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 approximately 1,000 screenplays The Black List has included since 2005, nearly a third have been produced as theatrical films, including Argo,[6] American Hustle, Juno,[1] The King's Speech, Slumdog Millionaire,[7] Spotlight, The Revenant, The Descendants, and Hell or High Water. The produced films have together grossed over $25billion, and been nominated for 241 Academy Awards and 205 Golden Globe Awards, winning 48 and 40 respectively.[8] As of the 92nd Academy Awards, three of the last 10 best picture Oscars went to scripts featured on a previous Black List, as well as nine of the last 20 screenwriting Oscars [Original and Adapted Screenplays]. 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."[9]
On January 27, 2019, at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, it was announced that the LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD had partnered with The Black List to create The GLAAD List, a new curated list of the most promising unmade LGBTQ-inclusive scripts in Hollywood.[10]