Life On The Bubble

Spec Market Roundup - December 2010 (with link to the PDF)

If you're on my mailing list, you know I totally phoned it in last week when it came time to put together the Spec Market Roundup for December.  Between working on a fairly big deal related to itsonthegrid.com (details to come, knock wood) and pre-loading for NYE, it was all I could do to list last month's sold specs, tracking board style.  I even neglected to schedule the mailing until today.

Below are links to the Roundup as well as the year-end Spec Market Scorecard, in case it slipped through the cracks over the holidays.  Enjoy.

 

Spec Market Roundup - December 2010 -- http://bit.ly/dQQjmc

 

Spec Market Scorecard - Year-End 2010 -- http://bit.ly/dVVgYO

Updated: Spec Market Scorecard - November 2010 (link: http://bit.ly/9Zibze)

Just published the updated Spec Market Scorecard to my mailing list.  The intro is below, and I'll update this post with a link to the Google Doc on Monday.  If you want it now, sign up for The Scoggins Report using that form toward the top of the right column.

Here's the link to the Google Doc:  

http://bit.ly/9Zibze

Have Hope you had a great weekend!
J

#####

2010 Spec Market Scorecard (Jan 1 - Nov 14)
by Jason Scoggins
November 18, 2010

As the Fall selling season winds down, the big story in the spec market is still Warner Bros.’ big push toward original material.  The Burbank studio is up to eight spec purchases in 2010, including an enormous deal for a script by Dan Fogelman this month (“Imagine,” Fogelman’s second Steve Carell-infused, multi-million dollar spec sale in twelve months), and despite not moving forward with an Olatunde Osunsanmi script, “Dark Moon,” which ended up at Dark Castle this month after Warners originally agreed to pick it up in October.

Across town, Relativity is now up to six spec purchases for 2010, a number that in 2009 would have tied the studio for first with Universal and Warner Bros.  And back in Burbank, Disney stepped up significantly this Fall as well, with two purchases in the past two months.  Disney’s two spec acquisitions are the first of the Rich Ross/Sean Bailey regime, and bring Disney’s 2010 tally on par with its 2009 number. 

Unfortunately, those are the highlights of an otherwise depressed spec market.  So far in 2010, the total number of scripts that have hit the boards is down 20% from the 2009 total, and the number of sales is down 25%.  If Warner Bros. hadn’t gone on its spec buying spree, that ratio would have been much, much worse.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. 

Spec Market Scorecard - October 2010

Just published the most recent Spec Market Scorecard to my mailing list.  The intro is below -- if you want the document itself, sign up for the Scoggins Report using the form to the right.  You'll get a link to the Scorecard as soon as you confirm your sign up.

Have a great weekend.

*****

We’re getting to that point in the year where the spec market numbers start to speak for themselves, so I’ll keep this week’s intro short.  The biggest change since the last edition of [the] Scorecard (mid-September) is how aggressive Warner Bros. has been:  The studio single-handedly revived the market with 6 spec purchases in as many weeks (including one this week that missed the cutoff for [the] report).  

Warners and Relativity (which also bought a spec this week after the cutoff) are the only studios to have exceeded their 2009 spec purchase numbers.  The rest remain woefully behind, most notably Sony and Universal, each of which has bought four fewer specs in 2010 than 2009.  There’s still a month left in the Fall selling season, and rumor has it that Sony finally has development dollars to spend (after over a year of being out of money), so I’m hoping for a big finish for 2010 even though the overall year-end numbers will be significantly lower than 2009.  Watch this space…

 

Teaser: Spec Market Scorecard (August 2010)

I'm about to upload and send the August 2010 Spec Market Scorecard out to my mailing list, so if you're not on the list and want to be, sign up for The Scoggins Report via the form toward the top of the right-hand column of the blog.

In the meantime, here's a trivia-style teaser:  Name the only major or mini-major studio to have purchased as many spec scripts in 2010 as by this point in 2009. (I'll post the answer once the Scorecard goes out, either this evening or tomorrow morning.)

 

ANSWER:  Relativity.

 

Teaser: Spec Market Scorecard (July 2010)

I'm about to upload the Spec Market Scorecard for July to bit.ly and send it out to my email list.  If you're not already on that list and want a copy of the Scorecard, use the signup form for The Scoggins Report toward the top of the right-hand column of this blog.

In the meantime, check out the following (depressing) stats:

• Only half of the studios that bought scripts through mid-July 2009 have bought any this year (8 out of 16).
• Of the eight who’ve bought scripts so far in 2010, only 1 (Paramount) has bought more specs this year than last; four have bought fewer.
• All in, the studios have bought less than half as many scripts this year as they had by mid-July last year (13 vs 28).

