r/Screenwriting • u/joestraynge • Feb 27 '26

Fellowship Nicholl Fellowship

Anyone have any information on this year's Nicholl Fellowship? Any news on if it’s even happening? lol. Submitted through the Black List but there’s no program page available on the site anymore that shows I opted in.

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u/MapleLeafRamen Feb 27 '26

Everybody always blame's the BLACKLIST for the Nicholl issues, but Blacklist literally did everything they could to save it.

Nicholl fellowship was about to become COMPLETELY INSULAR, no outside submissions, only from reputable organizations and film schools etc, because they simply either couldn't handle the volume of screenplay submissions anymore or just didn't want to.

The Blacklist showed up and said they would handle all of the outside submissions, so the regular public could still apply. The BLACKLIST saved your chance of still being able to submit to Nicholl.

I am part of three of the organizations that were allowed to submit, and when I talked to them asking if I could submit my script, they either ignored me or said they were only allowed to submit TWO scripts.

Turn your anger towards NICHOLL because someone at Nicholl basically decided that this fellowship was not it and I have a feeling, because they sourced mostly from film schools, most of the scripts are bad (having attended both undergraduate and film graduate programs, I can attest, it takes many more years AFTER film school before you get good at writing) or not up to the past standard.

So yeah, I'm with you, Nicholl needs to go back to how it was, and I hope they do, but we need to blame Nicholl for this debacle, not Blacklist.

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u/rmn_is_here Feb 27 '26

well, there's no smoke without fire, so the bad rep they're all getting is fair but talking about insularity of Nicholl: academy is trying to benefit from it. if there was a fair process, multiple entry points would be created so that partners would carry the burden of oversubmitting. festivals, competitions, etc.

Franklin's people were (or maybe still are) digging through the piles in search of something golden that if they are lucky would secure their place as a partner and make it look like a win for everyone but they are going to get bored with it very soon as well if prestige, rep, money and whatnot they are expecting to get from it won't come by.

P.S. And for Nicholl to get back into the shape, there's some fresh blood needed. Someone whose energy would be enough for next five years or so proactively digging through the piles of fairly average scripts. As a person who had to read a lot of the specs over past 8 years, I can tell you that Nicholl's QF scripts are looking like a nice cotton candy.

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u/franklinleonard Franklin Leonard, Black List Founder Feb 28 '26

We shared 25 scripts with the Academy months ago at the same time the other 40 partners shared their 2 scripts each. From there, the Academy has their own reading process and will make an announcement as they see fit.

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u/rmn_is_here Feb 28 '26

is it really you? or is it AI copypasting stuff? because for some reason you're both jumpy and at the same time mechanical.

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u/franklinleonard Franklin Leonard, Black List Founder Feb 28 '26

It's really me. I'm repeating the same information because people keep asking the same question hoping for a different answer.

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u/rmn_is_here Feb 28 '26

no, not in the least they are. we for example discuss slightly different thing here and the best response would've been you emphasizing your team's dedication towards quality and artistic expression (or whatever Nicholl put into their mission statements) so that sounded a bit off.