How I accidentally changed the way movies get made

How does Hollywood choose what stories get told on-screen? Too often, it's groupthink informed by a narrow set of ideas about what sells at the box office. As a producer, Franklin Leonard saw too many great screenplays never get made because they didn't fit the mold. So he started the Black List, an anonymous email that shared his favorite screenplays and asked: Why aren't we making these movies? Learn the origin story of some of your favorite films with this fascinating insider view of the movie business.

This weekend,

tens of millions of people
in the United States

and tens of millions more
around the world,

in Columbus, Georgia, in Cardiff, Wales,

in Chongqing, China, in Chennai, India

will leave their homes,

they'll get in their cars
or they'll take public transportation

or they will carry themselves by foot,

and they'll step into a room

and sit down next to someone
they don't know

or maybe someone they do,

and the lights will go down
and they'll watch a movie.

They'll watch movies
about aliens or robots,

or robot aliens or regular people.

But they will all be movies
about what it means to be human.

Millions will feel awe or fear,

millions will laugh and millions will cry.

And then the lights will come back on,

and they'll reemerge into the world
they knew several hours prior.

And millions of people
will look at the world

a little bit differently
than they did when they went in.

Like going to temple
or a mosque or a church,

or any other religious institution,

movie-going is, in many ways,
a sacred ritual.

Repeated week after week after week.

I'll be there this weekend,

just like I was on most weekends
between the years of 1996 and 1990,

at the multiplex, near the shopping mall

about five miles from my childhood home
in Columbus, Georgia.

The funny thing is
that somewhere between then and now,

I accidentally changed
part of the conversation

about which of those movies get made.

So, the story actually begins in 2005,
in an office high above Sunset Boulevard,

where I was a junior executive

at Leonardo DiCaprio's
production company Appian Way.

And for those of you who aren't familiar
with how the film industry works,

it basically means that I was
one of a few people behind the person

who produces the movie for the people
behind and in front of the camera,

whose names you will better
recognize than mine.

Essentially, you're an assistant movie
producer who does the unglamorous work

that goes into the creative aspect
of producing a movie.

You make lists of writers
and directors and actors

who might be right for movies
that you want to will into existence;

you meet with many of them
and their representatives,

hoping to curry favor
for some future date.

And you read, a lot.

You read novels that might become movies,

you read comic books
that might become movies,

you read articles
that might become movies,

you read scripts that might become movies.

And you read scripts from writers
that might write the adaptations

of the novels, of the comic books,
of the articles,

and might rewrite the scripts
that you're already working on.

All this in the hope of finding
the next big thing

or the next big writer
who can deliver something

that can make you and your company
the next big thing.

So in 2005, I was a development executive
at Leonardo's production company.

I got a phone call
from the representative of a screenwriter

that began pretty much the way
all of those conversations did:

"I've got Leo's next movie."

Now in this movie,
that his client had written,

Leo would play an oil industry lobbyist

whose girlfriend, a local meteorologist,
threatens to leave him

because his work contributes
to global warming.

And this is a situation
that's been brought to a head

by the fact that there's a hurricane
forming in the Atlantic

that's threatening to do Maria-like damage
from Maine to Myrtle Beach.

Leo, very sad about
this impending break up,

does a little more research
about the hurricane

and discovers that in its path
across the Atlantic,

it will pass over a long-dormant,
though now active volcano

that will spew toxic ash into its eye

that will presumably be whipped
into some sort of chemical weapon

that will destroy the world.

(Laughter)

It was at that point that I asked him,

"So are you basically pitching me
'Leo versus the toxic superstorm

that will destroy humanity?'"

And he responded by saying,

"Well, when you say it like that,
it sounds ridiculous."

And I'm embarrassed to admit
that I had the guy send me the script,

and I read 30 pages before I was sure
that it was as bad as I thought it was.

Now, "Superstorm"
is certainly an extreme example,

but it's also not an unusual one.

And unfortunately, most scripts
aren't as easy to dismiss as that one.

For example, a comedy
about a high school senior,

who, when faced
with an unplanned pregnancy,

makes an unusual decision
regarding her unborn child.

That's obviously "Juno."

Two hundred and thirty million
at the worldwide box office,

four Oscar nominations, one win.

How about a Mumbai teen
who grew up in the slums

wants to become a contestant
on the Indian version

of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?"?

That's an easy one --
"Slumdog Millionaire."

Three hundred seventy-seven
million worldwide,

10 Oscar nominations and eight wins.

A chimpanzee tells his story

of living with the legendary pop star
Michael Jackson.

Anyone?

(Laughter)

It's a trick question.

But it is a script called "Bubbles,"

that is going to be directed
by Taika Waititi,

the director of "Thor: Ragnarok."

So, a large part of your job
as a development executive

is to separate the "Superstorms"
from the "Slumdog Millionaires,"

and slightly more generally,
the writers who write "Superstorm"

from the writers who can write
"Slumdog Millionaire."

