New York University’s annual list of the best production-ready screenplays, inspired by The Black List from Trisch School of the Arts graduate film students and recent alumni, has been revealed for 2024. The four selected screenplays are Blue Comedy by Vincent Lee Accettola, Little Phnom Penh by Chheangkea, Rubber Hut by Hanna Gray Organschi, and Satoshi by Sara Crow and David Rafailedes, chosen based on a blind reading by industry insiders.
Blue Comedy follows a famous comedian who recently came out of the closet and moves to Boston to mentor a straight comedian whom he begins to develop feelings for. Little Phnom Penh centers on a woman as she comes to terms with her desires and changing family roles. The screenplay spans over two decades across the U.S. and Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime. Rubber Hut follows a former Pam Am stewardess who opens a drive-thru condom shop in her Italian Catholic Rhode Island town in 1992. Satoshi is the “potentially true” story about the founder of Bitcoin.
The Purple List is in its 13th year. Previous honorees include Chloé Zhao (Nomadland), Shaka King (Judas and the Black Messiah), Cathy Yan (Succession, Birds of Prey), Desiree Akhavan (Appropriate Behavior) and Laurel Parmet (The Starling Girl).
It was announced Wednesday that 2022 Purple List alum Nicholas Colia’s Griffin in Summer starring Everett Blunck, Melanie Lynskey, Owen Teague, and Kathryn Newton would receive its world premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Festival.
Founded by alumni Ashim Bhalla and Shandor Garrison and faculty member John Tintori, more than 15 scripts from past lists have gone into production.
More information about each of this year’s screenplays, provided by the Purple List team, follows.
BLUE COMEDY by Vincent Lee Accettola – DRAMATIC COMEDY
A recently uncloseted celebrity comedian returns to the Boston stand-up scene to mentor an aspiring straight comic for whom he’s hastily developed feelings.
LITTLE PHNOM PENH by Chheangkea – DRAMA
Spanning two ever-changing decades and continents following the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, a Cambodian woman in Phnom Penh grapples with her own deep personal desires and her evolving familial roles as a hopeful daughter, a watchful wife, and eventually, a single mother in America.
RUBBER HUT by Hanna Gray Organschi – COMEDIC DRAMA
Rhode Island, 1992. An entrepreneurial ex-Pan Am stewardess opens a drive-thru condom shop in her Italian Catholic town. Overnight, Emanuella DelVecchio becomes the local lightning rod, a radical hero to the neighborhood teens and an unlikely threat to her tight-knit community.
SATOSHI by Sara Crow & David Rafailedes – COMEDY
The potentially true story of a teenage anime-obsessed hacktivist who, after losing her scholarship to Stanford, returns home to Arizona to become the mysterious inventor of a new digital currency called Bitcoin.
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