I've broken out all of the details on the Scorecard, which should start making the rounds tomorrow.

 

Updated Spec Market Scorecard is now available...

If you're on my email list you received one from me mid-week last week with the link to the most recent edition of the Spec Market Scorecard, covering year to date through May 15.  If you're not on my email list and want a copy, you can sign up to receive it using the form toward the top of the upper right hand column of this page.  Once you confirm your email address, you'll be redirected to the Google Doc.

Teaser:  The four weeks ending May 15 saw the most spec script sales in a year...

Half full, or half empty?

If you're already on the mailing list to receive the Scoggins Report on a regular basis, there should be an email from me in your inbox with a link to the latest edition -- the Spec Market Scorecard through April 17, 2010.  If you're not on the list and want to be, use the sign-up form at the top of the upper right column of this page.

As I write in the introduction of the Scorecard, I've always been a "glass half full" kind of guy, but the numbers so far this year are a real bummer.  Here are the datapoints I'm finding most frustrating:

• A third fewer buyers have purchased scripts so far this year compared to last (14 vs 21);
• Two major buyers have yet to break out their checkbooks in 2010 (big Fox and Warner Bros.); and
• The major studios and their labels have bought roughly half as many specs so far this year as they had by this point last year.

In the four weeks between the last two Scorecards, not one of the big buyers have bought a spec script. So what do you think?  Can you seen any light at the end of the tunnel?

Now available: 2010 Spec Market Scorecard - March edition

If you've already signed up to receive copies of The Scoggins Report, there's an email in your in box right now with a link to the latest edition:  the first 2010 Spec Market Scorecard, which rolls up spec info through March 19.  If you're not on the list, sign up to get the current report and future editions using the form at the top of the right-hand column of this page.

Have a great weekend.

Spec Market Scorecard: 2009 Year to Date

[Special thanks to Nikki Finke for posting about the Spec Market Report this morning.]

Since the below grids sometimes don't format correctly don't all show up completely thanks to the limitations of the blog format, here's the PDF of the Spec Market Scorecard for your downloading pleasure:

Download 2009 Scorecard - December

###

Spec Market Scorecard:  2009 Year End Review

by Jason Scoggins

December 16, 2009

 

As I write this, New Year’s Eve is still two weeks away, but there’s just a day and a half left in Hollywood’s calendar year.  For all intents and purposes, Friday the 18^th is the last day in the office until January 4 for most agents, managers and executives, if they haven’t already left town for warmer or colder climes.  So while there are still one or two scripts on the market with big producers attached that may well end up selling, I feel pretty safe in saying these are the final spec market numbers for 2009.  I’ve interspersed notes and observations throughout the below grids, but here are the talking points for this weekend’s holiday parties:

·      436 spec scripts came out in 2009, of which 72 sold (17%).

·      373 specs went out wide in 2009, of which 19 sold (5%).  Of those 19, only 3 sold after April 30, out of 178 attempts during the period (1.7%).

·      Universal and Warner Bros. bought the most specs among the major buyers (6 each).

·      Relativity and Intrepid bought the most specs among the other buyers (3 each).

·      CAA sold the most specs of all the agencies, and had the best batting average as well (14 sales out of 34 attempts, or 41%).

·      Benderspink is the CAA of management companies, with the most spec sales and the best batting average amongst its cohort (5 sales out of 11 attempts, or 45%).

Since there won’t be much of a Spec Market to score until March, I’ll be filling the gap with a series of articles looking back at movement in 2009’s open writing assignment market.  Watch for those here and on blog.itsonthegrid.com over the next week or so.

Happy holidays!


Overall Spec Numbers:

 

All Specs	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec*	Total
Specs	28	60	78	46	40	48	16	8	40	46	18	8	436
Sales	3	12	10	9	10	6	5	3	4	5	4	1	72
Percent	11	20	13	20	25	13	31	38	10	11	22	13	17

 

Wide Specs	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec*	Total
Specs	27	55	71	42	31	39	12	4	34	40	14	4	373
Sales	1	7	3	5	1	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	19
Percent	4	13	4	12	3	0	8	0	0	3	0	0	5

 

* - Through December 16.

 

Note:  The above grids indicate the sales of scripts in the month they originally went out.  All other grids in this report are a straight tally of each month's sales.

 

With a full year’s worth of numbers to examine, a couple of interesting patterns emerge:

1.    The wide spec basically died on April 30, 2009.  For the first four months of 2009, 8.2% of the specs that went wide to the town ended up selling (16 out of 195).  Not a great percentage, but probably to be expected, all things considered.  From May through the end of the year, however, sales of wide specs fell off a cliff:  3 out of 178 wide specs sold during that period, or 1.7%.

