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EXCLUSIVE: Film executive Franklin Leonard has maintained The Black List for the past six years to champion hundreds of talented screenwriters and unproduced scripts. Well over 125 screenplays have been made into movies, and they’re responsible for 20 Oscars and roughly $10 billion in worldwide grosses. Today Leonard expands The Black List by launching a website that tracks Hollywood’s most popular scripts in real time. Blcklst.com bases its info on polling hundreds of high level studio and production company executives who are directly involved in moviemaking. The subscriber-only web site ($20 a month) will expand the pool of movie professionals to include agents and directors who will identify the scripts they like best. Blcklst.com algorithms will sort them by a number of criteria: most popular, and most popular dramas or comedies of the past week, month or whatever. For example, on Tuesday night, I broke news of the sale to Warner Bros of The Imitation Game about math genius Alan Turing. It has been the most popular available new script among several hundred beta-test users of Blcklst.com over the past couple of months.
One thing, though, Leonard’s website will not be open to the general public, however. Verified membership will be expanded to include agents, managers, directors, actors, and writers who will rate scripts according to what they like best. Additionally, the verified subscription format is designed to prevent data manipulation. Interestingly, there will be no “worst of” categories. (Gee where’s the fun if there’s no trashing or bashing?) The parameters are strictly based on what members like best and why. Leonard hopes the site will expand on what The Black List has already accomplished and help make the movie market more effective by pinpointing great screenplays with creative and profit potential as well as attract major talent.
In addition, The Black List has brought in a pair of bloggers under the blog.blcklst.com umbrella, Scott Myers at gointothestory (now gointothestory.blcklst.com) and Xander Bennett at Screenwriting Tips… You Hack (now screenwritingtips.blcklst.com). Bennett’s book based on his blog of the same name went on sale today from Focal Press.
For the uninitiated, The Black List is Leonard’s hot unproduced screenplay pecking order which he began in 2004 and compiled every year from the suggestions of hundreds of film executives, who each contributes the names of up to ten of their favorite scripts that were written in, or are somehow uniquely associated with, that calendar year and will not be released in theaters that calendar year, either. The Black List catapults dozens of scripts into production and screenwriters out of oblivion. Diablo Cody’s Juno, Nancy Oliver’s Lars And The Real Girl, Scott Neustader’s and Michael Weber’s 500 Days Of Summer, are just some of the screenplays which appeared on The Black List and then were made. I’ve noticed that it’s also a “big dick” measuring contest for the Hollywood agencies and their motion picture lit departments. Problem is, some screenwriters think this list isn’t on the up-and-up and accuse junior studio execs and assistants along with self-interested agents and managers of getting together to push their own clients on projects even if already abandoned.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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I cant wait to see how this is co-opted and corrupted by managers and agencies like the original black list was. They’ll end up gaming the system somehow…
That was my first thought.
Franklin Leonard is a baller. I live by Xander’s You Hack website.
Baller EXTRAORDINAIRE! Love him!
If Franklin were a baller he’d be in Deadline for selling his clients’ scripts not for expanding the tired Black list concept. Yawn. Everyonwe knows the Blacklist is like professional wrestling. Rigged.
He’s an executive, not a rep, dummy. If you don’t know, don’t talk.
This list has hurt infinitely more writers than it has helped. It’s a popularity contest based on where you’re repped and how many favors can be corralled by that rep. Yes there are some good scripts on the list but there are hundreds just as good that never get a chance.
Dude, shut up. There are also scripts towards the bottom that should be near the top, and vice versa. And those are people on the list.
“Problem is, some screenwriters think this list isn’t on the up-and-up and accuse junior studio execs and assistants along with self-interested agents and managers of getting together to push their own clients on projects even if already abandoned.”
Never heard that from a screenwriter, but there are plenty of execs who don’t contribute to the Black List anymore for this very reason. The first time I read one of those, “I remember you liking this script earlier in the year and just wanted to remind you that Black List voting is now…” etc. e-mails from a manager, I stopped paying attention.
It’s always great to find a new way to bring talented artists to the attention of the people making decisions. I have always been a fan of the blacklist, but I also know that like anything else, it can be manipulated (Hollywood). I really hope that the blacklist doesn’t become a “Trending” tool for green lighting a film. People seem to green light films more on marketing department data then the creative strengths of the project or that it might actually be entertaining (Blasphemy, I know). There are a lot of really talented people out there (Writers, directors, producers, actors, executives, etc.). I just hope this doesn’t increase the removal of the human factor of film (IE someone reading a script and actually fighting to get it made, because they believe in it and think it might be entertaining). In short, I hope I am wrong on this one but my gut is telling me otherwise.
Like anything else, The Black List has now jumped the shark. Waste of time fellow screenwriters.
Wait: now Franklin profits off the work of writers without their permission or offers of remuneration?
