbreak. [NOTE: a creepier Take Shelter?  I’m in.]

10 TWO NIGHT STAND
by Mark Hammer
After an extremely regrettable one night stand, two strangers wake up to find themselves snowed in after sleeping through a blizzard that put all of Manhattan on ice. They’re now trapped together in a tiny apartment, forced to get to know each other way more than any one night stand should. [NOTE: this could be super-cute. And also a fun holiday movie for the chick-flick lovers. Like moi.]

9 THE LAST DROP
by Brandon Murphy, Phil Murphy
A fully functioning alcoholic meets the girl of his dreams and soon discovers that there’s a lot more at stake than love if he doesn’t clean up his act.

8 GASLIGHT
by Ian Fried
Secretly imprisoned in a London insane asylum, the infamous Jack the Ripper helps Scotland Yard investigators solve a series of grisly murders whose victims all share one thing in common: dual puncture wounds to the neck. [NOTE: Jack stepping into Hannibal Lecter’s backdoor info role?  Mmmmmm.]

7 SUBJECT ZERO
by Dave Cohen
A Frankenstein-like tale of a scientist who develops a powerful new drug that brings his son back to life after he dies in a terrible car accident. Unfortunately, the desperate experiment of a loving father leads to the creation of a flesh-eating zombie epidemic with horrific consequences. [NOTE: 28 Days of Pet Sematary? Could work.  Could definitely work.]

6 THE DUFF
by Josh Cagan
Adapted from Kody Keplinger’s novel THE DUFF, the travails of a seventeen year old girl who believes she is the “designated ugly fat friend.” [NOTE: this has the possibility to be the next Mean Girls; a teen flick that has a soul.  Really crossing my fingers for this one.]

The entire list — in .pdf form — can be found here.  So take a look, and if there’s something you’d love to see, shout it out!