2.    Somewhat surprisingly, specs sold consistently throughout the year on a percentage basis.  The Spring selling season is roughly twice as long as the Fall season:  This year, we had 21 weeks in the Spring (from the end of Sundance to the week before Independence Day) versus 10 weeks in the Fall (from the week after Labor Day to the week before Thanksgiving).  So all things being equal, you’d expect to see twice as many scripts and sales in the first half of the year versus the second.  And despite the fact that not everything was equal in the latter part of 2009 (there was significant studio head turnover, plus three studios which put a moratorium on development spending), that’s pretty much reflected in the above numbers.  Spring sales were front-loaded into the first four months of the period (41 out of the 50 sales for the first half of the year), yet roughly the same percentage of scripts on the market sold in the first half of the year (16.7%) as the second (16.2%). 

As always, I wish I had data from 2006 for comparison.  Even if I had numbers for 2007 and 2008, they would be meaningless because of the WGA and SAG labor issues.  I’m already looking forward to December 2010 so I can put two years’ worth of numbers side by side.


Spec Sales By Genre:

 

Genre (sales)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Total	% of Sales
Action/Adventure		3	1	2	1	1	1	1	1	2	2		15	21
Comedy	1	2	4	4		3	1	3		2	2	1	23	32
Drama			1		4	1			1				7	10
Sci-Fi/Fantasy			2	1	2				1		1		7	10
Thriller	1	2	1	4	3	2	2		4	1	1		21	29

Spec Sales By Buyer:

Buyers (Studios)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Total
CBS Films						1			1				2
Disney				1						1			2
DreamWorks			2	1						1			4
Fox				1	1					1			3
Fox Atomic	1	1											2
Fox Searchlight			1										1
Lionsgate							2				1		3
MGM			1										1
Paramount			1			1			1	1	1		5
Screen Gems			1			1				1			3
Sony		1		1	1		1	1					5
Sony Animation				1									1
Universal		2	1					2			1		6
Warner Bros.		1		1	3						1		6

The top five spec buyers in 2009, not counting the majors’ subsidiary labels, were:

1.    Universal & Warner Bros. (tied, with 6 each)

3. Paramount & Sony (tied, with 5 each)

5. DreamWorks (4)

I was inclined at first to slot Fox in with Universal and Warner Bros., since between its three banners it also bought 6 specs, but I decided against it for two reasons:  First, these comparisons are more meaningful when the rules are the same for each company.  And second, big Fox shouldn’t get a pass.  They only bought 3 specs, the same number as Lionsgate and Screen Gems, despite having vastly deeper pockets and a much broader mandate.

Some additional things that jump out at me from the studios’ buying patterns:

·      Disney hasn’t been a player in the spec market for years, but in the above grid you can see the period in which they acknowledged having allocated all of their development funds for their fiscal year (May through September).

·      Sony has been true to its late 2009 word about not buying any new projects for a while.  They made no spec purchases after the end of the summer, and we’ve been hearing that they’re also not commencing writers on existing, non-fast-tracked projects until their development funds renew in April 2010.  This despite having their biggest year at the foreign box office ever in 2009.

·      Warner Bros. only bought one spec in the second half of the year, which seems to verify the rumors that they had put the brakes on new development spending at the same time Sony and Universal publicly said that’s what they were doing, late in the year.

·      New Line didn’t buy any specs in 2009.

Buyers (Other)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Total
Appian Way			1										1
Alcon							1						1
Beloved					1								1
Chockstone						1							1
Dimension				1									1
The Film Dept.				1									1
Gold Circle									1				1
Imagine						1							1
Intrepid				1	1	1							3
Mandate									1				1
MRC				1									1
Michelle Krumm									1				1
Montecito								1					1
National Lampoon			1										1
New Regency			1										1
Phoenix											1		1
Relativity					1	1			1				3
Reliance					1						1		2
Reliant	1												1
Sidney Kimmel		1											1
Starz Media Anim.					1								1
Summit		1									1		2
Yari Film Group									1				1

I expect Summit to buy more original material next year, since I think the majors will continue to focus on projects based on underlying material for the foreseeable future, which will put Summit in a position to leverage its “Twilight-” related windfall to its advantage in the spec market.  I’ll be looking for Alcon to pursue this niche as well with its own profits from “The Blind Side.”  It should continue to be a buyers’ market in 2010, too, so the deals should break in both companies’ favor for some time to come. 

Reliance and Relativity, on the other had, have less traditional models, so without more data it’s hard to predict whether they’ll be up or down in the spec market next year (though one would think Reliance, at least, will step up by proxy through the many high-profile development deals they’ve made in the last 18 months).  I’ll be counting Summit amongst the majors in 2010, but haven’t decided how to treat Alcon or Relativity yet.