I applaud Franklin for trying to squeeze every last drop of juice out of the Black List. At first it was a really cool idea, but I think this may be going too far. There was something in the novel honesty of it all at the start. “Hey, here are the scripts us development and creative execs like….take it or leave it”. But the continued politicization of the selection process and now the monetization of this website have kind of robbed him and the list of that. What will be created is a new “Academy”, membership and all, only this time it’ll be composed of D-Girls and Boys, with the role of Harvey “the badger” Weinstein to be played by Agents and Managers. People will sign up I’m sure simply to watch the results like a Stock Market ticker. But similar to Wall St, the ups and downs in the “buzz” and rankings will be filled with immeasurable amounts of b.s. and undoubtedly riddled by questionable practices and even more faulty results.
I agree, but I still think the list has value.
I would like to see a sortable Black List, where you just see original scripts.
Well said
$20 a month to get a top 5 of unproduced, unavailable scripts? No thanks.
And one more point – what’s equally odd is the horrible journalism/fact-checking that seems to plague anyone covering the Black List. How has not one story noted that every example they give of scripts “catapulted into production” were heading there before they were on the Black List, often a redundant list of things that have already been accepted by the community. Anointing “The Social Network” after it was cast up and moving towards production?
How does another tracking list (one that’s hugely influenced by agents and managers) help writers?
what is a “baller?”
Franklin rocks! Genius move
As my friend said: “Great, I’m looking for more lists not to be on.”
How the hell can the Blacklist be considered legit when the greatest screenwrter of our era, Craig Mazin, has not made one appearance on said Blacklist? Ask yourselves that.
I don’t know Craig Mazin’s assistant. Why don’t you tell us how great your boss is who wrote all the crappy Scary Movie sequels as well as the sequel to Hangover that got universally panned by the critics.
Pretty sure you missed Roanoke’s sarcasm.
$20 a month? Including agents? F that.
Why wasn’t ScriptShadow/Christopher Eads asked to be part of this group of bloggers?
I agree. Carson at ScriptShadow is a tireless bad ass. He’s got the goods, man.
Christopher Eads is despised by the few people who know him. John August, Craig Mazin, and every name writer with a blog has crucified him. He takes scripts and reviews them, ironic because he’s a complete failure — not as a writer, but as a human.
He was on a canceled reality show on the WB about his h.s. Guess who his character was labeled as? “The Misfit.” He’s a rich kid who couldn’t spin a good start in life into anything beyond teaching some tennis lessons in California. Sure your parents are proud, Chris.
Nobody takes that guy seriously. He’s just a wannabe screenwriter with a blog, and insiders know his opinions aren’t worth anything except to other wannabe screenwriters.
Franklin isn’t a rep, dummy, he’s an executive.
Where would Franklin rank on a list of the hottest executives in town?
Right at the top, baby.
Out of curiosity, who is Franklin Leonard? I cant seem to find any films he has produced, wrote, or directed. So is he a studio executive or a former executive who does this full time now? And are the votes anonymous? So is this a list of the best scripts in town voted on by anonymous people that is complied by a person who has not made a movie? And this is taken seriously and this list is important in the community? I hope this does not come off as critical, I’m just curious as to the qualifications of the people who vote on this list and are responsible for it.
Franklin Leonard was an exec at Universal, until they killed his family. They thought they’d killed him, too, but he survived, and hid out learning the secrets of the ninja so that he could take his vengeance…and now he’s back, and they will know his name is DEATH–
Wait, sorry, that sounds like a blacklist script. He IS a former exec with Universal. Met him a couple of times, good guy.
Not be mean (there is too much of that on here)– but to be clear, Franklin is not a producer. He is an executive who has been making the rounds from one company to the next for years. He plays the role of outsider but is really just another tool who has devised a way to make himself known in Hollywood. A bit of a poseur. As so many are. But the system, which has jr execs and agents and managers voting for scripts they are buying or clients they rep, is by definition rigged. It’s become another exclusive insider list. Sadly.
I’m always curious who the folks are who have never worked for a day in the business and comment on this site.
He’s a very well regarded executive. He was at Appian Way (DiCaprio) Director of Development at Universal now he’s a vp at Overbrook, Will Smith’s company. He’s a very, very, smart guy.
I like the Black List, I like what it has done to shine a light on writers and give them a bit of star power. However, I think that the expansion has limited value. As a rep, I don’t need to pay to know about unavailable material that someone else owns making it’s way through the process. Maybe different for other people, I’ll be curious to see how it develops.
I think the original idea of The Black List was out of a genuine one; to find unknown scripts and bring them forth into the light.
This idea though, like anything that’s around Hollywood long enough, was eventually going to become corrupted.
And so it began with agents, reps, etc, pushing scripts which were already in production as way to add further heat onto a project (Social Network being a shining example)
The fact that a David Fincher attached to direct-already cast-and written by Aaron Sorkin script was on The Black List, was the ultimate example of how far the original good intentions of The Black List had fallen. From trying to pull unknown writers from the depths, it had now come full circle to rub it in their faces by reminding them of where they were, and until they were established, of where they would remain: The bottom.
But, hey. The original idea, whilst now polluted, was indeed a good one.
Great. Even MORE groupthink. Just what Hollywood needs.
Last years list had scripts that were already in production. Why? I thought this was a list of UNPRODUCED scripts. All the scripts had producers attached.