And the easiest way to do this, obviously,
is to read all of the scripts,

but that's, frankly, impossible.

A good rule of thumb
is that the Writers Guild of America

registers about 50,000 new pieces
of material every year,

and most of them are screenplays.

Of those, a reasonable estimate
is about 5,000 of them

make it through various filters,
agencies, management companies,

screenplay compositions and the like,

and are read by someone
at the production company

or major studio level.

And they're trying to decide
whether they can become

one of the 300-and-dropping movies
that are released by the major studios

or their sub-brands each year.

I've described it before

as being a little bit like walking
into a members-only bookstore

where the entire inventory
is just organized haphazardly,

and every book has the same,
nondescript cover.

Your job is to enter that bookstore

and not come back until you've found
the best and most profitable books there.

It's anarchic and gleefully opaque.

And everyone has their method
to address these problems.

You know, most rely on the major agencies

and they just assume
that if there's great talent in the world,

they've already found
their way to the agencies,

regardless of the structural barriers
that actually exist

to get into the agencies
in the first place.

Others also constantly compare
notes among themselves

about what they've read and what's good,

and they just hope that their cohort group
is the best, most wired

and has the best taste in town.

And others try to read everything,
but that's, again, impossible.

If you're reading
500 screenplays in a year,

you are reading a lot.

And it's still only a small percentage
of what's out there.

Fundamentally, it's triage.

And when you're in triage,
you tend to default to conventional wisdom

about what works and what doesn't.

That a comedy about a young woman
dealing with reproductive reality

can't sell.

That the story of an Indian teenager
isn't viable in the domestic marketplace

or anywhere else in the world
outside of India.

That the only source of viable movies
is a very narrow groups of writers

who have already found their way
to living and working in Hollywood,

who already have the best
representation in the business,

and are writing a very narrow
band of stories.

And I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit,
that that's where I found myself in 2005.

Sitting in that office
above Sunset Boulevard,

staring down that metaphorical
anonymized bookstore,

and having read nothing
but bad scripts for months.

And I took this to mean one of two things:

either A: I was not very good at my job,

which was, ostensibly,
finding good scripts,

or B: reading bad scripts was the job.

In which case, my mother's
weekly phone calls,

asking me if my law school
entrance exam scores were still valid

was something I should probably
pay more attention to.

What I also knew

was that I was about to go
on vacation for two weeks,

and as bad as reading bad scripts is
when it is your job,

it's even more painful on vacation.

So I had to do something.

So late one night
at my office, I made a list

of everyone that I had had breakfast,
lunch, dinner or drinks with

that had jobs similar to mine,
and I sent them an anonymous email.

And I made a very simple request.

Send me a list of up to 10
of your favorite screenplays

that meet three criteria.

One: you love the screenplay,

two: the filmed version of that screenplay
will not be in theaters

by the end of that calendar year,

and three: you found out
about the screenplay this year.

This was not an appeal for the scripts
that would be the next great blockbuster,

not an appeal for the scripts
that will win the Academy Award,

they didn't need to be scripts
that their bosses loved

or that their studio wanted to make.

It was very simply an opportunity
for people to speak their minds

about what they loved,

which, in this world,
is increasingly rare.

Now, almost all of the 75 people
I emailed anonymously responded.

And then two dozen other people
actually emailed to participate

to this anonymous email address,

but I confirmed that they did in fact
have the jobs they claimed to have.

And I then compiled the votes
into a spreadsheet,

ran a pivot table,
output it to PowerPoint,

and the night before I left for vacation,

I slapped a quasi subversive name on it

and emailed it back
from that anonymous email address

to everyone who voted.

The Black List.

A tribute to those who lost their careers
during the anti-communist hysteria

of the 1940s and 50s,

and a conscious inversion of the notion

that black somehow
had a negative connotation.

After arriving in Mexico,
I pulled out a chair by the pool,

started reading these scripts
and found, to my shock and joy,

that most of them
were actually quite good.

Mission accomplished.

What I didn't and couldn't have expected

was what happened next.

About a week into my time on vacation,

I stopped by the hotel's
business center to check my email.

This was a pre-iPhone world, after all.

And found that this list
that I had created anonymously

had been forwarded back to me
several dozen times,

at my personal email address.

Everyone was sharing this list of scripts
that everyone had said that they loved,

reading them and then
loving them themselves.

And my first reaction,
that I can't actually say here,

but will describe it as fear,

the idea of surveying people
about their scripts

was certainly not a novel or a genius one.

Surely, there was some unwritten
Hollywood rule of omertà

that had guided people
away from doing that before

that I was simply too naive to understand,
it being so early in my career.

I was sure I was going to get fired,

and so I decided that day
that A: I would never tell anybody

that I had done this,

and B: I would never do it again.

Then, six months later,
something even more bizarre happened.

I was in my office, on Sunset,

and got a phone call
from another writer's agent.