Spec Sales by Seller:

 

Sellers (Agents)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Efficiency
Alpern Group						1							1/1  100%
APA							1	1					2/28      7%
Bohrman			1										1/10    10%
CAA		1	1	3	3	2		1	1		1		14/34    41%
Endeavor		2	2		1								5/7    71%
Gersh		1			1					1			3/10    30%
ICM			1	1		2	1		4		1		10/33    30%
Kohner	1												1/2    50%
Original Artists				2		1				1			4/8    50%
Paradigm											1		1/17      6%
UTA		2	1		2		1	2	1	1			10/30    33%
WMA		2	2	3	1								8/17    47%
WME							1		1	1	2		5/23    22%

In the spec market scrum amongst the agencies, the ranking ended up as follows:

1. CAA

2. UTA

3. ICM

4. WME

It’s worth noting, however, that WME didn’t form until May 2009.  When you take the numbers for all three of its component companies (Endeavor, WMA and WME), the combined firm would have been a dominant #1 in total scripts sold, with 18, and a close #2 behind CAA in terms of efficiency, with 38% (18 out of 47 attempts).

Also of note are the very strong results from Original Artists and Gersh, which took fewer swings than most of their brethren but had very respectable batting averages.  Contrast both companies with APA and Paradigm, which each sold fewer scripts overall than Original and Gersh yet took out several times as many projects.

Sellers (Managers)

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Efficiency

3 Arts

1

1/3    33%

Abstract

1

1

2/6    33%

Anonymous

1

1/9    11%

Art/Work

1

1/2    50%

Benderspink

2

1

1

1

5/11    45%

Brillstein

1

1/7    14%

Category 5

1

1/1  100%

Circle of Confusion

1

1

1

3/15    20%

Epidemic

1

1/1  100%

Energy

2

2/11    18%

Gotham Group

1

1/5    20%

H2F

1

1

2/11    18%

Hopscotch

1

1/3    33%

Hung

1

1/3    33%

Industry

1

1/5    20%

Justin Silvera Mgmt

1

1/2    50%

Kaplan/Perrone

1

1

1

1

4/12    33%

Luber/Roklin

1

1

2/4    50%

Mad Hatter

1

1/2    50%

Madhouse Ent.

1

1/1  100%

Management 360

1

1

2/5    40%

Marty Shapiro Mgmt

1

1/1  100%

Mosaic

1

1/5    20%

Principal

1

1/7    14%

Principato/Young

1

1

1

3/8    38%

Radmin

1

1/2    50%

Rain Mgmt Group

1

1/1  100%

Tom Sawyer Ent.

1

1/2    50%

Underground

1

1

2/5    40%

Viviano-Feldman

1

1/7    14%

The top management companies in the spec market in 2009 were, in order:

1.    Benderspink

2.    Kaplan/Perrone

3.    Principato-Young

4.    Circle of Confusion

The top three of those companies took quite a few shots and ended up with solid percentages.  Benderspink, though, was in a class by itself, setting up more scripts in 2009 than all but the big four agencies listed above and exceeding even CAA’s efficiency rating.  I debated whether to include Circle of Confusion on the above list at all, given their low percentage, but they deserve to be there as much as Principato-Young, even if they did make 50% more attempts.


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 (http://bit.ly/2HRZ67) as well as on Scoggins’ website:  http://www.lifeonthebubble.com. 

Details on each person, project and company in the Reports can also be found at http://www.itsonthegrid.com, a subscription-supported, web-based database of feature film development information recently founded by Scoggins and several other literary managers.  For daily posts of new and updated spec script, OWA and ODA information, check out the IOTG blog here:  http://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:  http://twitter.com/itsonthegrid.

Teaser: Spec Market Scorecard year-end numbers

Just wrapped up the Spec Market Scorecard for the end of the year.  It was quite an interesting exercise -- seeing the year's complete numbers all laid out like that provides a bit of perspective on what felt like an awful year for screenwriters (and lit agents and managers).  I'll post the report here (along with a link to the PDF) on Friday.  For now, some teaser numbers:

·      436 spec scripts came out in 2009, of which 72 sold (17%).

·      373 specs went out wide in 2009, of which 19 sold (5%).  Of those 19, only 3 sold after April 30, out of 178 attempts during the period (1.7%).

·      Universal and Warner Bros. bought the most specs among the major buyers (6 each).

·      Relativity and Intrepid bought the most specs among the other buyers (3 each).

·      CAA sold the most specs of all the agencies, and had the best batting average as well (14 sales out of 34 attempts, or 41%).  [But there's a twist, which you'll have to read the report to find out.]

