A man discovers a handbook on stopping an alien invasion. Another man learns his blog is a future religion. Just two of the unproduced movie ideas Hollywood execs pronounced among the world's best.

The Black List, a list of the year's best unproduced movie screenplays based on a poll of 250 film execs, is a fascinating look inside the movie companies' massive slush pile. Every year about this time, a list of dozens of scripts, with tantalizing descriptions, comes out. To get on the list, a script must have won praise from at least four execs.

The most popular unproduced script this year isn't science fiction — I think. It's called The Beaver written by Kyle Killen, and it's a film about a depressed man who gets hope from a beaver puppet on his hand.

Then there's this, which actually has been made into a 2009 film starring Milla Jovovich:

THE FOURTH KIND by Olatunde Osunsanmi. "A fact-based thriller involving an ongoing unsolved mystery in Alaska, where one town has seen an extraordinary number of unexplained disappearances during the past 40 years and there are accusations of a federal cover-up. Milla plays a woman investigating the disappearances in the town."

That screenplay won 11 mentions from execs.

Nine execs thought this seemed like a great movie (and I agree):

JONNY QUEST by Dan Mazeau
“Young Jonny Quest travels the world with his scientist father, adopted brother from India, Bandit the bulldog, and a government agent assigned to protect them while they investigate scientific mysteries.”

Eight execs were as eager to see this Brian K. Vaughan project as I am:

ROUNDTABLE by Brian K Vaughan
“In modern day, Merlin attempts to assemble a bunch of knights to battle an ancient evil.”

Five execs were intrigued by this weird-sounding project:

WHAT WOULD KENNY DO? by Chris Baldi
“A seventeen-year-old high school kid meets a ‘hologram’ of himself at thirty-seven-years-old and benefits from their friendship.”

Four execs were stoked about this project, which we've already blogged about:

BOBISM by Ben Wexler
“A shy college student discovers that life in one thousand years will be based on his blog — and he has to stop aliens from the future who want him dead.”

And four execs were thrilled by this one:

THE HOW-TO GUIDE FOR SAVING THE WORLD by BenDavid Grabinski
“A loser discovers a book on how to stop an alien invasion and is thrust into action to stop a real one.”

[NYMag.com]

Send an email to Charlie Jane Anders, the author of this post, at charliejane@io9.com.