Blacklisted

Tired of the screenwriting software out there, four-time Black List screenwriter Michael Sherman did what any writer with a coding itch would do: he built his own. He's certainly qualified. Sherman is one half of the duo Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, co-writers of Knock at the Cabin , directed by M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs), which was released by Universal Stu...

​ Visit the new Stan Store @ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ stan.store/blacklisted ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ​ Subscribe to our extended interviews on Spotify ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ . Before he was writing Air for Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, Alex Convery was chasing his own guy on the sidelines of college football. In this episode, Convery breaks down Bag Man , his 2018 Black List script about a college football fixer navigating st...

​ Visit the new Stan Store @ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ stan.store/blacklisted ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ​ Subscribe to our extended interviews on Spotify ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ . Before Fifty Shades of Grey , before Venom , Kelly Marcel wrote a spec about a two-week standoff between Walt Disney and P.L. Travers, and it landed on the 2011 Black List. This week on Blacklisted , Kelly joins me to talk about turning one of Disney'...

​ Visit the new Stan Store @ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ stan.store/blacklisted ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ​ Subscribe to our extended interviews on Spotify ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ . This week on Blacklisted , we're doing something new: bringing a writer and the executive who developed the idea with him into the same room, together. Leo Sardarian and Joe Russo join me to talk about Nicholas — the 2013 Black List script that reimagines the...

​ Visit the new Stan Store @ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ stan.store/blacklisted ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ​ Subscribe to our extended interviews on Spotify ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ . This week on Blacklisted, we're joined by screenwriter Kat Wood, whose spec script Ruby made the 2020 Black Lis t and sold to Amazon Studios and 87North in a competitive situation. Kat's path here is its own story - she started as a BBC broadcast journali...

​ Visit the new Stan Store @ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ stan.store/blacklisted ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ​ Subscribe to our extended interviews on Spotify ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ . This week we're joined by writing partners Lou Howe and Todd Bartels, whose Dolly Parton origin story Dumb Blonde landed on the 2022 Black List - and whose next collaboration just got a lot bigger. Their Anthony Bourdain feature Tony , directed by Matt Johnson and st...

Visit the new Stan Store @ ⁠⁠⁠⁠ stan.store/blacklisted ⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to our extended interviews on Spotify ⁠⁠⁠⁠ here ⁠⁠⁠⁠ . What does it look like when a spec script becomes a Spielberg film? Ask Liz Hannah. In 2016, Hannah — a first-time feature writer who'd spent four years in development before switching to the page — wrote a script about The Washington Post 's decision to publish the...

Visit the new Stan Store @ ⁠⁠⁠ stan.store/blacklisted ⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to our extended interviews on Spotify ⁠⁠⁠ here ⁠⁠⁠ . Aaron Karo wrote a Black List script about a toy that turned into a bomb scare. This week's guest is comedian, author, and screenwriter Aaron Karo, whose spec Tickle Me Elmo landed on the 2024 Black List. On paper, it's the story of how a $28 vibrating plush toy nearly t...

Visit the new Stan Store @ ⁠⁠ stan.store/blacklisted ⁠⁠ Subscribe to our extended interviews on Spotify ⁠⁠ here ⁠⁠ . What happens when the line between life and art disappears completely? That's exactly what happened to today's guest, Julia Yorks , writer of the 2024 Black List script The 7 Guys You Date Before Marriage , about a newly single woman diving back into the dating pool after th...

Visit the new Stan Store @ ⁠ stan.store/blacklisted ⁠ Subscribe to our extended interviews on Spotify ⁠ here ⁠ . How do you land a spot on the annual Black List without an agent or manager? Just ask this week's guest, Richard Martin. Richard cracked the 2025 Black List with Geezers — a slasher set in a Florida retirement complex. Think Golden Girls meets Scream. Or, put another way: how would...

Visit the new Stan Store @ stan.store/blacklisted Subscribe to our extended interviews on Spotify here . In our season three premiere, we speak to screenwriter Allison Lee, whose biopic Oh Yoko! landed on the 2025 Black List, the annual survey of Hollywood's best unproduced screenplays. The script traces Yoko Ono's path from her birth in war-torn Tokyo to her emergence as a groundbreaking...

What does it take to write one of the biggest movies in Netflix history — from scratch? This week, we sit down with screenwriter T.J. Fixman, the man behind Carry-On — the Christmas action thriller that broke Netflix records, racked up over 172 million views, and sparked a genuine cultural debate: is this the new Die Hard? Before he was writing Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman into one of the most-...

