The Tom Swift series of books began in the early 1900s, were created by Edward Stratemeyer. The series follows a boy genius through a series of science fictional adventures. In some of the early stories, Tom relies on his father and other adults, but in most of them, he's an independent teenager, inventing fantastic devices and having adventures on his own. But the movie pitch that Sonnenfeld is set to direct reimagines Tom as one half of a father-son team, who are the greatest inventors of all time.

The movie pitch, known as Swift, by Sonnenfeld and Ben David Grabinski, was competing with another version pitched by Albie Hecht (Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events), but now Hecht will produce the Sonnenfeld version, which Columbia Pictures has picked up.

It should be interesting to see if this movie takes off or not. It's got the campy appeal that fits in perfectly for a feel-good family movie. But we'll have to wait for more details. For now, Sonnenfeld is focused bringing another science fiction comedy to life, The How-To Guide for Saving the World.
[Variety]

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]