·      Benderspink is the CAA of management companies, with the most spec sales and the best batting average amongst its cohort (5 sales out of 11 attempts, or 45%).

Check back Friday for the full Scorecard.  Better yet, follow this blog on twitter (http://twitter.com/lifeonthebubble) and get notified the minute the article posts here.  I'll have a link to it on the Facebook fan page as well.  If you're not already a fan, why not become one now?  Click that little link on the left, at the top.

Spec Market Scorecard: 2009 to Date (November)

Spec Market Scorecard:  2009 to Date (November 15)

by Jason Scoggins

November 17, 2009
 

[Note: Like last month, the grids are wide enough that the formatting is tweaked in a couple of spots below and even may not show up completely for all browsers.  So here's a link to a PDF of this month's Scorecard for your downloading pleasure:  Download 2009 Scorecard - November ]

 

This Scorecard basically coincides with the end of the Fall selling season, and thus the end of the 2009 spec market.  (Which sucked, in case you haven’t been reading these reports all year.)  While there will no doubt be another sale or two between now and the end of the year (there’s a spec in the marketplace as I write this that has as good a chance of selling as anything that’s gone out in 2009, for example), the town is already starting to slow down for the holiday break, and I’m looking forward to sifting through the data in the grids over the next month or so and thinking about the lessons of 2009.

 

In the meantime, the high-level takeaways remain what they have been for the entire second half of the year:  Having a brand name producer champion your project is the key to getting a movie set up, and being selective about who you’re trying to sell to is better than the shotgun approach.

 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

 

 

Overall Spec Numbers:

 

All Specs	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov*	Total
Specs	28	60	78	46	40	48	16	8	40	46	17	427
Sales	3	10	10	9	10	6	5	3	4	5	2	67
Percent	11	17	13	20	25	13	31	38	10	11	12	16

 

Wide Specs	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov*	Total
Specs	27	56	71	42	31	39	12	4	34	40	14	370
Sales	1	6	3	5	1	0	1	0	0	1	0	17
Percent	4	11	4	12	3	0	8	0	0	3	0	5

 

* - Through November 15.

 

Note:  The above grids show the sales of scripts in the month they originally went out, adjusted from month to month as necessary.  The below grids are a straight tally of each month's sales.

 

 

Spec Sales By Genre:

 

Genre (sales)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Total	% of Sales
Action/Adventure		3	1	2	1	1	1	1	1	2	1	14	21
Comedy	1	2	4	4		3	1	3		2	1	21	31
Drama			1		4	1			1			7	10
Sci-Fi/Fantasy			2	1	2				1			6	9
Thriller	1	2	1	4	3	2	2		2	1		18	27

 

 

Spec Sales By Buyer:

 

Buyers (Studios)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Total
CBS Films						1			1			2
Disney				1						1		2
DreamWorks			2	1						1		4
Fox				1	1					1		3
Fox Atomic	1	1										2
Fox Searchlight			1									1
Lionsgate							2				1	3
MGM			1									1
Paramount			1			1			1	1		4
Screen Gems			1			1				1		3
Sony		1		1	1		1	1				5
Sony Animation				1								1
Universal		2	1					2			1	6
Warner Bros.		1		1	3							5

 

Buyers (Other)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Total
Appian Way			1									1
Alcon							1					1
Beloved					1							1
Chockstone						1						1
Dimension				1								1
The Film Dept.				1								1
Gold Circle									1			1
Imagine						1						1
Intrepid				1	1	1						3
Mandate									1			1
MRC				1								1
Montecito								1				1
National Lampoon			1									1
New Regency			1									1
Relativity					1	1			1			3
Reliance					1							1
Reliant	1											1
Sidney Kimmel		1										1
Starz Media Anim.					1							1
Summit		1										1

 

 

Spec Sales by Seller:

 

Sellers (Agents)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Efficiency
Alpern Group						1						1/1  100%
APA							1	1				2/28      7%
Bohrman			1									1/10    10%
CAA		1	1	3	3	2		1	1		1	13/33    39%
Endeavor		2	2		1							5/7    71%
Gersh		1			1					1		3/10    30%
ICM			1	1		2	1		2			7/29    24%
Kohner	1											1/2    50%
Original Artists				2		1				1		4/8    50%
UTA		2	1		2		1	2	1	1		10/30    33%
WMA		2	2	3	1							8/17    47%
WME							1		1	1	1	4/21    19%

 

 

Sellers (Managers)

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Efficiency

3 Arts

1

1/3    33%

Abstract

1

1

2/6    33%

Anonymous

1

1/9    11%

Art/Work

1

1/2    50%

Benderspink

2

1

1

1

5/11    45%

Brillstein

1

1/7    14%

Category 5

1

1/1  100%

Circle of Confusion

1

1

1

3/15    20%

Epidemic

1

1/1  100%

Energy

1

1/10    10%

Gotham Group

1

1/5    20%

H2F

1

1/9    11%

Hopscotch

1

1/3    33%

Hung

1

1/3    33%

Industry

1

1/5    20%

Justin Silvera Mgmt

1

1/2    50%

Kaplan/Perrone

1

1

1

1

4/12    33%

Luber/Roklin

1

1

2/4    50%

Madhouse Ent.

