EXCLUSIVE: The Women’s List on Friday unveiled finalists for its 2026 Scripts List, highlighting the year’s best unproduced scripts penned by women spanning feature films and hourlong and half-hour TV pilots across multiple genres.
Organizers said the list was curated to showcase originality, strong characters and cinematic potential, featuring dynamic female roles the industry wants and needs.
This is the third edition of the list, which in past incarnations has led to multiple script options for its alums along with meetings and script-read requests from agents, managers and actresses, and companies including the Obamas’ Higher Ground and Abigail Disney’s Level Forward.
This year’s list has generated response from the likes of Taylor Sheridan’s Bosque Ranch, Sony’s Screen Gems, Big Moody Curve, Gracie Otto’s Ralf Films and more, organizers said. Loglines and topics from this year’s crop range from Taylor Swift fans to anti-Nazi resistance fighters, the Voyager I mission and an Ozempic horror movie.
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“Every year this list gets sharper and more surprising,” The Women’s List co-founder Jan Kimbrough said. “These 2026 finalists prove that women are writing the stories audiences are actually craving right now, across every genre and format.”
Kimbrough is chair of a board that includes fellow co-founder Mia Certic, Christine Luby, Lisa Seidman and Sharon Soboil.
Check out the finalists and script descriptions below.
Alone – Feature – Ana Mendez
In a post-apocalyptic wilderness, a woman separated from her husband fights to defend her safe haven from a mysterious stranger who threatens not only her shelter, but her reality.
Balloons – Feature – Nikki Braendlin
A reluctant friendship with two endearing misfits ultimately forces a reclusive parking enforcement officer to confront his obsession with death and the guilt that accompanies it.
Betty Lee Is Missing – One Hour – Allyson Morgan
A small town is thrown into crisis when sweet, unassuming teenager Betty Lee goes missing on prom night – and then returns, three days later, as a 36-year-old woman.
Bible Quiz – ½ Hour – Margaret Borchert and Geneva Willis
Tasked with elevating the profile of the “sport” Bible Quiz, an underdog team of girls seek glory, God, and gold (medals). But these girls are only human and the road to Nationals is paved with temptations like boys, booze, and banned books.
Bright Belt – Feature – Don Angelica Silva
Post emancipation, a fierce young matriarch and her idealistic brother fight to sustain their family’s prosperous tobacco farm as ambition, loss, and nature itself sow the seeds of a new kind of freedom ready to bloom into a cultural evolution.
Deep and Dark – Feature – Jennifer Grand
A disillusioned college student visiting relatives in a remote cabin over winter break must survive a home invasion by desperate criminals who believe her unassuming uncle runs a dark web operation and holds the keys to millions in cryptocurrency.
Everybody Knows – Feature – Rangeley Wallace
After her mom’s unexpected death, a materialistic law student returns home, discovers a shocking truth about her mother’s past and joins a local reporter to investigate a ruthless climate change cover-up that may be behind her death.
Exodus – One Hour – Leslie Borchert
On the lam from U.S. government operatives, an ex-con engineer joins a team of interplanetary smugglers in hopes of reuniting with her family on the Mars – only to uncover a deadly conspiracy that shatters the idyllic façade of life on the Red Planet.
Fania In the Forest – One Hour – Lisa Kenner Grissom
After the Nazi invasion of 1939 Vilna scatters her family, a fearless Jewish teenage girl fights to join a group of male-only forest resistance fighters—only to learn that her recklessness may threaten the safety and mission of the entire brigade.
Filthy – Feature – Lisa Cole
When her born-again mother transplants her from California to Bible Belt Arkansas, a 13-year-old girl must survive poverty, predation, and religious hypocrisy before finding the courage to save herself.
Giants Among Us – Feature – Elba Roman Morales
After his family is fractured by loss, a rigid father is pulled into his young son’s imaginative world and must learn to love in a language he was never taught or risk losing him forever.
Giles vs. Harris – Feature – Melanie Jeffcoat
An ambitious black janitor in 1902 Alabama, stripped of his right to vote, partners with a hot-tempered black attorney from NYC in a historic legal battle pitting this unlikely duo directly against established political white supremacy and the KKK.
Ghosting – Feature – Micheline Auger
Ghosting is a psychological horror about a successful ghostwriter who retreats to a remote cabin to write her first novel—only to discover that to reclaim her voice, she must confront the past she’s been running from or risk losing herself entirely.
Hungry Woman – Feature – Tricia Lee
When her Ozempic drug is recalled, a restrained bride-to-be fights her awakening suppressed hunger and starts to crave flesh.
Hush, My Darling – Feature – Meagan Fulps
Set within the hyper-competitive world of elite girls’ basketball, Hush, My Darling is a psychosexual drama following a mother who gets dangerously entangled with her teenage daughter’s AAU coach. Inspired by a true story.
I Met the Devil – Feature – Rachel Coomes
Accused of witchcraft during the Scottish witch hunts in 1662, Isobel Gowdie spins an elaborate confession to stave off her execution. Inspired by true events.
