THREAD: So. A little background on the #1 script on the 2020 Black List.

On August 13th, 2020, I got an email with the subject line: "Nicholl 2020 QF!"

It was from Sophie Dawson, about her script THE HEAD HUNTER. 1/

The email read:

"Hi John!

My dark comedy just made the quarterfinals of the 2020 Academy Nicholl Fellowships competition! Would you be interested in taking a look?

(cont'd) 2/

Title: THE HEAD HUNTER

Logline: A high-functioning cannibal selects his victims based on their Instagram popularity, but finds his habits shaken by a man who wants to be eaten.

Thanks so much for reading this email, enjoy your week!

Best,
Sophie" 3/

That logline sounded incredibly interesting to me. So I responded the next day saying so and sent over the Bellevue release form. Sophie filled it out and send over her script. 4/

I read Sophie's script over the weekend. It was AMAZING -- one of the funniest, darkest scripts I'd ever read.

Sophie is a wickedly funny, incredibly engaging writer and I could NOT put down her script. 5/

I shared it with my colleague Zack Zucker, who also loved it. We reach out to Sophie and set a Zoom with her ASAP. 6/

Zack and I really connected with Sophie on that Zoom. I asked Sophie why she'd queried me. She let me know that she'd seen someone speaking highly of my Twitter on screenwriting Reddit (possibly @ChrisParizo?) and had decided to check out my twitter feed. 7/

In fact, that was one of the reasons Sophie quickly signed with us -- she really enjoyed the approach to the industry I laid out on Twitter.

Which, honestly, with August being a rough month for me on Twitter, was very nice to hear! 8/

Sophie's script was already so good that Zack and I didn't have many notes. One of the only ones I had was to tweak the title -- get rid of "The" and make it one word:

HEADHUNTER

(As @IanShorr can attest, I love one-word titles!) 9/

THE SOCIAL NETWORK happens to be one of Sophie's favorite films so she was very much okay with me being so Sean Parker about this: 10/

We started slipping HEADHUNTER to a few tastemaker execs and well-connected assistants at the same time as we took it out to agents. We suspected that they would love it as much as we did and help build buzz for the script. 11/

This strategy was correct -- the script seemed to go a bit viral and emails and calls started to come in about it.

All of which led to six agencies meeting with Sophie about potentially representing her. She connected best with the team at WME and decided to sign with them. 12/

Together with Sophie's WME team, we took the script out as wide as we possibly could in September and October. We knew we had something great!

Lots of execs adored the script as we had and Sophie has been taking tons of general meetings. Building up her fanbase and network. 13/

All of which led to today's exciting news of HEADHUNTER being NUMBER ONE ON THE 2020 BLACK LIST!!!

So proud and excited for Sophie!!! When we first started talking, Sophie's dream was simply to be on the annual Black List.

Topping it? Wow. 14/

Sophie and I celebrated today and she gave me her blessing to walk through our journey. It's nearly four months to the day since she sent me that query email. 15/

She particularly wanted me to make it clear that you don't have to write something down the middle, something familiar, something "everyone will like" to be on the Black List.

You don't even have to write a biopic (though I do love a good biopic!) 16/

Sophie can only write the stories that she's passionate about, that she's bursting to tell. And that's what she did.

She wrote the script that she wanted to read, the movie that she wanted to see. And the good news is, she wasn't alone in that. 17/

And I'm so lucky that she reached out to me. That we're working together and have had this success to date.

And hopefully, so much more to come!!!! END