In this bonus episode, host Chris Hill sits down with David Boxerbaum, partner at Verve Talent & Literary Agency and one of the most respected literary agents working in the spec script market today. Named to The Hollywood Reporter's "Next Generation 35 Under 35" at just 26 years old, Boxerbaum has built his reputation on landing six-and seven-figure spec sales for his clients —...

In 2022, the script that rose to the very top of the Black List was Pure , a psychological horror-thriller about a woman whose obsession with food purity unravels into madness at her sister's destination wedding. The writer was Catherine Schetina, best known for her work on the acclaimed Hulu drama The Bear . The manager behind her? Jon Hersh. Jon founded Night Drive Management in 2017 with on...

Before Allan was helping run production at one of Hollywood's most storied companies (Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment), he was a kid in the mailroom at Endeavor — sorting packages, learning the rhythm of the industry from the ground up. This week, he traces the full arc: from assistant at Fox 2000, to VP at Hugh Jackman's SEED Productions, to nearly a decade building a slate at Star...

Manager Zack Zucker of Bellevue Productions — whose client Matisse Haddad landed the #1 Black List script of 2025 — breaks down the mistake that kills most screenwriting careers before they start: falling in love with the wrong kind of idea. Inspired by Franklin Leonard's viral essay "The Moral Case for Selling Out," we dig into why professional writers rarely make this error (their reps won't let...

To celebrate the #BlackList2025 release, we're dropping a loaded bonus episode with Black List founder Franklin Leonard . Twenty-one years after its inception, the Black List has become Hollywood's most influential survey of unproduced screenplays - launching careers, reshaping industry gatekeeping, and proving that meritocracy can be an engine for diversity. As the 2025 list drops, we sit...

Trevor White of Star Thrower Productions talks about how he and his brother Tim have built their producing careers by working hands-on with screenwriters to develop their scripts, then using the Black List as a spotlight tool to get the industry buzzing and help package projects with the right talent - a strategy that's led to some serious hits including King Richard (2021), where Zach Baylin's sc...

Get your copy of John's exceptional book here . What if every story you've ever loved - from ancient myths to Marvel blockbusters, from Shakespeare to The Sopranos - follows the exact same blueprint? Today we dive deep into John Yorke's revolutionary book "Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them," the UK's bestselling screenwriting text that's required r...

Hit the link here for 10% off Story and Plot's pro digital screenwriting courses, MASTERING STRUCTURE and IDEA TO OUTLINE. There you can sign up for Tom's weekly newsletter - it's a free screenwriting lesson in your inbox every Tuesday morning. It's also where you can find his FREE email course , SCREENWRITING FOR BEGINNERS , for those at the beginning of their journey. Discover wh...

In our season two finale, we speak to screenwriter Justin Kremer, who made history as the first writer to be signed via The Black List website just six weeks after its launch. Six weeks later, he landed on the annual Black List for his historical political biopic McCarthy , which chronicles the rise and fall of 1950s Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. The script explores McCarthy's tenure as the most vis...

This week on Blacklisted, we sit down with screenwriter Shea Mayo to dive into the bloody good journey of their spec script Crush on You - a love letter to '80s slasher films and ‘90s teen horror that caught Hollywood's attention and landed on the prestigious Black List in 2020. Mayo breaks down how she channeled the iconic terror of Nightmare on Elm Street and other genre classics into a fresh, c...

Today we're talking with Colin Bannon, a screenwriter who's made the prestigious Black List a record seven times with his genre-bending thrillers and survival horror scripts. We're diving into his breakthrough screenplay "The Interventionist," which landed on the 2018 Black List and follows a drug-addicted interventionist trying to help his own daughter, only to discover something far more siniste...

Multi-hyphenate talent Leah McKendrick joins us to dive deep into her romantic comedy screenplay  Voicemails for Isabelle , which earned a coveted spot on the 2019 Black List . Now McKendrick is bringing her vision to life as the film's director, with Netflix set to release the project featuring Nick Robinson and Zoey Deutch in the leading roles. Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Leah McKendrick on ⁠⁠ X ⁠⁠ and ⁠...

In the sixth episode of season two, we're joined by writer David Lee Williams (or is it Hawk?) to discuss his ⁠ 2022 Black List ⁠ script Clementine — a high-octane thriller with the real-time propulsion of Run Lola Run , fueled by the visceral maternal energy of J.Lo's The Mother. Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ David L Williams ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ on ⁠ X ⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Host : ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Chris Hill⁠⁠⁠ ⁠...