Case Study: The Blacklist achieves a faster, more collaborative digital writers' room with Bluescape

How The Blacklist Creates a Digital Writers’ Room

The Blacklist, the NBC crime-thriller created by Jon Bokenkamp, needed to replicate the energy and immediacy of a writers’ room after its creator relocated away from his team. Video calls weren’t enough; they required a way to see, arrange, and interact with developing story elements in real time, so they turned to Bluescape and its digital collaboration platform to digitize their writers’ room.

Bluescape provided an infinite digital workspace with real-time notecards, color‑coded templates, and on‑screen writing that let the team map six‑act structures, track multiple characters and subplots, and revisit earlier episodes quickly. The result, says The Blacklist team, was a much faster, nimbler outlining process—Bluescape helped them accelerate turning what’s on the board into a finished outline and improved efficiency when developing complex, season‑long storylines.

The Blacklist

Jon Bokenkamp

Creator and Executive Producer of NBC’s Crime Drama