EXCLUSIVE: J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot is partnering with The Black List on a new initiative that will provide 500 writers from historically underrepresented communities with access to the Black List website, offering them the opportunity to receive feedback on their original work that they might not otherwise be able to acquire.
Participating talent will have access not only to one free month of hosting on the site, but also to one free professional screenplay evaluation. Bad Robot will work with community organizations, including Arts in the Armed Forces, Barcid Foundation, The Blackhouse Foundation, Gold House, The Latinx House, Outfest/Outfest Fusion, RespectAbility and Women in Film to distribute 400 of the website fee waivers directly to writers, with The Black List distributing the other 100 to scribes who are already a part of the blcklst.com ecosystem.
Fee waivers are being distributed once a quarter starting today, and will expire 30 days after the end of the quarter, so writers should ensure that they are ready to upload a completed screenplay to blcklst.com before requesting one. Writers who qualify as being a part of an underrepresented community per WGA guidelines, and who are not yet involved with The Black List, are encouraged to contact one of Bad Robot’s partner organizations to receive a fee waiver.
Said The Black List’s founder and CEO, Franklin Leonard: “Anyone paying attention to their work knows that Bad Robot is consistently great about quietly creating opportunities for talented folks for whom access is the primary obstacle, and we’re overjoyed to be partnering with them in one of the very many ways they do that. Through this program 500 writers will receive free hosting and feedback on their work, visibility throughout the Blcklst.com industry ecosystem of representatives, producers, talent, and financiers, and free access to dozens of other opportunities available on the website. Very exciting stuff.”
Added Bad Robot’s President of Motion Pictures Hannah Minghella: “There are still institutionalized pipeline issues in our industry that make it very challenging for talented writers to find a platform for their work. The Black List is exactly that platform. We are thrilled to partner with them and all of these community organizations to give so many writers a chance to receive professional feedback and industry-wide exposure.”
Two-time Emmy winner Abrams launched Bad Robot in 2001. In the years since, his company has produced such series as Alias, Lost, Fringe, Person of Interest, Westworld, Castle Rock, Lovecraft Country and Lisey’s Story, and films including, Super 8, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker, along with the Star Trek, Mission: Impossible and Cloverfield franchises. In addition to its live-action film and television slate, Bad Robot is producing animated projects including a reimagining of Dr. Seuss’s iconic Oh, The Places You’ll Go, Charlie Mackesy’s beloved illustrated book, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, and the upcoming series, Batman: Caped Crusader.
The company is also behind the independent music label Loud Robot, launched in 2018, and Bad Robot Games, a new entity dedicated to developing large and indie-scale original games for mobile, PC and console. It recently launched an audio division, Bad Robot Audio, in partnership with Spotify to develop and produce original scripted and non-scripted audio content.
The Black List was introduced in 2005 as an annual survey of Hollywood executives’ favorite unproduced screenplays. Since then, upwards of 440 Black List scripts have been produced, grossing over $30 billion in box office worldwide. Black List movies have won 54 Academy Awards from 267 nominations, including four of the last 12 Best Picture Oscars and 11 of the last 28 Best Screenplay Oscars.
In October of 2012, the Black List launched an online community where screenwriters could make their work available to readers, buyers and employers. Since its inception, it has hosted nearly 80,000 screenplays and teleplays and provided more than 130,000 script evaluations.The Black List currently hosts more than 5,000 scripts by around 3,700 writer members, which are available for download by industry professionals ranging from agency assistants, to studio and network presidents, to A-list actors and directors.
The Black List’s first feature production, Come As You Are, debuted at SXSW in 2019. Its second, Breaking News in Yuba County, directed by Oscar nominee Tate Taylor and starring Allison Janney, Mila Kunis, Regina Hall, Awkwafina, Wanda Sykes and Juliette Lewis, was released in by MGM Studios in February of last year.
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