The Annual Black List: Steady Growth Leads to New Portal

The creator behind the yearly Black List (best of unproduced screenplays and “a snapshot of the collective taste of the people who develop, produce, and release theatrical feature films in the Hollywood studio system and the mainstream independent system“) has gone portal, which basically means I’ll probably won’t be viewing the list as I once did in the past: a passed around email via industry folks I know on the “inside”. Click here to visit the site.

With a botched domain name, a clean interface and a background image that reminds us that despite a paper-less friendly society, people still like to receive their scripts on actual pulp, for the time being the site functions as a “cast your vote” system and which will probably be an information friendly source on those who get on the list. For those who don’t know it, this thing is big. It has the potential of kick-starting a screenwriter’s career, the ability to green-light a project and it gets many agents’ panties tied in knots.

I’ve enjoyed looking back at the past years, 2005 edition reminds us of a time of when studios took risks. 2006’s list has only saw three of the top ten listings make its way into theaters. 2007’s list (which I updated the status in July) cam out at a time where studios were less interested in taking a gamble on original content. The status of Source Code just recently changed for the better. And finally, 2008’s list is perhaps too fresh – from the top screenplays, we only have The Beaver that is currently in production.