The Black List’s website is open for TV business, the script-database service announced Wednesday.
“Writers and industry professionals have been asking us about a television version of the site since we launched our feature script service last year,” said Black List founder Franklin Leonard. “The goal of this new venture parallels the mandate of the feature film script hosting service: make it easy for those making episodic content to find great scripts and writers, and help those with great scripts get them to people who can do something with them.”
Just like with movie scripts, a $25 monthly fee allows writers to host and index each of their projects, which can be accessed by industry pros and fellow writers. For an additional fee, Black List script readers will evaluate them.
Here’s the release:
BLACK LIST WEBSITE EXPANDS TO TELEVISION AND WEB SERIES
ONLINE SCRIPT DATABASE WELCOMES SERIES PILOTS AND BIBLES
LOS ANGELES (November 13, 2013) – This morning, the Black List’s online script database (http://www.blcklst.com) launched its long awaited expansion into television and episodic scripted content.
Beginning today, writers from around the world will be able to upload their original pilot scripts (and, optionally, their series bibles) to the script database, request evaluations by professional script readers, and make their scripts available to the Black List’s growing membership of industry professionals, currently over 2,000 members. Writers will be able to categorize their scripts in a near infinite number of ways, including but not limited to multi-cam/single-cam, procedural/serialized, length of season, prospective number of seasons, and more than 60 genres and over 800 tags.
“Writers and industry professionals have been asking us about a television version of the site since we launched our feature script service last year. We’re excited to roll it out now in a way that can accommodate conventional television, miniseries and web series scripts,” said Black List founder Franklin Leonard. “The goal of this new venture parallels the mandate of the feature film script hosting service: make it easy for those making episodic content to find great scripts and writers, and help those with great scripts get them to people who can do something with them. I’m very optimistic that we can repeat the success we’ve had since our film launch: more than 13,000 downloads of uploaded scripts, more than four major agency and management company signings, one two-script blind deal at a major studio, one produced film, and more than twenty sales for writers living as far away from Hollywood as Ireland and Sweden.”
As with feature film scripts, writers will pay $25 per month to host and index each of their pilots (and if they so choose, the series bible at no additional charge) on the Black List’s website, accessible only by a closed community of industry professionals (and by their fellow writers if they choose to make them available.) They can further pay for evaluations by professional script readers hired by the Black List. Evaluations for pilots meant to be longer than 30 minutes will cost $50, just like feature scripts, and those meant to be 30 minutes or less will cost $30.
WGA East and West members will be able to list their material free of charge (without hosting it), just as they can with their film scripts.
Also, just like with film scripts hosted on the site, reminded Leonard, “writers retain all rights to sell and produce their work and are free to negotiate the best deal they can get. All we ask is an email letting us know of their success.”
THE BLACK LIST
Since 2005, the Black List has become one of Hollywood’s primary arbiters of taste in scripted material. Begun as an annual survey of several dozen executives’ favorite unproduced film scripts, the 2012 edition surveyed over 300 executives, over 60% of Hollywood’s studio system’s executive corps.
The Black List, run by founder Franklin Leonard and CTO Dino Sijamic, now includes the annual list of most-liked unproduced screenplays, the membership community and “real time Black List,” the Black List blog – home of Scott Myers’ “Go Into the Story” and Xander Bennett’s “Screenwriting Tips… You Hack” – and the Black Board, the free online discussion community moderated by Shaula Evans.
225 scripts from the annual Black List have been produced as feature films grossing over $19 billion in worldwide box office. Black List scripts have won 35 Academy awards – including three of the last five Best Pictures (SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, THE KING’S SPEECH, and ARGO) and seven of the last twelve screenwriting Oscars (JUNO, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, THE KING’S SPEECH, THE SOCIAL NETWORK, THE DESCENDANTS, DJANGO UNCHAINED, and ARGO) – from 175 nominations. It is also solely responsible for bringing undiscovered writers and new material to the attention of Hollywood actors, directors, producers and financiers in tens of thousands of introductions per year. 2013 awards contenders SAVING MR BANKS, PRISONERS, LEE DANIELS’ THE BUTLER, and THE WOLF OF WALL STREET were all once scripts on the annual Black List.
Since October 2012, the Black List’s membership community has generated over 13,000 script downloads, more than forty major agency and management company signings, more than twenty script sales, one two-script blind deal at a major studio, and one produced film.
