The Black List | |
---|---|
Created | 2004 |
Location | blcklst |
Author(s) | Franklin Leonard |
Purpose | Ranking of top unproduced screenplays |
The Black List is an annual survey of the "most-liked" motion picture screenplays not yet produced. It has been published every year since 2005 on the second Friday of December by Franklin Leonard, a development executive who subsequently worked at Universal Pictures [1] and Will Smith's Overbrook Entertainment. [2] [3] [4] The website states that these are not necessarily "the best" screenplays, but rather "the most liked", since it is based on a survey of studio and production company executives. [5]
Of the more than 1,000 screenplays The Black List has included since 2005, at least 440 have been produced as theatrical films, [6] including Argo , [7] American Hustle , Juno , [1] The King's Speech , Slumdog Millionaire , [8] Spotlight , [9] The Revenant , The Descendants , and Hell or High Water . The produced films have together grossed over $30 billion, [9] and been nominated for 241 Academy Awards and 205 Golden Globe Awards, winning 50 [10] and 40 respectively. As of the 92nd Academy Awards, four of the last 10 Academy Awards for Best Picture went to scripts featured on a previous Black List, as well as 12 of the last 20 screenwriting Oscars (Original and Adapted Screenplays). [11] Additionally, writers whose scripts are listed often find that they are more readily hired for other jobs, even if their listed screenplays still have not been produced, such as Jim Rash and Nat Faxon, two of the writers of the screenplay for The Descendants , who had an earlier screenplay make the list. [3] Slate columnist David Haglund has written that the list's reputation as a champion for "beloved but challenging" works has been overstated, since "these are screenplays that are already making the Hollywood rounds. And while, as a rule, they have not yet been produced, many of them are already in production." [12]
The first Black List was compiled in 2005 by Franklin Leonard, at the time working as a development executive for Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way Productions. He emailed about 75 fellow development executives and asked them to name the ten best unproduced screenplays they read that year. [13] To thank them for participating, he compiled the list and sent it to the respondents. The name The Black List was a nod to his heritage as an African American man, and also as a reference to the writers who were barred during the McCarthy era as part of the Hollywood blacklist. [14]
The screenplays to top The Black List, from 2005 to 2023 respectively, are: Things We Lost in the Fire ; The Brigands of Rattleborge; Recount ; The Beaver ; The Muppet Man ; College Republicans; The Imitation Game ; Draft Day ; Holland, Michigan ; Catherine the Great; Bubbles; Blond Ambition; Ruin; Frat Boy Genius; Move On; Headhunter; Cauliflower; Pure; and Bad Boy.
On January 27, 2019, at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, it was announced that the LGBT media advocacy group GLAAD had partnered with The Black List to create The GLAAD List, a new curated list of the most promising unmade LGBT-inclusive scripts in Hollywood. [15]
The Black List tallies the number of "likes" various screenplays are given by development executives, and then ranks them accordingly. The most-liked screenplay is The Imitation Game, which topped the list in 2011 with 133 likes; it went on to win the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 87th Academy Awards in 2015. [16]
More than 440 screenplays have been put into production after appearing on The Black List. [11] These include:
(120/286 screenplays produced)
(40/87 screenplays produced)
(56/130 screenplays produced)
(39/105 screenplays produced) [18]
(41/97 screenplays produced) [19]
(44/76 screenplays produced) [20]
(28/71 screenplays produced) [8] [21]
(28/78 films have been put into production; 27 completed, 1 in production)
(19/72 films have been put into production; 18 completed, 1 in production) [22]
(17/70 screenplays produced) [23]
(20/81 screenplays produced) [24]
(20/73 films have been put into production; 19 completed, 1 in production) [25]
(15/76 films have been put into production; 14 completed, 1 in production [26] )
(9/73 screenplays produced) [27]
(10/66 screenplays have been put into production; 9 completed, 1 in production) [28]
(16/80 screenplays have been put into production; 11 completed, 5 in production) [29]
(6/73 screenplays have been put into production; 5 completed, 1 in production) [11]
(0/74 screenplays have been put into production) [30]
(0/76 screenplays have been put into production) [31]
Danny Strong is an American actor, screenwriter, director, and producer. As an actor, Strong is best known for his roles as Jonathan Levinson in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doyle McMaster in Gilmore Girls and Danny Siegel in Mad Men. He also wrote the screenplays for Recount, the HBO adaptation Game Change, Lee Daniels' The Butler, and co-wrote the two-part finale of The Hunger Games film trilogy, Mockingjay – Part 1 and Mockingjay – Part 2. Strong also is a co-creator, executive producer, director, and writer for the Fox series Empire and created, wrote and directed the award-winning Hulu miniseries Dopesick.
