Wrap Roundtable: Franklin Leonard Says Making Indie Films Isn’t an ‘Altruistic Impulse’ – ‘It’s Exactly the Opposite’ (Video)

thewrap.com:

his work as founder of The Black List has proven that the opposite is true. The best screenplay is the best business plan.“I think there is an assumption that when you work in the indie space, or you’re seeking out writers from outside the traditional system, that there’s some sort of altruistic impulse behind it.

It’s exactly the opposite,” Leonard said, posing that his Black List, a highly regarded online reference naming the year’s best unproduced screenplays, “comes from a fundamental desire to increase and improve the economics of the industry.” He then cited a recent study from Harvard Business School investigating the financial performance of scripts found and ultimately produced from The Black List. “Controlling for all other factors, movies made from Black List scripts, some of which were distributed by the studios, made 90% more in revenue than movies made from scripts that were not on The Black List,” he said.Asked for his definition of success in indie film, Leonard said that success was a film “that delivers a financial profit that exceeds what you could get by investing in a conservative mutual fund [or] one that is well received by audiences that people will still be talking about 20 years from now.”Leonard was joined on the deep-dive Zoom discussion with moderator and Elevated Films president Cassian Elwes, Killer Films co-president Christine Vachon, 30West co-president and CEO Micah Green and UTA’s partner and head of independent film Rena Ronson.

The loosely moderated and wide-ranging roundtable spanned the gamut between what once was and what might be in the future. Vachon, when asked how she puts money together for a new project today, said, “I don’t even know if it’s easier or harder, it’s.