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The Wall Street Journal & Spotify Studios
Why Hollywood Can't Find Good Scripts
22 minutes Posted Jun 1, 2026 at 8:00 pm.
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Show notes
How to get discovered in Hollywood has been a decades-old struggle. For screenwriters, that game started to change when Franklin Leonard launched the Black List, an annual ranking of the “most liked” but not-yet-produced screenplays. Since 2005, more than 500 of those scripts have become feature films, including several Best Picture Oscar-winners. Ryan Knutson interviewed Leonard about how to fix some of Hollywood’s other challenges at our live show in Los Angeles.
 
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