Producers and directors currently enrolled in select degree programs will have access to the Black List’s online database of screenplays, and Chapman University students will be the first to do so.

In an expansion designed to give currently enrolled producers and directors better access to a wider array of available screenplays, screenwriters hosting their scripts on the Black List will have the option – if they so choose – of making their work available to students, who can access them via the Black List’s database. Student producer and director memberships to the site will be free, just as industry professional memberships are.

“With the cost of production continuing to decrease, we noticed that many undergraduate and graduate film programs – Chapman’s Dodge School in particular – are encouraging their students to explore feature film opportunities while still enrolled in school,” said Black List founder Franklin Leonard. “We thought it only appropriate that we give screenwriters with scripts hosted on our site the opportunity to connect with those students if they so desire. Chapman University students will be the first to have that access, but I doubt they will be the last, and we encourage any other program that would like is students to have this opportunity to get in touch.”

“These individual memberships will prove invaluable for our producing and directing students who will become the next Justin Simien and Matt and Ross Duffer, among recent Chapman graduates of whom we are enormously proud. It will undoubtedly prove to be a great tool for our students who look to make independent features while they are in school and/or after graduation,” said Bob Bassett, dean of Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. “The Black List has proven essential for our own production company, Chapman Filmed Entertainment (CFE), which is funding and readying for production a script we found on the Black List website – Ride Share by Matt Tente.”

Since its launch in October 2012, the Black List website has made introductions that resulted in hundreds of writers being signed at major agencies and management companies, more than dozen landing on the annual Black List, and five produced feature films including KATIE SAYS GOODBYE, by Wayne Roberts, which will premier this weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival.

About The Black List:
The Black List is an online community where moviemakers find scripts to make and writers to write them, and screenwriters find moviemakers to make their scripts and employ them. Begun in 2005 as an annual survey of several dozen executives’ favorite unproduced screenplays, The Black List has grown to survey over 500 executives each year (virtually 100% of Hollywood’s studio system’s executive corps). Over 320 Black List scripts have been produced into films grossing over $25 billion in worldwide box office. Black List scripts have won 45 Academy Awards – including four of the last eight Best Pictures (”Slumdog Millionaire,” “The King’s Speech,” “Argo,” and “Spotlight”) and nine of the last eighteen screenwriting awards (“Juno,”  “Slumdog Millionaire,” “The King’s Speech,” “The Social Network,”  “The Descendants,” “Argo,” “Django Unchained,” “The Imitation Game,” and “Spotlight”) – from over 225 nominations. In October 2012, The Black List launched an online database of every screenplay circulating Hollywood and all those submitted by English language screenwriters from around the world. Since its launch, it has hosted more than 25,000 screenplays and completed more than 50,000 script evaluations. Hundreds have found representation at major agencies and management companies or sold their screenplays as a direct result of introductions made via the site. At any given time, more than 3,000 screenplays and original television pilots are actively hosted for perusal by thousands of film industry professionals, ranging from agency assistants to studio and network heads.