Franklin Leonard
SHORT BIO
Franklin Leonard is the host of the Black List Table Reads podcast (an iTunes Best of 2015 pick) and founder of The Black List, the yearly publication highlighting Hollywood’s most popular unproduced screenplays and the company birthed to continue its mission. Over 250 Black List scripts have been produced as feature films earning 243 Academy Award nominations and 45 wins including 3 of the last 7 Best Pictures. (Cue the Marketplace happy music?).
Franklin has previously worked in development at Universal Pictures and the production companies of Will Smith, Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella, Leonardo DiCaprio, and John Goldwyn. He has been a juror at the Sundance, Toronto and Guanajuato Film Festivals and for the PEN Center Literary Awards. He was also a delegate and speaker at the White House’s 2015 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi, Kenya.
A Few Highlights:
He’s on board…lots of them! Currently serves on the advisory boards of the Young Storytellers Foundation, Project Greenlight’s Digital Studios, and the Bernard Van Leer Foundation. He is also a member of the Associates Branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Has been named one of Hollywood Reporter’s 35 Under 35, Black Enterprise magazine’s “40 Emerging Leaders for Our Future,” The Root’s 100 Most Influential African-Americans, Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business” Awarded the 2015 African-American Film Critics Association (AAFCA)’s Special Achievement Award for career excellence.