The Black List launching web site to track hot scripts in real time
Film exec Franklin Leonard has helped spotlight hundreds of talented screenwriters and unproduced scripts with the Black List. There have been 125 screenplays turned into movies, 20 Oscars and roughly $10 billion in worldwide grosses. Now Leonard is taking the list online and will track popular scripts in real time, according to Deadline.
Here is a description of the site:
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.
The site will not be open to the general public. Verified membership will be expanded to include agents, managers, directors, actors, and writers who will rate scripts according to what they like best. The verified subscription format is designed to prevent data manipulation. The site will focus only on the positive and not the negative, there will be no“worst of” category. The goal is to more effectively pinpoint great screenplays with creative and profit potential as well as attract major talent.
The site has tapped a pair of bloggers to write 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).
The Black List started in 2004 and is 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."
Here are some of the scripts that have been helped by The Black List:
- Diablo Cody’s Juno
- Nancy Oliver’s Lars And The Real Girl
- Scott Neustader’s and Michael Weber’s 500 Days Of Summer
What are your thoughts?