The Black List – how one email changed Hollywood

In many ways, the origin story of how the Black List – the annual round-up of the most liked unpublished scripts in Hollywood – is almost as exciting as the films it has helped bring to life.

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Rebecca Cope

6 days ago

Picture the scene. It’s 2005, and Franklin Leonard, pictured below, a development executive in his mid-20s, is just starting out in his career in film. He’s starry-eyed and idealistic about the projects ahead, especially since he’s landed a job at Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company, Appian Way.

Leonard’s job was to find great stories that could make their way to the big screen. But there was a problem: despite receiving thousands of scripts from the Writers Guild of America, the majority of them just weren’t very good.

The email that changed everything

Franklin Leonard, 2023 Vanity Fair Oscar Party

Film and TV producer Franklin Leonard is a cultural commentator, and entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of the Black List

Getty Images for Vanity Fair

Frustrated, he decided to send an anonymous email to 75 industry contacts to ask them for their 10 favourite unproduced scripts from that year. When he received their replies, he decided to put them into a spreadsheet and then, as a thanks for their participation, shared the results, as the very first Black List. The name was inspired by those who had been blacklisted during the infamous McCarthy era in Hollywood, when communist-leaning directors were barred from working.

The reaction was instant. Without realising it, Leonard had solved one of Hollywood’s biggest problems: how to find good films in the sea of screenplays in circulation (hence the name of his popular 2019 TED talk, How I Accidentally Changed The Way Movies Get Made).

From that first list, 121 films were developed and released, including the 2006 classics Little Miss Sunshine, Blood Diamond and The Prestige.

From spreadsheet to blockbuster

One of the biggest success stories to to come out of the Black List is 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire, starring Dev Patel

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Since its launch, the annual list has seen 400 films greenlit, 50 Academy Awards won, 40 Golden Globes awarded, and over $30 billion (£23 billion) in box office revenue.

It works by polling key industry insiders, mostly development executives, about their favourite unpublished screenplays, awarding each one point. From there, the list is ordered, with the top film being the most popular.

Some of the biggest hits to come out of it include Slumdog Millionaire (2008) starring Dev Patel, pictured above, The King’s Speech (2010), Argo (2012) and The Revenant (2015). More recently, it pushed Promising Young Woman (2020), main image, and Challengers (2024) to the forefront.

The most popular script so far on The Black List is The Imitation Game (2014), which topped the 2011 list with 133 likes and won Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars.

The Black List has also been credited with launching the careers of countless writers, directors and actors, who might otherwise have toiled without industry contacts or agents for years. In fact, just having a screenplay on the list – even if it doesn’t get picked up – offers enough cachet to see you recruited for another job.

The films you didn’t know came from the Black List

From the first Black List, 121 films were developed and released, including 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine

Eric Lee/THA/Shutterstock

So, based on the 2024 Black List, what films could we look forward to seeing soon?

Among the 83 listed scripts were stories about everything from a couple who discover they’ve accidentally joined a cult (How To Save A Marriage), the real-life story of the lawyers seeking justice for botched breast implant patients (Bust), and a crime caper in IKEA (Assembly Required).

The most popular script was One Night Only, whose author, Travis Braun, also wrote the number one script from 2023, Bad Boy. One Night Only’s premise sounds like a comedy version of The Purge: “two strangers scrambling to find someone to sleep with on the one night of the year when premarital sex is legal.”

Coming soon: this year’s most anticipated Black List scripts

A previous Black List entry, Ballerina, starring Ana de Armas, hits UK cinemas in June

Larry D. Horricks/Lionsgate

Meanwhile, there are a slew of films coming to the big screen this year which appeared on previous Black Lists.

Out in September, A Big, Bold, Beautiful Journey – a romantic fantasy starring Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell as strangers who embark on a journey based on where Farrell’s GPS tells them to go – is perhaps the most highly-anticipated. Then there’s the latest in the John Wick universe, Ballerina, in which Ana de Armas is a ballerina with a serious grudge, pictured above.

You can also currently stream The Gorge, starring Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy as snipers sent to guard a vast and deeply mysterious gorge, on Apple TV+.