1

1/1  100%

Management 360

1

1

2/5    40%

Marty Shapiro Mgmt

1

1/1  100%

Mosaic

1

1/5    20%

Principal

1

1/7    14%

Principato/Young

1

1

1

3/8    38%

Radmin

1

1/2    50%

Rain Mgmt Group

1

1/1  100%

Tom Sawyer Ent.

1

1/2    50%

Underground

1

1

2/5    40%

 

 

About The Scoggins Reports:
The Scoggins Reports (Jason Scoggins’ monthly Spec Market Roundup and Spec Market Scorecard) 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 nor 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 (http://bit.ly/2HRZ67) as well as on Scoggins’ website:  http://www.lifeonthebubble.com.  Details on each person, project and company in the Reports can also be found at http://www.itsonthegrid.com, the subscription-supported, web-based database of feature film development information that Jason recently helped launch.  

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.  You can follow his daily posts and tweets here:  http://twitter.com/jscoggins.

Teaser: Spec Market Scorecard for November

I was incredibly late pulling my Spec Market Scorecard together again this week - my public apologies to Marvin Acuna and his team at The Business of Show Institute, who have now had to rush their weekly newsletter out the door at the last minute because of me three times in a row.  

The Scorecard will publish in the BOSI newsletter tomorrow, and I'll post it here afterward.  In the meantime, here are a couple of teaser stats for you.

• 427 specs went to market in 2009, of which 67 sold.
• 370 of those specs went out wide, of which 17 sold.
• Since the end of April 2009, 174 scripts went out wide, of which...wait for it...just 3 have sold.

And on that happy note, have a fantastic Thanksgiving, everyone.  If you need me, I'll be the guy off in the corner, drinking bourbon and mumbling the serenity prayer.

Shameless plug: Check out www.itsonthegrid.com

I just posted the Spec Market Roundup for October, and since that always means a bump in traffic here, I wanted to post a reminder to check out www.itsonthegrid.com, the new feature film development website that launched last week.

Reader question: Wide vs Naked Specs

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.
--
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.
--

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.  

Scoggins Endorses: www.phonesheet.com

I've mentioned this in passing a few times over the past couple of months, but I want to haul out the megaphone to promote a friend's product:  www.phonesheet.com.  If you make or receive more than a handful of phone calls a day, you're going to want to sign up for this service.  And if you do, be sure to enter the promo code "scoggins" -- you'll get 10% off the already-so-low-you-won't-believe-it monthly fees.

Those of you already working in the entertainment business will know exactly what the site is/does just from the name.  For those of you unfamiliar with the term, phonesheets are the tools everyone in Hollywood uses to keep track of incoming and outgoing phone calls.  Back when I started as an assistant at ICM, the old school paper-based phonesheets were just getting converted over to electronic (usually FileMaker Pro-based) versions.  Lots of us assistants still had to keep track of calls with pen and paper and various colors of highlighters, believe it or not -- hundreds of marks and codes per day indicating "left words" and "returns" and so on.  (Ah, the joy of call dumping at the end of the day so your boss could start the next day's phonesheet with a clean sheet of paper.)

One of the guys who designed and built those FileMaker Pro phonesheets was Jan Zands, who earlier this year launched his new service.  www.phonesheet.com is the supercharged, web-based version of your now-old school desktop-based phonesheets.  I've been beta-testing it for the past six months or so, and it's totally badass.  Here are some of the things I love about it:

1. Since it's web-based, you can access your phonesheet wherever you are.
2. More than one person can access a given phonesheet simultaneously (no charge for additional users of a given phonesheet), which means my assistant can update it for me as well.
3. Its color-coding is completely intuitive (watch the demo video on the site to see the thought process behind it): red = incoming calls I need to return, blue = calls I've made/returned, green = outbound calls I want to make.
4. If your contact list is in Outlook or Entourage, it's easy to upload your whole address book.

PLUS...there's a mobile version of the service for Blackberries called Phonesheet2Go that's a game-changer (the iPhone version is already in the works; in the meantime, you can access your phonesheet with your iPhone through Safari).  Every call I make or receive gets logged right there on my phone and automatically syncs with the web-based version.

