GLAAD AND THE BLACK LIST ANNOUNCE FINALISTS FOR FOURTH GLAAD LIST

Ten promising unmade feature film scripts tell compelling and authentic LGBTQ stories

October 28, 2024, Los Angeles – GLAAD, the world’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) media advocacy organization, and The Black List, the unique platform dedicated to identifying and celebrating exceptional storytelling, have selected ten outstanding scripts for the fourth edition of The GLAAD List, a list of the most promising unmade LGBTQ-inclusive scripts in Hollywood that have been hosted on blcklst.com.

These ten screenplays represent the kind of bold storytelling and inclusive LBGTQ depictions that GLAAD would like to see produced on big and small screens. Each of these projects show tremendous promise, and both The Black List and GLAAD have faith that these projects can both entertain audiences and change hearts and minds around the world. More information from GLAAD may be found here.

In addition to their deeply meaningful storytelling, the ten unmade film projects featured on the 2024 GLAAD List contain complex LGBTQ protagonists and speak to the multitude of diverse and unique experiences within the LGBTQ community. The GLAAD List is the longest running Black List diversity list, and was first launched at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019.

“The scripts on the 2024 GLAAD List are compelling and entertaining stories of LGBTQ people that have rarely been seen onscreen. As shown by recent box office and critical successes, audiences and critics are demanding to see more inclusive stories while a small group of loud anti-LGBTQ activists try and repeatedly fail to create ‘backlash’ against them,” said GLAAD President & CEO Sarah Kate Ellis. “To the studios, networks, and production companies looking for fresh, intersectional stories that will break through, The GLAAD List is the place to find them. From period dramas to gripping sci-fi to coming-of-age narratives to stories that defy categorization, these scripts reflect the breadth and depth of the LGBTQ community and the unique perspectives we bring to every genre.”

“Yet again, The GLAAD List has produced an incredible collection of widely diverse scripts, by genre and beyond,” said Black List founder Franklin Leonard. “No surprise given that it’s The Black List’s original partnership of this sort. It continues to be an absolute joy to work with GLAAD to do this every year.”

A full list of the 2024 GLAAD List titles and loglines may be found below.

ACIDS by Tamar Feinkind
In 1982 New York, a closeted lesbian doctor battles her trauma and societal stigma when she invites a pregnant AIDS patient into her home, forging a powerful, transformative bond.

CHASING TAILLIGHTS by Harrison Hamm
After their star-crossed one-night stand, a trans Filipina truck driver and a professional ‘lot lizard’ find their parallel courses of life mysteriously redirected when a surreal mid-July snowstorm falls on the New Mexico desert.

DUJA by Ambar Riat
Perpetually drowning in a sea of normies, a Punjabi-American named Bhagat navigates a second coming-of-age as a transgender adult. When he begins dating a charismatic young woman named Gigi, Bhagat learns that forming vulnerable and intimate bonds with himself and others will pave the path to his higher self.

JULIET by Jen Richards
Diana is a lifelong theater techie, but when she transfers schools to finish her senior year, gets cast as the lead of Romeo & Juliet, and falls for her costar, she learns that a great performance will require her to be her fullest self, and that stepping from the wings into the spotlight is all the harder when you’re a trans girl trying to live an ordinary life.

OFFSIDE by Natalie Cutler
An uneducated coal miner plays for the most famous football team in Britain. But when the FA realizes her relationship with a female can be used as a weapon to put women ‘back in their place’, Lily Parr must make a choice. Football? Or the freedom to love?

QURAN CAMP by Samah Meghjee
At a summer camp for Muslim tweens, shy and nerdy Tanveer doesn’t expect to find a crush – especially not one who’s her bunkmate.

SUMMER 58 by Estephan Khattar
Amid another crisis in Lebanon, a closeted, young man must embody masculinity to be casting a film. To do so, he forms an unusual bond with a militia fighter who becomes his unlikely mentor. Together, they embark on a transformative journey, exploring their masculinity and sexual identity, all against a backdrop of a scorching Mediterranean summer.

WHEELS COME OFF by Kryzz Gautier
In the year 2065, a fiery teenager with a wild imagination, her paraplegic mom, and their clueless robot struggle to navigate the post-apocalypse; but when the mother’s wheelchair breaks, the trio must venture out into the dangerous outside for a chance to survive.

WINGBOY by Grace Mei Ng
Fifteen years ago, Singaporean children began to be born with a wide range of feathered mutations. Despite these children being shunned, Adam, a Filipino-Chinese boy, decides to help a wingboy learn how to fly – therefore going on a journey that helps Adam embrace his whole self.

