With all the uncertainty over at NBCU, Franklin Leonard, the creator of the Black List, is yet another exec leaving his post at Universal Pictures and joining Overbrook Entertainment, the company run by mega film star
Will Smith, James Lassiter, Ken Stovitz and Jada Pinkett Smith.
Leonard will serve as VP of Creative Affairs for the Smith/Lassiter run company. This is definitely a bump in title for The Harvard-educated Georgia native and Black List creator who for the past two years has acted as director of development over at Universal. He has worked on such films as the Fast Five (the fifth installment of The Fast and the Furious franchise), the Vince Vaughn comedy Couples Retreat, the Meryl Streep romantic comedy It’s Complicated and M. Night Shyamalan’s Devil.
The exec is best known for creating the Black List while a development exec at Appian Way in 2005. The list, which is unveiled every December, ranks the most-liked unproduced scripts Hollywood movers and shakers have read all year and has become an anticipated event among the development community as well as a platform for screenwriters.
