By V Renée · February 5, 2021
It’s awards seasons again and you know what that means.
A battle royale between the year’s best movies and TV shows to take home golden statues? No. I mean, yes…but no.
It means production studios are making screenplays available for download. I’m talking straight FYC bouillon, baby! And that’s good news for screenwriters looking to learn from the carefully crafted pages of master storytellers.
Here are 33 screenplays contending for award nominations, free and ready to download.
Click on the movie posters to see each title in the TSL Screenplay Library.
Note: Some screenplays are earlier drafts and don’t always reflect the final cut of the eventual films.
Lionsgate
Successful author Veronica Henley is finishing a book tour before she returns home to her husband and daughter. But a shocking turn of events is about to upend Veronica’s existence, plunging her into a horrifying reality that forces her to confront her past, present and future — before it’s too late.
Amazon Studios
Released from prison for bringing shame to his country, Kazakh funnyman Borat risks life and limb when he returns to America with his 15-year-old daughter.
Sony Classics
Kyle and Mike are best friends who share a close bond until Mike sleeps with Kyle’s fiancée. A tumultuous but enduring relationship between two men across many years of laughter, heartbreak and rage. It is also the story of real-life best friends who turn their profound connection into a rich, humane and frequently uproarious film about the boundaries in all close friendships.
Netflix (via Deadline Hollywood)
Four African American vets battle the forces of man and nature when they return to Vietnam seeking the remains of their fallen squad leader and the gold fortune he helped them hide.
Focus Features
Following the antics of a young woman, Emma Woodhouse, who lives in Georgian- and Regency-era England and occupies herself with matchmaking – in sometimes misguided, often meddlesome fashion- in the lives of her friends and family.
Sony Classics
A man refuses all assistance from his daughter as he ages. As he tries to make sense of his changing circumstances, he begins to doubt his loved ones, his own mind and even the fabric of his reality.
Sony Classics
A widowed New York socialite and her aimless son move to Paris after she spends the last of her husband’s inheritance.
Amazon Studios
Young mother Sandra escapes her abusive husband and fights back against a broken housing system. She sets out to build her own home and in the process rebuilds her life and rediscovers herself.
Sony Classics
Ambition and societal pressure propel an aspiring chef to leave his soulmate in Mexico and make the treacherous journey to New York, where life will never be the same.
Netflix
Full of misgivings, a young woman travels with her new boyfriend to his parents’ secluded farm.
Amazon Studios
A woman is forced to go on the run with her baby after her husband betrays his partners in crime.
Focus Features
Two con artists have spent 26 years training their only daughter to swindle, scam and steal at every turn. During a desperate and hastily conceived heist, they charm a stranger into joining them, only to have their entire world turned upside down.
Universal Pictures
A semi-autobiographical comedy-drama about Pete Davidson growing up in Staten Island, including losing his father during 9/11 and entering the world of stand up comedy.
Warner Bros.
Deputy Sheriff Joe “Deke” Deacon joins forces with Sgt. Jim Baxter to search for a serial killer who’s terrorizing Los Angeles. As they track the culprit, Baxter is unaware that the investigation is dredging up echoes of Deke’s past, uncovering disturbing secrets that could threaten more than his case.
Netflix
Tensions rise when trailblazing blues singer Ma Rainey and her band gather at a recording studio in Chicago in 1927.
Netflix
Smoldering tensions and painful revelations push a filmmaker and his girlfriend toward a romantic reckoning.
STX Films
A defense attorney, her associate and a military prosecutor uncover a far-reaching conspiracy while investigating the case of a suspected 9/11 terrorist imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for six years.
Focus Features
Faced with an unintended pregnancy and a lack of local support, Autumn and her cousin, Skylar, travel across state lines to New York City on a fraught journey of friendship, bravery and compassion.
Universal Pictures
Five years after the end of the Civil War, Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd crosses paths with a 10-year-old girl taken by the Kiowa people. Forced to return to her aunt and uncle, Kidd agrees to escort the child across the harsh and unforgiving plains of Texas. However, the long journey soon turns into a fight for survival as the traveling companions encounter danger at every turn — both human and natural.
A24
The story of a young mother who reconnects with her larger-than-life playboy father on an adventure through New York. In this comedy about aging, marriage, and the tenuous bond between parents and grown children, New York author and married mother-of-two Laura has become suspicious that her career-driven husband may be having an affair with a coworker, a speculation encouraged by her caddish, bon vivant father.
Amazon Studios
On the night of Feb. 25, 1964, in Miami, Cassius Clay joins Jim Brown, Sam Cooke and Malcom X, and they discuss the responsibility of being successful black men during the civil rights movement.
Pixar/Disney
Teenage elf brothers Ian and Barley embark on a magical quest to spend one more day with their late father. Like any good adventure, their journey is filled with cryptic maps, impossible obstacles and unimaginable discoveries. But when dear Mom finds out her sons are missing, she teams up with the legendary manticore to bring her beloved boys back home.
Amazon Studios
Stuck in a time loop, two wedding guests develop a budding romance while living the same day over and over again.
Apple TV+
After 12 years in prison, former high school football star Eddie Palmer returns home to put his life back together and forms an unlikely bond with Sam, an outcast boy from a troubled home. But Eddie’s past threatens to ruin his new life and family.
Fox Searchlight
The life of David Copperfield from childhood to maturity, with his own adventures and the web of friends and enemies he meets along his way.
Netflix
Down-on-their-luck Broadway stars shake up a small Indiana town as they rally behind a teen who wants to go to the prom with her girlfriend.
Universal Pictures
Nothing in Cassie’s life is what it appears to be — she’s wickedly smart, tantalizingly cunning, and she’s living a secret double life by night. Now, an unexpected encounter is about to give Cassie a chance to right the wrongs from the past.
Oscilloscope
After an abortion, a deadbeat nanny finds friendship with the 6-year-old she’s hired to watch.
Pixar/Disney
Ever wonder where your passion, your dreams and your interests come from? What is it that makes you… YOU? In 2020, Pixar Animation Studios takes you on a journey from the streets of New York City to the cosmic realms to discover the answers to life’s most important questions.
Amazon Studios
A heavy-metal drummer’s life is thrown into freefall when he begins to lose his hearing.
Warner Bros.
A secret agent is given a single word as his weapon and sent to prevent the onset of World War III. He must travel through time and bend the laws of nature in order to be successful in his mission.
DreamWorks Pictures
The film is based on the infamous 1969 trial of seven defendants charged by the federal government with conspiracy and more, arising from the countercultural protests in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The trial transfixed the nation and sparked a conversation about mayhem intended to undermine the U.S. government.
Netflix
A rich Indian family’s ambitious driver uses his wit and cunning to escape from poverty and rise to the top as an entrepreneur.
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