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Three Aussies – Paul and Ben China and Natasha Pincus – make Hollywood list of top unmade scripts

Two Australian-based brothers have had their script acknowledged on Hollywood’s Blacklist, an annual list of the top scripts circulating Hollywood.

The film, Sweet Virginia, written by twins Paul and Ben China, received 26 mentions on the list.

The Black List is compiled by film executive Franklin Leonard and made up of suggestions from over 290 film executives putting forward their top 10 films. Any film that received more than six mentions was included on the list.

Sweet Virginia is about a former rodeo star who begins a friendship with a young man responsible for a spat of violence in the small town.

Paul and Ben previously wrote and directed Crawl, a short film compared to the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple and No Country for Old Men.

Also on the list is Australian Natasha Pincus, for her script Clive. Pincus directed Gotye’s mammothly successful break-out video ‘Somebody That I Used to know’. Her script Fell, directed by Kasimir Burgess, received funding from Screen Australia yesterday.

Clive received 19 mentions. The synopsis reads: “After an accident causes a successful CEO to lose both legs, he is forced to re-evaluate his life and identity.”

Both the China brothers and Pincus are Represented by agency Verve.

In the past, scripts that made the list such as Diablo Cody’s Juno and Michael Weber’s 500 Days of Summer were subsequently made.

New Zealand’s Taika Waititi, writer director of 2010’s Boy as well as 2007’s Eagle Vs Shark received 12 mentions for film Jojo Rabbit. The film is set during WWII and is about a German boy who, after being hurt by a grenade at Hitler youth camp discovers his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their house.

Waititi was also one of the writers, alongside Blue Tongue Collective’s Nash Edgerton and Spencer Susser on short film The Captain, selected for Sundance.

Another film to appear on the list is A Country of Strangers by American writer Sean Armstrong. The film was second on the list receiving 43 mentions. It’s based on true events, about three siblings taken from an Australian beach in 1966 and the forty year search undertaken by inspector Geoff Harper.

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