EXCLUSIVE: The Gotham Movie & Media Institute will honor Franklin Leonard and his firm, the Black Listing, with the Gotham Anniversary Tribute at its annual movie awards ceremony in December.
The honour acknowledges the twentieth 12 months of The Black Listing, which Leonard based in 2005 as a platform devoted to nurturing written storytelling and empowering writers to maximise their skilled potential.
The award might be introduced on the thirty fourth annual Gotham Awards on December 2 at Cipriani Wall Avenue in New York Metropolis. With its timing simply after Thanksgiving, the occasion usually helps sound the opening bell for the intense section of Oscar season.
The Anniversary Tribute was created by The Gotham with a view to acknowledge main milestones and influential people. Final spring, Mariska Hargitay obtained the distinction on the inaugural Gotham TV awards for her excellent run on Legislation & Order: Particular Victims Unit.
“With the Black Listing, Franklin Leonard has undeniably reshaped Hollywood by elevating proficient writers and noteworthy initiatives. His dedication to nurturing rising screenwriters and decreasing boundaries to entry for expertise is one which resonates deeply with The Gotham and our values,” mentioned Jeffrey Sharp, Government Director of The Gotham Movie & Media Institute. “So lots of Hollywood’s most beloved movies, reminiscent of Juno, Slumdog Millionaire, and The King’s Speech, had been all given a singular platform by the annual Black Listing that helped them get made. We’re honored to current Franklin and the Black Listing with the Anniversary Tribute.”
First established as an annual survey of Hollywood’s most-liked unproduced screenplays, the Black Listing has since grown right into a complete useful resource for the movie, TV, publishing, and theater worlds. It’s a conduit for 1000’s of writers, brokers, managers, showrunners, producers, financiers, administrators, actors, and theater trade professionals. Thus far, greater than 400 scripts from the Black Listing’s annual survey have been produced as function movies, leading to greater than $30B in world field workplace, 300 Academy Award nominations and 50 wins, together with 4 Finest Photos. It has accounted for almost half of the screenwriting Oscars awarded since 2007.
Among the many acclaimed movies to be produced after showing on the annual Black Listing are Juno, Slumdog Millionaire and The King’s Speech. In September 2024, the Black Listing introduced its enlargement into fiction, permitting fiction writers to make use of blcklst.com to create a free profile to showcase their accomplished novels.
Together with serving as CEO of the platform, Leonard can be a movie and tv producer. He labored in function movie growth at Common Photos and the manufacturing firms of Will Smith, Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella, and Leonardo DiCaprio.