10 Worst Films Adapted From Black List Screenplays
From the Black List to the bad kind of blacklisted.
In 2005, studio executive Franklin Leonard created the Black List – an annual survey released each December featuring the most liked unproduced screenplays as voted for by almost 100 fellow film executives. Twelve years after its founding, the yearly announcement of the Black List has become one of the most anticipated events in the Hollywood calendar.
Over the years, it’s featured some brilliant screenplays that went on to be made into equally brilliant films. In fact, it’s spawned over 250 Oscar nominated films and a further 48 winners including Best Picture victors like Spotlight and Slumdog Millionaire.
But on the flipside, the Black List has also spawned plenty of stinkers too. Maybe we can’t place the blame entirely on Black List voters or original scriptwriters for the terrible films that came to be, though.
After all, a movie can go through infinite changes from start to finish that enthusiastic executives and screenwriters can’t be held entirely accountable for and some of the worst movies to make it off the Black List and into reality undoubtedly suffered from bad direction and misguided script rewrites. On the other hand, some sounded pretty bad on paper from the beginning.
Whoever is to blame for the way these movies turned out, one thing is for sure – they really should’ve stayed on the Black List.
10. Clash Of The Titans
If ever there was a movie that proved fancy CGI can’t make
up for an otherwise mind-numbingly bad film, it’s Louis Leterrier’s 2010 Clash
of the Titans remake. It’s been called an ‘affectionate remake’ by some but if
the degree to which the remake deviates from both the original 1981 movie and
the Greek mythology that inspired it, scriptwriter Travis Beacham’s affections
must be fickle.
Perhaps its unimaginative tagline ‘Titans will clash’, which is basically the title slightly reworded, should’ve been an indication of what to expect because behind all the CGI and 3D shizzle Clash of the Titans is really just one hundred-odd minutes of cheesy dialogue and stilted acting, topped off with an anti-climactic appearance of the most legendary of all mythical sea monsters, the Kraken.
Stick to Desmond Davis’s original. The then ground-breaking effects might look dated and quaint, but it is a fun watch – something the remake could never claim to be.