101 Greatest Screenplays of the 21st Century (*so far)

If it bleeds, it leads, and it led Dan Gilroy to create an amoral TV news stringer whose study of the business combines with his ambition to horrific, successful ends. As Gilroy said in Film Comment, the script clicked into place when he stopped trying to write a heroic lead and created an antihero instead. “What I found fascinating about the antihero is that he makes the world bend around him. He doesn’t change. He forces other characters to do things that they normally wouldn’t do…. They expose the world in a way that I don’t think you have the opportunity to do with heroes.”

READ: The wild Nightcrawler ride of Dan Gilroy.