10 Best Films Made From Black List Screenplays

Irish playwright turned Academy Award winning filmmaker Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges script first appeared on the Black List in 2006 and didn’t languish there too long before it was snapped up, filmed in just 12 weeks and released to critical and cult acclaim. Not bad considering it was McDonagh’s feature film debut.

Mining McDonagh’s theatrical background, the film takes inspiration from Harold Pinter’s play The Dumb Waiter which also focuses on two hitmen but features considerably less blood and swearing. Speaking of swearing, In Bruges is by no means the most profanity-laden film out there but does apparently contain an impressive 126 instances of the word ‘f*ck’ which equates to around 1.18 ‘f*cks’ per minute over its 107-minute runtime.

According to IMDB, there’s a few differences between the original script and the final cut including hitmen Ray and Ken originally being English and Ray surviving his wounds during the finale rather than his fate being left ambiguous.