Why Hollywood Can't Find Good Scripts

The Journal.

The Wall Street Journal

Daily News, Business News, News

4.2 • 5.8K Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2026

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How to get discovered in Hollywood has been a decades-old struggle. For screenwriters, that game started to change when Franklin Leonard launched the Black List, an annual ranking of the “most liked” but not-yet-produced screenplays. Since 2005, more than 500 of those scripts have become feature films, including several Best Picture Oscar-winners. Ryan Knutson interviewed Leonard about how to fix some of Hollywood’s other challenges at our live show in Los Angeles. Further Listening: - Hollywood Jobs Are Disappearing - Inside the Nasty Fight to Take Over Hollywood - The Journal. - For Riz Ahmed, Life is a Spy Thriller Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey listeners, I've got a trivia question for you.
0:10.5	What do the following movies have in common?
0:14.6	500 Days of Summer, Spotlight, The Imitation Game, Argo, Juno, the King's Speech, Little Miss Sunshine, Slumdog Millionaire.
0:26.8	The answer is that before they were famous films, there were screenplays that made The Blacklist.
0:35.4	The Blacklist is an annual compilation of the most liked but not yet produced screenplays in Hollywood.
0:41.9	Since 2005, more than 500 Blacklist scripts have been made into feature films, grossing over
0:47.8	$30 billion in box office sales worldwide. Blacklist movies have won 60 Academy Awards, including four Best Picture Oscars.
0:57.6	In today's episode is a conversation with the founder of the Blacklist, Franklin Leonard.
1:02.7	It was filmed at our live show in Los Angeles. You can watch our conversation on Spotify.
1:12.6	Live from the El Ray Theater in Los Angeles,
1:14.6	welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.
1:18.6	I'm Ryan Knowson.
1:24.6	Coming up on the show, Franklin Leonard on the blacklist and the biggest challenges facing Hollywood.
1:32.3	Attention all passengers.
1:42.3	The Uber ride for Mark and Jamal's romantic weekend will depart in four minutes from Platform 6.
1:49.0	Your ride comes with a rolling countryside sunset view and a table seat, ideal for playing footsie beneath.
1:57.0	Thank you for booking your tickets on Uber.
2:00.0	Trains on Uber.
2:02.3	Trains on Uber.
2:15.4	It is so much more fun recording this podcast here than in like a dark studio.
2:17.3	I can't imagine why.
2:21.7	Okay, so you've told this story before, but I want to start by talking about the origin story of the blacklist.
	...

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