By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

BLACK LIST GRANTS HOLLYWOOD ACCESS TO ASPIRING SCREENWRITERS

Posted Monday, October 15th, 2012 - Comments Off on BLACK LIST GRANTS HOLLYWOOD ACCESS TO ASPIRING SCREENWRITERS
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 ANNUAL “BEST OF” LIST NOW HOSTS AMATEUR SCREENPLAYS, RECOMMENDS “BEST OF” TO OVER 1,000 INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS 

LOS ANGELES (October 15, 2012) – Hollywood’s annual list of most liked screenplays has expanded beyond Hollywood’s hallowed halls. The Black List founder Franklin Leonard and co-founder/CTO Dino Sijamic announced today the launch of a paid service that allows any screenwriter, amateur or professional, to upload their script to The Black List’s database, have it evaluated by professional script readers, and depending on its evaluation(s), have it read by as many as 1,000 film industry professionals currently a part of its membership site. The Black List’s home on the web is http://www.blcklst.com

“For years people have been asking me how to get their scripts to Hollywood. Short of endless rounds of unanswered query letters and screenplay competitions that may, in the best case scenario, attract the notice of a few people, I never had a good answer,” said Leonard. “We built this to provide one.  It’s essentially a screenplay competition with rolling admission, as many prizes as there are good scripts, and instead of a check, you may be rewarded with a career as a professional screenwriter. But it’s also more than that: we’re delivering the best scripts directly to the hundreds of people who can help get them bought and made.”

Leonard and Sijamic described this new service as consistent with their mission of heralding great screenwriting in order to help moviemakers find great scripts to make.  “We have an iron-clad ‘do no harm’ policy.  A script’s evaluation will only be made public if a writer wishes to make it so.  Moreover, the only time an industry professional’s attention will be drawn to a script is if it’s been evaluated positively or if our algorithm believes they personally will like it,” added Leonard.

Aspiring screenwriters will pay $25 a month to have their scripts hosted on The Black List’s website, accessible only by a closed community of Hollywood professionals.  They can further pay $50 for evaluations by anonymous script readers hired by The Black List.  Every read by industry professionals generated by those evaluations is entirely free.

Moreover, The Black List will not claim a commission, finder’s fee, or producer credit on business generated by their service. “Writers retain all rights to sell and produce their work and are free to negotiate the best deal they can get. All we ask is an email letting us know of their success,” added Leonard.

Over 200 scripts that have appeared on the annual Black List of most liked unproduced scripts have been produced and released for the domestic market, making over $16BN in worldwide box office and earning 148 Academy Award-nominations and 25 victories, including two of the last four best pictures (THE KING’S SPEECH and SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE) and five of the last ten screenwriting Oscars.  Among The Black List projects part of awards contention this year include ARGO, DJANGO UNCHAINED, THE IMPOSSIBLE, and LOOPER.

THE BLACK LIST

Over the last seven years, the Black List has become one of Hollywood’s primary arbiters of taste in material.  The Black List started as a survey of several dozen executives’ favorite unproduced scripts, the 2011 edition surveyed over 300 executives, over 60% of Hollywood’s studio system’s executive corps.

The Black List, run by founder Franklin Leonard and CTO Dino Sijamic, now includes the annual list of most liked unproduced screenplays, the membership community and “real time Black List,” and the Black List blog, home of Scott Myers’s “Go Into the Story” and Xander Bennett’s “Screenwriting Tips… You Hack,” two of the premier and best-trafficked screenwriting blogs online.

Over 200 Black List scripts have been produced as films grossing over $16 billion in worldwide box office.  Black List scripts have won 25 Academy Awards – including the last two of the last four Best Pictures (SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and THE KING’S SPEECH) and five of the last eight screenwriting awards (JUNO, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, THE KING’S SPEECH, THE SOCIAL NETWORK, and THE DESCENDANTS) – from 148 nominations.  It is also solely responsible for tens of thousands of yearly introductions of Hollywood actors, directors, producers, and financiers to new material and writers they were heretofore unaware of.

Other notable Black List scripts include 21, 3:10 TO YUMA, 500 DAYS OF SUMMER, ADVENTURELAND, BABEL, BLACK SNAKE MOAN, CEDAR RAPIDS, CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR, DIVING BELL & THE BUTTERFLY, DUE DATE, EASY A, FANBOYS, FROST/NIXON, HANNA, IN BRUGES, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, INVCITUS, JUNO, LARS AND THE REAL GIRL, NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST, NO STRINGS ATTACHED, ORPHAN, RECOUNT, RENDITION, SALT, SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD, THE SOURCE CODE, STATE OF PLAY, SUPERBAD, THE BLIND SIDE, THE BUCKET LIST, THE FIGHTER, THE HANGOVER, THE IDES OF MARCH, THE KITE RUNNER, THE QUEEN, THE TOWN, THE WRESTLER, THERE WILL BE BLOOD, UP IN THE AIR, WE ARE MARSHALL, and ZOMBIELAND.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon