Franklin Leonard

Franklin Leonard is an entrepreneur, cultural commentator, and occasional film and television producer. He is the founder of the Black List, a company dedicated to identifying and supporting brilliant writers through its annual survey of Hollywood’s most liked screenplays and its online marketplace for screenplays, television pilots, theatrical plays, and novels. To date, 400+ scripts from the Black List’s annual survey have been produced as films, generating $30B+ in global box office and 300+ Oscar nominations and 50 wins, including four Best Pictures and >50% of the screenwriting Oscars since 2007. Leonard has worked in film development at Universal Pictures and the production companies of Will Smith, Sydney Pollack & Anthony Minghella, and Leonardo DiCaprio and served as a juror at the Sundance, Toronto, and Mumbai film festivals. One of Fast Company’s 2012 100 “Most Creative People in Business,” a recipient of the WGAe’s 2019 Evelyn Burkey award for elevating the honor and dignity of screenwriters, and the 2024 Gotham Film Organization’s Anniversary Tribute, Leonard is also a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a member of AMPAS and BAFTA. His TED talk – How I Accidentally Changed the Way Movies Get Made – has been viewed >1.75M times.