Malcolm D. Lee has spent nearly three decades proving that Black joy, Black love, and Black laughter belong on the biggest screens in the world. Now he is turning that conviction into a direct investment in the next generation of filmmakers who believe the same thing.
The Best Man director’s Blackmaled Productions announced today the launch of Love & Laughs, a new initiative developed in partnership with Tribeca Studios and Universal Film that will support emerging filmmakers with a passion for telling comedic and romantic stories.
The program, developed alongside Universal’s Filmmaker & Content Strategies team, is designed to find and develop fresh voices capable of capturing what Lee has built a career around: stories about how people connect, clash, and fall for each other.
“I am extremely excited to be partnering with Universal’s Filmmaker and Content Strategies team and Tribeca Studios to find that next voice that will bring love and laughs into the world,” Lee said in a statement. “It has long been my mission to help amplify the voices of aspiring storytellers and filmmakers that will bring us movies with heart and humor. My team at Blackmaled Productions and I are ready to roll up our sleeves with the next great filmmaker.”
The submission window is now open and closes on May 20. Applications and additional information are available at tribecafilm.com/loveandlaughs.
Love & Laughs is a one-year, non-exclusive program that will select up to three participants to create short films serving as proofs of concept, with the ultimate goal of developing those projects into full-length features. Each filmmaker selected will receive a $50,000 grant from Tribeca Studios to produce their film.
Beyond the funding, participants will receive exposure to the major studio production process, access to creative and production executives to build their professional networks, and the opportunity to screen their completed projects at a Los Angeles premiere in 2027.
The scope of the initiative is deliberate; this is not a contest with a single winner. It is a pipeline, designed to give emerging talent the kind of real-world infrastructure that independent filmmakers rarely have access to at the beginning of their careers.
For filmmakers who have stories to tell about love and laughter, the messy, funny, complicated, beautiful kind, the submission window is open now. It closes May 20.
Applications for the Love & Laughs initiative are open now through May 20, 2026. Apply at tribecafilm.com/loveandlaughs.
Photo Credit: Universal Pictures
