Planet Money

Hollywood's Black List (Classic)

Feb 22, 2023

Franklin Leonard, a film executive and the founder of The Black List, discusses his journey from a junior executive to transforming Hollywood's script selection process. He reveals how a simple spreadsheet and an anonymous email address helped him unveil exceptional screenplays hidden among thousands of mediocre ones. Leonard delves into the challenges of finding diverse voices in the industry, the impact of The Black List on Hollywood's power dynamics, and how it has celebrated promising talents and reshaped the narrative landscape.

23:07

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Episode guests

Franklin Leonard

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Episode notes

Intro

2min

Navigating Hollywood's Script Selection Challenge

2min

The Quest for Unseen Scripts in Hollywood

2min

Navigating the Hollywood Script Maze

9min

Consequences of Fame: The Impact of the Hollywood Blacklist

2min

The Blacklist's Hollywood Impact

7min

This episode originally ran in 2020.

In 2005, Franklin Leonard was a junior executive at Leonardo DiCaprio's production company. A big part of his job was to find great scripts. The only thing — most of the 50,000-some scripts registered with the Writers Guild of America every year aren't that great. Franklin was drowning in bad scripts ... So to help find the handful that will become the movies that change our lives, he needed a better way forward.

Today on the show — how a math-loving movie nerd used a spreadsheet and an anonymous Hotmail address to solve one of Hollywood's most fundamental problems: picking winners from a sea of garbage. And, along the way, he may just have reinvented Hollywood's power structure.

This episode was produced by James Sneed and Darian Woods, and edited by Bryant Urstadt, Karen Duffin and Robert Smith.

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