Hollywood is littered with great un-produced scripts.

David Peoples, the Oscar nominated screenwriter of 1992's "Unforgiven" and Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic "Blade Runner," should know. Upon receiving the Austin Film Festival's Distinguished Screenwriter Award this year, the veteran writer spoke to Speakeasy about the half a dozen projects that he and his wife, co-screenwriter Janet Peoples, have floating around Tinseltown.

One of their most recent talked-about movies was a remake of "The Prisoner," the cult 1960s British sci-fi TV series, which was to be directed by blockbuster filmmaker Christopher Nolan ("Inception"). "We did a draft that we were very pleased with and another draft closer to what Chris wanted to do," said Peoples, "but when Chris departed, we didn't have a clear direction of where to go." With a hint of facetiousness, he added, "Now I'm sure it's thriving with other writers."

Last year, the Peoples worked on a rewrite for Warner Bros of a project that Peoples had originally written in the early '90s called "Time is Money," a futuristic story about a society where people can live longer if they acquire a currency called "time." "Our title was 'Joint Account,' which we think is much better, but we're just the writers," quipped Peoples. "What do we know?"

If Peoples' three decades in the industry make him sound a little jaded, it's simply "the nature of the business," he said. "There is a frustration in seeing something you wrote made worse," he explained of the Hollywood process of going out to other writers for rewrites and polishes. "Sometimes, you do it yourself: you get paid to make your own work worse. But it's also a frustration when someone comes in and improves your work, because it's a blow to your ego."