WOODSIDE by Gerard Shaka
While struggling to cope with an abusive father and a conflicted mother, a misunderstood, queer Bahamian teen discovers self-love through his experiences replanting mangroves with a marine conservationist.

Several writers on this year’s GLAAD List have also received additional industry accolades for their work.

Tamar Feinkind was the 2023 Sloan x Black List fellow and an alum of the Black List and Women in Film’s Feature Residency. Kryzz Gautier is an alum of Sundance Institute and Women in Film’s 2021 Financing Intensive and The Black List and Women in Film’s 2020 Episodic Lab; WHEELS COME OFF also was featured on the 2021 Black List. Jen Richards is an actor, activist, producer and writer who has been a featured performer in “Mayfair Witches,” “Nashville,” “Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen,” and more and was Emmy-nominated for her webseries, “Her Story.” Samah Meghjee is a current participant in the Geffen Writers’ Room and her GLAAD List project QURAN CAMP was also featured on MUBI/WScripted’s Cannes Screenplay List. Estephan Khattar’s SUMMER 58 received a grant from Kone Foundation and is the first LGBTQ Lebanese film. Grace Mei Ng was the 2023-2024 Jack Nicholson Writing Scholar at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. Gerard Shaka’s WOODSIDE was chosen for the 2022 Museum of the Moving Image Sloan Student Discovery Prize.

Of the 40 scripts named to the first three GLAAD Lists, four have been released as feature films:

• ANYTHING’S POSSIBLE by Ximena Garcia Lecuona (fka What If?) premiered on Prime Video in July 2022 and stars Eva Reign, Abubakr Ali, and Renee Elise Goldsberry.
• BEFORE I CHANGE MY MIND by Trevor Anderson & Fish Griwkowsky premiered at the Locarno Film Festival in August 2022, and was distributed theatrically in the US in March 2024. The film stars Vaughan Murrae, Matthew Rankin, and Dominic Lippa.
• KNOCK AT THE CABIN by Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman (fka The Cabin at the End of the World) was released theatrically in February 2023 and stars Ben Aldridge and Jonathan Groff.
• THREE MONTHS by Jared Frieder premiered on Paramount+ in February 2022 and stars Troye Sivan, Viveik Kaira, and Ellen Burstyn.

Four additional GLAAD List scripts have been filmed as proof-of-concept short films (see below), and another 13 scripts are in development at production companies.

• BLUE BOY by Nik Dodani
• FRAUD by Dana Aliya Levinson
• IN THE CITY OF SHY HUNTERS by Sam McConnell
• MARGO & PERRY by Becca Roth

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About The Black List:
The Black List is a platform dedicated to identifying and celebrating exceptional storytelling. First established in 2005 as an annual survey of Hollywood’s most-liked unproduced screenplays, The Black List has since grown into a comprehensive resource for the film, TV, publishing, and theater worlds, serving thousands of writers, agents, managers, showrunners, producers, financiers, directors, actors, and theater industry professionals.

More than 400 scripts from the annual Black List survey have been produced, grossing over $28B in worldwide box offices. Films produced from those Black List scripts have won four Best Picture Oscars and 12 Best Screenplay Oscars since 2007. A Harvard Business school study found that “Black-Listed scripts were twice as likely to be made into films…They also did better at theaters, with movies of the same budget generating 90% more revenue at the box office.”

In October 2012, The Black List launched a unique online community to cater to the needs of screenwriters, creatives, and industry professionals. Since its inception, it has hosted more than 100,000 scripts and provided more than 130,000 script evaluations. Among the films produced: NAACP Award-nominated MR MALCOLM’S LIST, Independent Spirit Award-nominated THE NOVICE, and Golden Globe-nominated NIGHTINGALE, starring David Oyelowo. The Black List also supports various programs for writers–including mentorships, production funds, and direct financial grants–in collaboration with its sponsors.

In September 2024, The Black List announced its expansion into fiction. This launch allowed fiction writers to use blcklst.com to create a free profile that showcases their completed novels regardless of publication status, purchase professional feedback from The Black List’s experienced readers, and submit their manuscripts to various fiction-specific programs. As a longstanding advocate for increasing access and visibility for screenplays in Hollywood, The Black List aims to bring the same clarity and connectivity to the publishing industry, linking it with the film and television industries and writers around the world.

More information on The Black List is available at www.blcklst.com. For regular updates, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Letterboxd, and Youtube.