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Spec Market Roundup: November 2009
By Jason Scoggins
December 2, 2009
Here’s the cliché you knew was coming:
Not with a bang but a whimper.
As usual, the 2009 Spec Market effectively ended as of the week of
Thanksgiving. (There will be a few
intrepid souls who take scripts out between now and Sundance 2010 -- as of this
writing there are three in the marketplace for the week of November 30 -- but
conventional wisdom says all thoughts of buying have been banished by visions
of sugar plums and the Wailea Four Seasons.) November’s numbers were on par with what we’ve come to expect
from this discouraging year:
- 17 new
specs hit the market, 3 of which sold
- 14 of
the 17 went out wide, none of which sold
- 2
scripts from the ancient past (in spec market terms) also sold
It’s safe to say the fork has been well stuck in the tactic of taking a spec
out wide. The ratio for the year
to date is 18 sales out of 369 scripts (5%), but that’s front-loaded by the
numbers from January through April (15 sales out of 195 scripts, or 7.69%). Since May 1, just 3 out of the 174 scripts that went wide have sold (1.72%). I’ll update the stat in my year-end
reports and continue to track it in 2010, but I’ll stop commenting until it
becomes a “Man Bites Dog” story again.
Weekly Spec Script Breakdown:
Week of November 2:
- 3 scripts went wide, none of which have sold
- 3 additional sales were reported (1 recent, 1
from Feb 2009, 1 from July 2008)
Week of November 9:
- 8 scripts went wide, none of which have sold
- 1 script went direct to buyers and sold (to
Summit, the week of Thanksgiving)
Week of November 16:
- 3 scripts went wide, none of which have sold
- 1 additional sale was reported
Week of November 23:
- No activity (week of Thanksgiving)
Genre Breakdown, Attachments
1 – Action
2 – Comedy
1 – Sci-Fi
1 – Thriller
Producers continued to be the common denominator among the month's sales -- the
three that came out and sold in November each had major producers attached, and
one had an up-and-coming star on board (Isla Fisher, to “Desperados”). One of the two additional sales (“Dirty
Old Men”) had Morgan Freeman attached to star and produce, in addition to a
director/producer team in Peter Segal and Michael Ewing.
Buyers and Sellers
Three of the month’s five purchases were made by the major studios this year:
·
Lionsgate bought
Andrew Knauer’s “Last Stand” from WME and Energy Entertainment for Lorenzo di
Bonaventura to produce.
·
Universal bought
Ellen Rapoport’s “Desperados” from CAA and Management 360 for Isla Fisher to
star and Jason Blum and Mark Gordon to produce through Gordon’s eponymous
company.
·
Warner Bros.
bought Josh Cagan’s & Greg Coolidge’s “Dirty Old Men” from CAA and H2F for
Morgan Freeman to star and produce with Lori McCreary through his Revelations
Entertainment banner, with Peter Segal in talks to direct and produce with his
Callahan Filmworks partner Michael Ewing.
“Dirty Old Men” originally went out in February 2009, at which point Freeman
was already on board. The sale was
announced in The Hollywood Reporter on November 1, which means it actually sold
in October, but for the sake of consistent methodology we’ll count it in
November. (I'd link to the THR article but apparently they've put their archives behind their subscription wall.)
The other two purchases in November were made by other Buyers (I’ll probably
bump Summit into the “major studio” category for 2010):
·
Summit bought
Ben Magid’s “Invasion” from WME and Energy Entertainment for Eli Roth and Eric
Newman to produce (presumably through their Arcade Films banner) with Participant Media, which is reportedly bringing production financing to the project.
·
Phoenix bought
Brian McGreevy & Lee Shipman’s 2008 Black Listed script “Once Upon A Time
In Hell” from Paradigm and Mad Hatter Entertainment. The script originally went out in July 2008. This is Phoenix’s first spec purchase
in 2009.
November had some highs and lows for McGreevy & Shipman -- Paradigm went out with their spec "Future Perfect" during week 2, which went into 8 territories through 5 producers, but hasn't sold as of this writing.
You can see the agency and management company breakdown from the above, but to
recap: On the agency side, CAA and
WME had two sales each, and Paradigm finally got on the board for 2009 as
well. On the management company
side, Energy had its first two sales of the year, H2F and Management 360 each
had their second sales of 2009, and Mad Hatter had its first.
Clearly, the Mike Esola
(WME)/Brooklyn Weaver & Jake Wagner (Energy) combination is as strong as
ever. Esola had a phenomenal
month; in addition to being responsible for both of WME’s two sales, he set up
an Alan Cohen & Alan Friedland pitch called "High School Reunion" at Universal, with Imagine
producing. Separately, Brooklyn
told me a few weeks ago that his company’s focus on filling open writing
assignments this year (as opposed to last year’s focus on specs) has worked out
exceedingly well, too.
Congratulations to all.
About The Scoggins Reports:
The Scoggins Reports (Jason Scoggins’ monthly Spec Market Roundups and
Spec Market Scorecards) are terribly unscientific analyses of the feature film
spec script market based on information culled from a variety of public and
non-public sources. The numbers do not include pitch sales or
the film rights to underlying material. These are by no means official statistics, merely a fairly
complete summary. Past editions
can be found in the archives of The Business of Show Institute as well as on Scoggins’
website: www.lifeonthebubble.com.
Details on each person, project and company in the Reports can also be found at
www.itsonthegrid.com, a subscription-supported, web-based database of
feature film development information that Jason recently helped launch. For daily posts of new and updated spec
script, OWA and ODA information, check out the IOTG blog here: blog.itsonthegrid.com.
About Scoggins:
Jason Scoggins is a partner at Protocol, a literary management and
production company. He manages
writers, directors and producers of film and TV alongside Protocol’s founding
partners Brian Inerfeld and John Ufland.
Follow him here: twitter.com/itsonthegrid.
What about TMI to Disney?
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118011418.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+variety%2Fheadlines+%28Variety+-+Latest+News%29&query=TMI
Posted by: Scribe | December 8, 2009 at 06:41 PM