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January 5 is National Screenwriters Day, and in honor of this important day the Script Hive has voted for our favorite Movies and Television Shows of 2021! Below we’ve got our top 5 for each category. If you haven’t already, be sure to join the community to get access to many of these scripts, as well as 16,000 others!
Voting Process
Each member of the server is able to rank their top 5 movies & tv shows for the year. A vote for 5th place is worth 1 point; a vote for 1st place is worth 5 points. All the points are added up and that determines the ranking of each movie.
Without further ado!
Top 5 Movies of 2021
5. Licorice Pizza – 23 Points
Paul Thomas Anderson returns with this slice of 70’s California nostalgia, a coming of age story set in the valley. Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim star as two people trying to figure out themselves, and each other.
4. Pig – 31 Points
Nicolas Cage stars in Michael Sarnoski’s revenge thriller deconstruction about a hermit who goes looking for his stolen truffle pig in the Portland restaurant scene.
3. The Green Knight – 37 Points
Sir Gawain & The Green Knight gets the big screen adaptation, written and directed by David Lowery, with Dev Patel as a knight in search of glory in the waning days of Camelot.
2. Spider-Man: No Way Home – 46 Points
The biggest hit of 2021, Spider-Man (Tom Holland) returns in the immediate aftermath of his previous entry as he tries to undo the damage of his unmasking only to make things much, much worse as faces from 20 years of spider-movies make an appearance. Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers also return for writing duties.
1. Dune – 73 Points
Denis Villeneuve does the impossible and brings the book Dune (or at least its first half), the epic sci-fi story of political intrigue, colonialism and messiahs, to the big screen with Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides. Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, and Eric Roth all received writing credits on the script.
Best TV Shows of 2021
5. Ted Lasso – 33 Points
Ted is back! After the team is removed from the league, can they make their way back? And more importantly, will they all keep growing as people? Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly, BIll Lawrence and Jason Sudeikis all share lead credits.
4. Loki – 35 Points
Disney+ came out swinging this year with four Marvel tv shows, but the only one to make the top 5 was Loki, with Tom Hiddleston returning as the sly trickster as he attempts to fix the timeline – or at least not get erased from existence. Michael Waldron created and was head writer for the show.
3. Squid Game – 36 Points
The show everyone was talking about, Squid Game offers an updated spin on the “game of death” format as a bevy of South Korean people, each with their own reason for needing the money, compete against in each other in deadly children’s games. Hwang Dong-hyuk created, wrote, and directed every episode.
2. Midnight Mass – 38 Points
Mike Flanagan takes a break from his string of haunted house adaptations to turn his gaze towards an original, Stephen King-esque meditation on guilt, faith, and absolution on a remote fishing village. Oh, and there’s a monster running around too.
1. Succession – 71 Points
As caustic as ever, Succession season 3 saw the Roys again at each other’s throats, fighting for control, no matter who gets in their way. Jesse Armstrong created and showruns.
The Data
We received 50 votes, with a total of 659 points distributed across 76 movies and 528 points across 58 tv shows (not every ballot filled out all 5 spots). 33 of those 76 movies got at least 6 points and cleared the threshold to be ranked; just 22 of the 58 shows did the same.
We’ve published the full breakdown so you can see how all entries stacked up. And let us know in the comments what your favorites were!