“I think we celebrate in this industry great scripts after they become great movies through our award system, which is inherently complex and political and commercial anyway,” screenwriter Julia Cox said of the work of writers last night on the Deadline X Black List 20th Celebration panel.
“So for there to be validation for the work as it exists, as a literary document, it’s not only validating to that script, but to our whole existence,” the acclaimed Nyad scribe added of the Franklin Leonard founded survey before an invite only crowd in Santa Monica.
The event came just hours after the 20th installment of the Black List was made public in the morning of December 10.
With her Love of Your Life script on the 2024 tally of the most like unproduced screenplays in town, the CAA and Project D Media repped Cox was joined on Tuesday’s panel by Leonard and back-to-back Black List topper Travis Braun, who was #1 with One Night Only this year and Bad Boy in 2023. As you can see in the video above the trio discussed the history of the Black List, the importance of writers, and the power of the word and the Black List stamp in the too often IP bound executive suites of Hollywood.
Founded in 2005 by former studio suit Leonard, the annual and expanding Black List has seen at least 450 scripts have been produced, grossing over $30 billion in box office worldwide. Black List movies have won 54 Academy Awards from 273 nominations, Since 2007, that’s included four Best Picture Oscars and 11 Best Screenplay Oscars.
The King’s Speech, Slumdog Millionaire, Argo and Spotlight were all Oscar best picture winners and they were all Black List screenplays before they were made into movies.
Taika Waititi’s 2020 Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar winner Jojo Rabbit and 2021 Best Original Screenplay winner Promising Young Woman were among the most recent standouts in an unique process that has provided critical and commercial success with some of the most original writing the industry has even see.
And, it continues.
Challengers by Justin Kuritzkes was a 2021 Black List script. The Luca Guadagnino directed and the Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Conner starring film scored a Golden Globe Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy nomination this week and is widely seen as a major awards contender.
“This is a place to celebrate the craft of screenwriting,” Braun told the crowd at last night’s panel near the end of an admittedly big day for him. “There’s, there’s an art form to …a good line, a good action line, that you’re like, this just tickles me, or this is so interesting,” the UTA and Echo Lake repped creator of Disney’s Pupstruction series added.
Having said that, even while rightly calling writing “the lifeblood of this business,” Leonard wasn’t wearing any rose-tinted glasses about the realities of the industry today, and how hard it has always been for new voices and diverse voices to get their scripts read, let alone made.
“The value of writers, I think, is sorely underappreciated in this industry, sort of on a moral standpoint, but also just on a purely economic one,” the BL founder pointed out. “If the industry invested more in writers and writing and the work that undergirds the entire system, we would get significantly better economic outcomes.”
“And I think that’s why the writers had to go on strike, and …it’s why that sort of one of the basic tenets of the Black List as a whole is we will all do better if we all begin to recognize the value of writers vis a vis the contributions that they actually make.”
Indeed.
Black List founder Franklin Leonard at the Deadline x The 2024 Black List Celebration on December 10, 2024.
Rich Polk
After last night’s panel on the roof of the Santa Monica Proper Hotel, there was a party downstairs for Black List writers, past, present and maybe future, with a few other well known faces and names in attendance too. – as you can see more of in our photo gallery.
As well the Santa Monica Proper Hotel, thanks to Johnnie Walker, our other partner for last night’s Deadline X Black List 20th Celebration.