Blacklisted

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How do you land a spot on the annual Black List without an agent or manager? Just ask this week's guest, Richard Martin.
Richard cracked the 2025 Black List with Geezers — a slasher set in a Florida retirement complex. Think Golden Girls meets Scream. Or, put another way: how would Blanche deal with Ghostface? Fun!
After earning his master's at USC, Richard spent a decade as a development exec at Bad Hat Harry Productions, shepherding projects from studio tentpoles like X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days of Future Past to indie horror gems like The Taking of Deborah Logan. He's since moved into directing and producing — helming Hulu's horror-comedy series Spooked — and picked up a ScreenCraft Grand Prize along the way.

Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Richard Martin on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠X⁠⁠
Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Chris Hill⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BlueSky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠storyandplot.com/blacklisted⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for a 10% discount on Tom Vaughan's fantastic screenwriting courses.

Useful links:
Jamie Lee Curtis presents GEEZERS - Black List
Save The Cat
Michael Arndt - Story Structure Videos

Visit the new Stan Store @ stan.store/blacklisted
Subscribe to our extended interviews on Spotify here.

In our season three premiere, we speak to screenwriter Allison Lee, whose biopic Oh Yoko! landed on the 2025 Black List, the annual survey of Hollywood's best unproduced screenplays.
The script traces Yoko Ono's path from her birth in war-torn Tokyo to her emergence as a groundbreaking modern artist in New York, before her life is upended by a whirlwind romance with John Lennon that would brand her as the "witch" who broke up the Beatles in the eyes of the public.
Lee, who has also adapted Maurene Goo's novel Throwback and developed projects for Netflix Animation, Amazon, and AMC, talks candidly about the personal stakes of the project — including writing an outline for the script without telling her own representatives, drawn to a story she "just couldn't let go" of despite the complicated rights landscape surrounding the Beatles' legacy.

Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Allison Lee on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠X⁠
Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Chris Hill⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BlueSky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠storyandplot.com/blacklisted⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for a 10% discount on Tom Vaughan's fantastic screenwriting courses.

Useful links:
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind - Special Exhibition @ The Broad
Why We Write: Allison Lee
Black List 2025 - The Hollywood Reporter
Allison Lee: Film Independent
⁠Allison Lee: Sundance Advisor
Allison Lee - Creative Screenwriting Interview

What does it take to write one of the biggest movies in Netflix history — from scratch?
This week, we sit down with screenwriter T.J. Fixman, the man behind Carry-On — the Christmas action thriller that broke Netflix records, racked up over 172 million views, and sparked a genuine cultural debate: is this the new Die Hard?
Before he was writing Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman into one of the most-watched original films on the planet, Fixman was crafting narratives for video games — most notably the beloved Ratchet & Clank franchise. So how does a game writer crack Hollywood's most coveted genre: the contained, high-concept, race-against-the-clock thriller?
We also talk about the Die Hard question, building a villain you never quite see, writing Christmas into the DNA of an action film without making it a gimmick — and what's coming next with his new project The Seventh Man.
If you've ever stared at a blank page wondering how a single high-concept idea becomes a global phenomenon, this one's for you.

Useful Links:
Carry-On on Netflix
Most Popular Movies on Netflix - Carry-On at #3
Seventh Man sells to United Artists - Variety

In this bonus episode, host Chris Hill sits down with David Boxerbaum, partner at Verve Talent & Literary Agency and one of the most respected literary agents working in the spec script market today. Named to The Hollywood Reporter's "Next Generation 35 Under 35" at just 26 years old, Boxerbaum has built his reputation on landing six-and seven-figure spec sales for his clients — and he's not done yet.

Useful Links:
'Don't Go In The Water' sells to Universal - Deadline
Chris Pine to star in Netflix survival thriller 'Yeti'
Python Thriller Spec 'Crush' sells to 20th - Deadline
Skydance buys short story 'Drift' for $2M+
'Cola Wars' Pitch sells to Sony - Deadline
Apatow and Spielberg attached to 'Cola Wars' - Deadline
Veteran lit agent joins Verve - Variety

In 2022, the script that rose to the very top of the Black List was Pure, a psychological horror-thriller about a woman whose obsession with food purity unravels into madness at her sister's destination wedding. The writer was Catherine Schetina, best known for her work on the acclaimed Hulu drama The Bear.
The manager behind her? Jon Hersh.
Jon founded Night Drive Management in 2017 with one clear mission: find bold voices with incendiary material.
Since then, he's built a roster of writers and writer-directors whose work has landed at Universal, Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Lionsgate, Paramount Players, AMC, and beyond — and whose scripts have become a regular fixture on the Black List year after year.
In this episode, Jon pulls back the curtain on what it actually takes to compete at the highest level of the spec market.
Jon also reflects on his path from story analyst at CAA to development executive at Broad Green Pictures before ultimately founding his own company, and what each stop taught him about the business of discovering and developing great writers.

Useful links:
"Pure" tops the Black List in 2022.
Night Drive Management Website.
Yoko Ono Biopic, "Oh Yoko!", lands on Black List 2025.
Short Story "Carrier" Sells to New Regency.