There's a lot more to love about www.phonesheet.com than just the above, but you should check out the demo yourself.  Regardless, the pricing is pretty perfect:  $6.95/month (when you sign up for 6 months; $9.95/month otherwise), plus $2.95/month if you use the mobile version.  Again, if you enter "scoggins" as the promo code you'll get 10% off those prices for the first year.  And there's absolutely no downside thanks to the 30-day free trial they're currently offering.

Bottom line, whether you're working in Hollywood or not, if any part of your day is spent working the phones, you've at least got to check this thing out.  Trust me, you'll thank me later.

Spec Market Scorecard: 2009 to Date (October 16)

Download 2009 Scorecard - October 16 PDF

Spec Market Scorecard:  Year-to-Date (October 16)

by Jason Scoggins

October 21, 2009

[Housekeeping note:  The grids are getting wide enough that they may not completely show up below, depending on your browser.  I've attached a PDF of the Scorecard to this post -- click the link above to download it.  - JPS]
 

This isn't exactly the return to form I'd been hoping for. The end of the Fall selling season fast approaches, and as you can see from the below numbers the spec market is as flat as it's been since the end of April. Which in retrospect is not that surprising given the past month's remarkable executive turnover (huge changes at the top of Disney and Universal, plus adjustment at Fox) and conflicting messages coming out of the studios. On the one hand, the majors are saying they're out of money in the short term (Sony and Universal even made public statements regarding curtailed spending on new and existing development, respectively). On the other, a bunch of high profile pitches and other projects have sold since the end of the Summer, including at least a couple in the seven figures.

It's clear from the swings in the number of new scripts on the market week-to-week over the past month (from the last week of September: 4, 17 and 5, and just half a dozen so far this week) that the town is not quite sure what to make of the fact that specs continue not to sell. One would think more than 9% of new spec scripts would get set up coming out of the Summer break, but maybe this is the new normal.

A couple of things are certain, however:

• Producers are the new black when it comes to setting up a script. All but one or two of the specs that sold in 2009 were bought by or for a significant if not major producer (and just a handful of this year's sales had big actors or directors attached). This underscores the efficacy of the newly announced development funds secured by Bruckheimer and Parkes/MacDonald. Hopefully we'll see more of these deals in the next several months and the formal emergence of a new class of buyer.

• 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.

Overall Spec Numbers:

All Specs	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct*	Total
Specs	28	60	78	46	40	48	16	8	40	24	388
Sales	3	10	10	9	10	6	5	3	4	2	62
Percent	11	17	13	20	25	13	31	38	10	8	16

Wide Specs	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct*	Total
Specs	27	56	71	42	31	39	12	4	34	20	336
Sales	1	6	3	5	1	0	1	0	0	0	17
Percent	4	11	4	12	3	0	8	0	0	0	5

* - Through October 16.

Note: The above grids show the sales of scripts in the month they originally went out, adjusted from month to month as necessary. The below grids are a straight tally of each month's sales.

Spec Sales By Genre:

Genre (sales)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Total	% of Sales
Action		3	1	2	1	1	1	1	1	1	12	19
Comedy	1	2	4	4		3	1	3		1	19	31
Drama			1		4	1			1		7	11
Sci-Fi/Fantasy			2	1	2				1		6	10
Thriller	1	2	1	4	3	2	2		2		17	27

Spec Sales By Buyer:

Buyers (Studios)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Total
CBS Films						1			1		2
Disney				1						1	2
DreamWorks			2	1							3
Fox				1	1					1	3
Fox Atomic	1	1									2
Fox Searchlight			1								1
Lionsgate							2				2
MGM			1								1
Paramount			1			1			1		3
Screen Gems			1			1					2
Sony		1		1	1		1	1			5
Sony Animation				1							1
Universal		2	1					2			5
Warner Bros.		1		1	3						5

Buyers (Other)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Total
Appian Way			1								1
Alcon							1				1
Beloved					1						1
Chockstone						1					1
Dimension				1							1
The Film Dept.				1							1
Gold Circle									1		1
Imagine						1					1
Intrepid				1	1	1					3
Mandate									1		1
MRC				1							1
Montecito								1			1
National Lampoon			1								1
New Regency			1								1
Relativity					1	1			1		3
Reliance					1						1
Reliant	1										1
Sidney Kimmel		1									1
Starz Media Anim.					1						1
Summit		1									1

The one really remarkable spec sale in the past month was Relativity's purchase of Ric Roman Waugh & Michael Lerner's "Rubicon," which Waugh will direct and Atlas will produce. Nicole Clemens at ICM originally took this script out wide in March 2009.