The call began very similarly
to the call about "Superstorm":

"I've got Leo's next movie."

Now, that's not the interesting part.

The interesting part
was the way the call ended.

Because this agent
then told me, and I quote,

"Don't tell anybody, but I have it
on really good authority

this is going to be the number one script
on next year's Black List."

(Laughter)

Yeah.

Suffice it to say, I was dumbfounded.

Here was an agent, using the Black List,
this thing that I had made anonymously

and decided to never make again,

to sell his client to me.

To suggest that the script had merit,

based solely on the possibility of being
included on a list of beloved screenplays.

After the call ended, I sat in my office,
sort of staring out the window,

alternating between shock
and general giddiness.

And then I realized that this thing
that I had created

had a lot more value

than just me finding good screenplays
to read over the holidays.

And so I did it again the next year --

and the "LA Times" had outed me
as the person who had created it --

and the year after that,

and the year after that --
I've done it every year since 2005.

And the results have been fascinating,

because, unapologetic lying aside,
this agent was exactly right.

This list was evidence, to many people,
of a script's value,

and that a great script had greater value

that, I think, a lot of people
had previously anticipated.

Very quickly, the writers
whose scripts were on that list

started getting jobs,

those scripts started getting made,

and the scripts that got made

were often the ones
that violated the assumptions

about what worked and what didn't.

They were scripts like "Juno"
and "Little Miss Sunshine"

and "The Queen" and "The King's Speech"

and "Spotlight."

And yes, "Slumdog Millionaire."

And even an upcoming movie
about Michael Jackson's chimpanzee.

Now, I think it's really important
that I pause here for a second

and say that I can't take credit
for the success of any of those movies.

I didn't write them, I didn't direct them,
I didn't produce them, I didn't gaff them,

I didn't make food and craft service --

we all know how important that is.

The credit for those movies,
the credit for that success,

goes to the people who made the films.

What I did was change
the way people looked at them.

Accidentally, I asked
if the conventional wisdom was correct.

And certainly, there are movies
on that list that would have gotten made

without the Black List,

but there are many
that definitely would not have.

And at a minimum, we've catalyzed
a lot of them into production,

and I think that's worth noting.

There have been about 1,000
screenplays on the Black List

since its inception in 2005.

About 325 have been produced.

They've been nominated
for 300 Academy Awards,

they've won 50.

Four of the last nine Best Pictures
have gone to scripts from the Black List,

and 10 of the last 20 screenplay Oscars
have gone to scripts from the Black List.

All told, they've made
about 25 billion dollars

in worldwide box office,

which means that hundreds
of millions of people

have seen these films
when they leave their homes,

and sit next to someone they don't know
and the lights go down.

And that's to say nothing
of post-theatrical environments

like DVD, streaming and,
let's be honest, illegal downloads.

Five years ago today, October 15,

my business partner and I
doubled down on this notion

that screenwriting talent
was not where we expected to find it,

and we launched a website
that would allow anybody on earth

who had written
an English-language screenplay

to upload their script, have it evaluated,

and make it available to thousands
of film-industry professionals.

And I'm pleased to say,
in the five years since its launch,

we've largely proved that thesis.

Hundreds of writers from across the world
have found representation,

have had their work optioned or sold.

Seven have even seen their films made
in the last three years,

including the film "Nightingale,"

the story of a war veteran's
psychological decline,

in which David Oyelowo's face
is the only one on screen

for the film's 90-minute duration.

It was nominated for a Golden Globe
and two Emmy Awards.

It's also kind of cool
that more than a dozen writers

who were discovered on the website

have ended up
on this end-of-year annual list,

including two of the last three
number one writers.

Simply put, the conventional wisdom
about screenwriting merit --

where it was and where it could be found,

was wrong.

And this is notable,
because as I mentioned before,

in the triage of finding
movies to make and making them,

there's a lot of relying
on conventional wisdom.

And that conventional wisdom,

maybe, just maybe,

might be wrong
to even greater consequence.

Films about black people
don't sell overseas.

Female-driven action movies don't work,

because women will see themselves in men,
but men won't see themselves in women.

That no one wants to see movies
about women over 40.

That our onscreen heroes have to conform
to a very narrow idea about beauty

that we consider conventional.

What does that mean when those images
are projected 30 feet high

and the lights go down,

for a kid that looks like me
in Columbus, Georgia?

Or a Muslim girl in Cardiff, Wales?

Or a gay kid in Chennai?

What does it mean for how we see ourselves

and how we see the world
and for how the world sees us?

We live in very strange times.

And I think for the most part,
we all live in a state of constant triage.

There's just too much information,

too much stuff to contend with.

And so as a rule, we tend
to default to conventional wisdom.

And I think it's important
that we ask ourselves, constantly,

how much of that conventional wisdom
is all convention and no wisdom?

And at what cost?

Thank you.

(Applause)