The Blacklist expands from Hollywood scripts to unpublished novels

Executive overview

Hollywood and book publishing share the same structural flaw: a superabundance of supply, a walled-garden gatekeeping system, and widespread risk assumptions that the data shows are simply wrong. The Blacklist built its reputation by surfacing great unproduced screenplays — Argo, Juno, Slumdog Millionaire — before the industry knew they existed. It has now expanded that model to fiction manuscripts, connecting novelists directly to publishers, film producers, and TV executives.

The core insight: perceived risk in creative industries is mostly faulty assumption, not real risk — and correcting those assumptions unlocks billions in untapped value.

What the Blacklist does and how the expansion works

• Writers upload unpublished, self-published, or published novels to the Blacklist platform
• Manuscripts are searchable by publishing, film, and TV industry professionals
• Writers can pay for professional reader feedback; highly rated work is surfaced to the industry via weekly emails
• The platform charges a monthly hosting fee — it takes no equity stake or backend on deals
• Partnership with producer Simon Kinberg (The Martian) commits to optioning at least one manuscript in year one for film/TV adaptation

Why publishing mirrors Hollywood

• Both are hit-driven businesses with subjective products and no objective value signal
• Both face superabundant supply that no individual reader can fully evaluate
• Both triage through existing networks — agents, grad programs, established contacts — creating a walled garden by default, not by design
• Revenue and cost pressures in both industries compound the problem in 2024

The case against conventional risk thinking

• Industry assumptions about what is "risky" are demonstrably wrong: female-driven action films (Hunger Games), Black films with international appeal (Coming to America, Will Smith, Denzel) were all deemed too risky
• A Harvard Business School study found films made from annual Blacklist scripts earn 90% more revenue than comparable non-Blacklist films, controlling for all other factors
• McKinsey found Hollywood's anti-Black bias costs the industry ~$10B per year; bias against Latinx audiences costs $12–18B; against Asian American audiences, $2–4B
• The argument is not for more risk-taking — it is for better risk assessment

The business model and bootstrapped growth

• The Blacklist has been profitable every month since launch, with no outside funding raised
• Franklin Leonard owns the company outright; it was built to solve a specific, known problem
• The platform now has visibility over original screenplays and novels that represent roughly 50% of all film production inputs
• The manuscript expansion is described as "the last brick in the initial foundation" — future revenue opportunities will be explored from this position

AI and the future of writing

• The Blacklist will not use AI to evaluate manuscripts or screenplays — feeding a writer's work to an LLM without compensation is a non-starter
• Leonard does not believe AI can replicate the emotional effect that defines great writing
• The platform tests for one thing: does reading this make you want to tell everyone, or wish you hadn't started?
• The profession of writing has already changed — shorter TV rooms, more gig-style work, personal brand pressure — but the core act is unchanged: go into a room alone and write