His Black List shook up Hollywood. Now, this Columbus native releases the Georgia List

Columbus native Franklin Leonard, a film and television producer who shook up Hollywood eight years ago when he founded a platform to showcase the work of overlooked writers, has expanded his effort to diversify the industry.

This time, he shines a spotlight on his home state.

Leonard, a 1996 graduate of Brookstone School and the Ledger-Enquirer’s Page One Awards winner in math that year, is now the CEO of the Black List, which he started in 2005 as an annual survey of Hollywood’s most popular but unproduced screenplays.

Since then, the Black List has grown into a database of more than 40,000 scripts by 95,000 writers from more than 100 countries.

The attention this list has given to those screenplays has resulted in more than 300 of them being produced as feature films. Together they received more than 270 Academy Award nominations and more than 40 wins, including Oscar-winning pictures “Juno,” “The King’s Speech,” “Argo,” “Spotlight” and “Slumdog Millionaires.”

Last year, in partnership with Collective Moxie and Trilith Studios, with additional support from 3Arts Entertainment, Fifth Season, Content Talent South, the Alliance Theatre and Art Farm at Serenbe, the Black List launched the Georgia List, a new opportunity for writers with close ties to the Peach State to submit their scripts.

Now, that partnership has announced its inaugural Georgia List, promoting the top 10 scripts, as judged by representatives from each supporting partner.

The writers selected for the Georgia List get to meet with managers from 3Arts and Content Talent South for possible representation and with executives from Fifth Season for potential development deals. The Alliance Theatre stages a public reading of one script from the list, and two of the listed writers become Artists in Residence at the Art Farm at Serenbe.

They also will receive a $10,000 grant and mentoring from Jamie Linden, who wrote “We are Marshall” and “Dear John”.

Deadline reported the news of the selected scripts on the Georgia List in an article posted Dec. 7.

The list includes a script by former Ledger-Enquirer reporter Clint Williams, who wrote for this newspaper in the 1980s. Titled “Freedom Fort” and based on historic events, it tells the story of runaway slaves occupying an abandoned British fort following the War of 1812 as they try to repel invading American troops to remain free.