It's been a while since I did a "What the heck are you talking about?" Q&A post. I got a question via email from a reader today that I thought was worth echoing here.
I have a quick question regarding your analysis; you say “2 of the 140 scripts have sold” and then the chart below it shows that there has been many more sales since the beginning of May. Is this only for “naked” specs? And what do you mean by that?
Here is the text (for your reference), below.
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The only reason to take a naked spec out wide right now is to introduce a writer to the
town on a wholesale basis (that is to say, there's no good reason to take out a naked
spec right now). The dismal statistic continues unabated: Just 2 of the 140 scripts that
have gone out wide since May 1 have sold. That's a ridiculously low percentage:
1.4%, not far off (statistically speaking) the percentage of scripts sold during the WGA
strike.
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Good question. Here's the answer:
The key qualifier is "...that have gone out wide since May 1." That is to say, specs that get sent out to the whole town, as opposed to getting slipped to select producers. I started looking at that metric back in the Spring when I was wondering what the numbers suggested was the best strategy to sell a spec in this market climate. It was the original impetus for my Spec Market Reports in the first place, hence all the chatter and ongoing numbers about wide versus select scripts in the marketplace.
To answer the other question, naked specs are scripts that don't have any attachments when they hit the marketplace. Most scripts that go wide are also naked. Regardless, whether a producer or actor or director is attached from the outset or not, the projects that have been getting set up this year have been narrowly targeted to specific buyers, and thus haven't hit the big, private or public, subscription-supported tracking boards at all until they're announced in the trades.
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