Charles Stuart Kaufman is an American screenwriter, film director, and novelist. He wrote the films Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). He both wrote and directed the films Synecdoche, New York (2008), Anomalisa (2015), and I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020). In 2020, Kaufman released his first novel, Antkind.
Frank Árpád Darabont is an American screenwriter, director and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and a Golden Globe Award. In his early career, he was primarily a screenwriter for such horror films as A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), The Blob (1988) and The Fly II (1989). As a director, he is known for his film adaptations of Stephen King novellas and novels, such as The Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Green Mile (1999), and The Mist (2007).
Wentworth Earl Miller III is an American-British actor and screenwriter. He rose to prominence following his starring role as Michael Scofield in the Fox series Prison Break, for which he received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama in 2005. He made his screenwriting debut with the 2013 thriller film Stoker. In 2014, he began playing Leonard Snart / Captain Cold in a recurring role on The CW series The Flash before becoming a series regular on the spin-off, Legends of Tomorrow.
Jesse David Armstrong is a British screenwriter and producer. He is known for writing for a string of several critically acclaimed British comedy series as well as satirical dramas. He has received numerous accolades including a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and seven Primetime Emmy Awards as well as a nomination for an Academy Award.
Joseph Wright is an English film director. His motion pictures include the literary adaptations of Pride & Prejudice (2005), Atonement (2007), Anna Karenina (2012), and Cyrano (2021), the action thriller Hanna (2011), the Peter Pan origin story Pan (2015), and the Darkest Hour (2017), a political drama following Winston Churchill during World War II nominated for Best Picture.
Dark Horse Entertainment is a motion picture and television production arm of American comic book publishing company Dark Horse Comics, founded in 1992. They also have a sub-label, Dark Horse Indie. They have their headquarters in Milwaukie, Oregon.
Chris LaMont is an American screenwriter, independent filmmaker, and film professor, who co-founded the Phoenix Film Festival in 2000. He has written and co-written several feature films, including The Locksmith and Hard Kill. He has also produced and directed several independent films, Netherbeast Incorporated, and The Graves.
Joseph Hillström King, better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American writer. His work includes the novels Heart-Shaped Box (2007), Horns (2010), NOS4A2 (2013), and The Fireman (2016); the short story collections 20th Century Ghosts (2005) and Strange Weather (2017); and the comic book series Locke & Key (2008–2013). He has won awards including Bram Stoker Awards, British Fantasy Awards, and an Eisner Award.
The Austin Film Critics Association (AFCA) is an organization of professional film critics from Austin, Texas.
Jon Spaihts is an American screenwriter and author. He is best known for co-writing Denis Villeneuve's Dune (2021) and its sequel Dune: Part Two (2024), both films based on the novel of the same name by Frank Herbert. He also wrote the screenplays for the films Prometheus (2012), Passengers (2016) and Doctor Strange (2016). For his work on Dune, Spaihts was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Max Borenstein is an American screenwriter. He is best known as the creator of the MonsterVerse film series featuring classic Kaiju of Toho's Godzilla mythos, including writing Godzilla, Godzilla: Awakening and Kong: Skull Island (2017), and contributing to the story of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) and Godzilla vs. Kong (2021). In 2022, he co-created the sports drama series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty on HBO.
Zach Dean is an American screenwriter and film producer, best known for writing the films Deadfall, The Tomorrow War and Fast X.