Last Call – One Hour – Jelena Woehr
A cantankerous bartender with an eerie gift and a spiritually aware detective solve murders—with the help of the victims.
Latecomer – 1/2 Hour – Alex Rubin
When a late-night host is fired over politics, she decides to change those politics herself by running for governor.
Liberty Library – ½ hour – Carmen Angelica
Liberty Library is a mockumentary following a group of community-driven librarians determined to help despite dealing with attacks from the left, right and general bureaucracy.
My Last Skirt – Feature – Stephanie Sanditz
An Irish orphan fleeing poverty reinvents herself and joins the Union Army as a man, becoming a decorated Civil War hero and possibly the first woman to vote in America until a devastating secret threatens to erase everything she/he fought for.
North Brother Island – Feature – Kimberly McLeod
A pathologist crippled with anxiety is sent to an island to investigate toxic metal poisoning, only to find himself trapped in the island’s haunted past and must escape before he becomes its next quarantine victim. Inspired by true events.
Nuts – Feature – Sara Friedman
After the accidental death of her one-night stand, a young therapist becomes entangled with his grieving family and finds herself drawn to his charismatic half-brother.
Public Way – ½ Hour – Marty Johnson
A hard-living New England townie becomes an unlikely activist when a powerful outsider moves to town and attempts to block the locals from accessing an oceanfront path.
Rhythm Girls – One Hour – Judy Chaikin
The true story of an all-girl band of Black teen-age girls from Mississippi and their struggles to rise to the top of the white male dominated music world in the 1940’s.
Ricky Baby – Feature – Chelsea Gonzalez
Ricky, a man with Down syndrome, discovers a passion for dance after falling head over heels for Joe, a handsome subway performer. When the two team up to earn a living, Ricky’s feelings for Joe have a major ripple effect on both their lives.
See Jane Fight – Feature – Jill Morley
The daughter of a fallen female kickboxing champion must confront the emotional trauma caused by her mother in order to achieve her dream of becoming a professional MMA fighter.
Shucked – 1/2 Hour – Jana Peck
A single mother inadvertently destroys a cash smuggling ring then flees to her native Prince Edward Island where her past – and the smugglers – await. To stay alive, she must set up a whole new smuggling network in the only world she knows – oysters.
Sisters of Industry – Feature – Kryssa Schemmerling and Jodi Gibson
In a New England mill town, a runaway farm wife assumes a new identity to escape her abusive past—but as brutal labor conditions and ghostly apparitions converge, she’s drawn into a deadly secret society of factory girls bent on vengeance.
The Slemmon Sisters – One Hour – Siobhan Gilbert
Two Irish sisters from rural Clare—one desperate to escape her sibling’s shadow, the other struggling to live up to everyone’s expectations—must navigate their fractured relationship when they both make Ireland’s first professional women’s rugby team.
The Sacrifice – One Hour – Jo Budzilowicz
Accused of murdering her high-school boyfriend in a modern-day witch hunt, Stella Moore fled home. Twenty-five years later, she’s drawn back—to a town of secrets, lost magic, and a production of Macbeth that awakens something long buried.
Strange Chapel – One Hour – Austin Highsmith Garces
Children in Strange Chapel, LA begin to vanish into thin air, and the mystery of their disappearance opens the door to parallel universes and a world of problems for the town.
The Swiftie Struggle – Feature – Danielle Bruncati
When two devoted Taylor Swift fans get shut out of the Eras Tour presale, their desperate attempts to secure tickets force them to confront their deepest fears about friendship, loss, and growing up.
Taku Dogs – One Hour – Sarah Sprague
An indigenous Search and Rescue K-9 handler races to rescue a series of abducted victims from an increasingly violent kidnapper while trying to mend her relationship with her estranged big sister.
Thunderbird – Feature – Jacky Watson
A Native Alaskan marine biologist believes a prehistoric creature holds the key to curing all genetic disease. When she runs across a sunken Cold War submarine, she discovers the truth behind a secret mission and the truth about the creature itself.
Total Smut – Feature – Frances Denny
When a washed-up romance novelist is forced to team up with a bestselling romantasy writer or risk financial ruin (and worse: irrelevance) secrets are uncovered that risk overturning both of their lives.
Triangle – Feature – Akiva Penaloza
A clever Jewish immigrant must conceal a forbidden love, outwit factory abusers, and survive the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire to reach her American dream.
Voyager – CS Fischer
When Voyager I starts sending back gibberish, it seems like the end for the veteran spacecraft. But when one of the team recognizes a pattern in the gibberish, they realize there may be something out there trying to make contact.
Weather or Not – Feature – Suzanne Johnson
A small Midwestern town in the ‘60s is rocked by scandal when a young girl inadvertently tells her brother the truth about their enigmatic boarder and in the process learns the importance of standing up for what she believes in.
Woman Hollering – Feature – Lindsey Villareal
An abandoned girl in South Texas transforms into a half-owl, half-witch called La Lechuza.
