The secret link between these Oscar-winning films

It’s a website few have ever heard of, but The Black List is behind some of the most successful movies to ever come out of Hollywood.

Ever wondered what I, Tonya, The Hangover and Slumdog Millionaire have in common?

From the outside it may not seem like much, but dig a little deeper and you’ll find the common thread binding these rag-tag cinematic tales together is actually a little-known website called The Black List.

If you’ve never heard of it, you’re not alone. Despite it being one of the most influential websites in Hollywood, few people have. Without it, though, box office smashes like The Post, Dallas Buyers Club and American Sniper may never have made it to the big screen at all.

Created by film executive Franklin Leonard back in 2004, the Black List was originally developed as a way to find promising unproduced screenplays and share them with others within the industry.

Django Unchained, starring Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio, was a Black List script. Picture: AP/The Weinstein Company

“You can submit your screenplay to our website and have it evaluated, and if it’s good we tell Hollywood, ‘hey you should probably do something with this,’” Franklin recently told the podcast Keep It!.

Early Black List indie hits include Juno, Lars and the Real Girl, 500 Days of Summer and Death at a Funeral, while more commercial gems like Blades of Glory, Blockers and Superbad have also found their way onto the big screen thanks to the site.

Now 15 years on, The Black List allows writers to submit unproduced screenplays for critique and feedback, and to be seen by some of the most influential film and television industry names from around the world. And each December, the site publishes a list of the top ten screenplays submitted to the site from throughout the year.

Margot Robbie’s I, Tonya came from The Black List. Picture: supplied

When it comes to the Oscars the website’s ability to deliver a winner is unprecedented.

“The track record is ridiculous,” Franklin says. “There have been, like, 1200 scripts on the list, 400 have gotten produced, they’ve been nominated for something like 275 Oscars, 50 wins, four of the last 10 best pictures, and 10 of the last 22 screenwriting Oscars.”

Think The King’s Speech (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay winner 2011), The Imitation Game (Best Adapted Screenplay winner 2015), Whiplash (Best Supporting Actor, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing winners 2015), Spotlight (Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay winner 2016), and Manchester By The Sea (Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor winners 2016) to name but a few.

Leonard has said The King’s Speech, starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter, is his favourite script to come from The Black List. Picture: supplied

Other films to have received the Black List nod include the 2018 Netflix breakaway hit starring Sandra Bullock, Bird Box, and the upcoming Ruth Bader-Ginsberg biopic On the Basis of Sex.

When asked what his all-time favourite was, Leonard conceded it had to be The King’s Speech, if for no other reason than, like King George VI, he too was a kid who grew up with a lisp.

And while none of this year’s Oscar nominees appear to have come from The Black List, keep an eye out in 2020, because there might just be a few.