The Black List is “an annual survey of [300] Hollywood executives’ favourite unproduced screenplays". According to Deadline, “since its inception by feature development executive Franklin Leonard the survey has yielded north of 400 Black List scripts. Of that batch, those produced continued on to earn $26B+ at the global box office in addition to 53 Academy Awards from 262 nominations, including four of the last 10 Best Picture Oscars and 10 of the last 22 Best Screenplay Oscars”. The Black List 2018 was announced in December and this year, Elissa Karasik’s Frat Boy Genius came in at #1. It tells the semi-fictional story of a woman who used to work at Snapchat and now it’s being made into a series that’s being compared to The Social Network and Mark Zuckerberg with a “deeply unflattering portrayal of Evan Spiegel, the app's 28-year-old founder” who is now, as you know, married to Miranda Kerr.
The Hollywood Reporter published a synopsis of the project on Friday that includes a physical assessment of Evan from the script’s stage direction, describing him as "a surprisingly not-totally-unattractive combination of thin lips, hooked nose and butt chin."
This is gossip. Because gossip is storytelling. They’ll call it something else – something to “class” it up, give it more gravitas, like an interrogation of the intersection between privilege and tech – but for those of us not ashamed of gossip, we can see it for what it is: informative, insightful, confrontational, and also delicious. There’s a celebrity angle.
Per THR about the screenplay:
Some mileage is gotten, too, out of Spiegel's tabloid-friendly dating life, including his brief romantic entanglement with Taylor Swift. During a text exchange, the singer writes, "Hamptons? ;)" to which Spiegel responds, "Want to be straight with you, I don't have time for a relationship rn :(."
"Feel free to write a song ;)" he adds, eliciting a "F-ck you, Evan" from the pop star.
And you know why that’s especially interesting to me? Because in January 2014, I reported exclusively that Taylor and Evan were dealing with each other – which her publicist then denied at the time. You can revisit that post here (thanks R!). I wonder if that part of the script going to make it into the final product or whether or not Taylor’s people are going to shut it down. I mean, I hope not. She’s not the one who looks like an asshole.