Spec Sales by Seller:

Sellers (Agents)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Efficiency
Alpern Group						1					1/1 100%
APA							1	1			2/27 7%
Bohrman			1								1/9 11%
CAA		1	1	3	3	2		1	1		12/32 38%
Endeavor		2	2		1						5/7 71%
Gersh		1			1						2/9 22%
ICM			1	1		2	1		2		7/28 25%
Kohner	1										1/2 50%
Original Artists				2		1					3/7 43%
UTA		2	1		2		1	2	1	1	10/28 36%
WMA		2	2	3	1						8/17 47%
WME							1		1		2/17 12%

Sellers (Managers)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Efficiency
3 Arts											1/3 33%
Abstract			1		1						2/6 33%
Anonymous					1						1/8 17%
Art/Work				1							1/2 50%
Benderspink		2		1	1						3/10 30%
Brillstein				1							1/7 14%
Category 5					1						1/1 100%
Circle of Confusion		1									2/13 15%
Epidemic			1								1/1 100%
Gotham Group					1						1/4 25%
H2F							1				1/8 13%
Hopscotch											1/1 100%
Hung				1							1/2 50%
Industry	1										1/5 20%
Justin Silvera Mgmt						1					1/1 100%
Kaplan/Perrone	1				1	1					4/11 36%
Luber/Roklin		1	1								2/4 50%
Madhouse Ent.							1				1/1 100%
Management 360						1					1/4 25%
Marty Shapiro Mgmt					1						1/1 100%
Mosaic		1									1/3 33%
Principal				1							1/6 17%
Principato/Young			1								2/7 29%
Radmin					1						1/2 50%
Rain Mgmt Group								1			1/1 100%
Tom Sawyer Ent.									1		1/2 50%
Underground				1		1					2/5 40%

Copyright 2009 - Jason Scoggins.  All rights reserved.

About The Scoggins Report

The Scoggins Report is a semi-monthly, terribly unscientific analysis of the feature film spec script market based on information culled from a variety of public and non-public sources. The Report does not include pitch sales nor the film rights to underlying material. The aggregated data in the Report are by no means official numbers, just a fairly complete summary of periodic market activity. Past installments of The Scoggins Report can be found in the BOSI archives at http://www.thebusinessofshowinstitute.com/newsletter/past-newsletters.hml, as well as on Jason Scoggins' website, http://www.lifeonthebubble.com.

About Jason 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.

Teaser: Spec Market Scorecard for October

Wrapped up the Spec Market Scorecard for October last night and the numbers are unsurprisingly awful.  It'll post some time tomorrow after the BOSI newsletter goes out.  Here's a teaser stat:  Just 2 of the 140 specs that have gone out wide since May 1 have sold.  That's 1.4%, nearly the same number of specs that sold during the WGA strike (that is, zero).  It's so bad that a couple of our producer friends recently commented that the only reason they're even reading material and asking for territories is to have something to do on a day-to-day basis.  And an MP Lit agent at one of the big four agencies told me a week or so ago that he doesn't think the spec market will ever heal, that the model itself is broken.

I'm looking for the silver lining here, something to indicate that things will loosen up at some point, but I'm not seeing it yet.  The only glimmer of hope is the trend (if that's what it is, hopefully) of big producers putting development financing together, buying and developing material independently, and then presenting full-blown packages to the studios.  

You guys are smart -- any thoughts or comments or predictions?

Spec Market Scorecard: 2009 to Date (September 15)

Spec Market Scorecard: 2009 to Date

by Jason Scoggins

September 15, 2009

UPDATE 9/18/2009:  Obviously, today's news that Universal has frozen development until 2010 is a bit of a setback to my below optimism.  Maybe Disney, whose development funds replenish within the next month or so, will step into the breach and show Paramount and Universal what's what.  Given their track record, though, I'm not holding my breath.

At last. Summer's only been over for about a week and already the spec market is heating back up. It'll be interesting to see how the green shoots in the economy at large will affect buyers' checkbooks between now and the holidays. For the better, hopefully, and in the spirit of that post-recessionary optimism, I'm not going to update that depressing percentage of wide specs that have sold since April (for this month, at least).

A couple of quick notes before I get to the numbers:

• As I wrote in the Spec Market Roundup for August a couple of weeks ago, I missed Universal's March purchase of Jonathan Herman's dramatic thriller "Rites of Men" from WMA and Luber/Roklin. It's now reflected in the below grids.

• According to a post on www.bloody-disgusting.com last week, Sony bought Christopher Allen Nelson & Mitch Rouse's action horror spec script "Supermax" for Broken Road to produce not long ago. My friends at www.trackingb.com report that the sale happened in July, and it's reflected in the grids accordingly. Also, as of this writing, I hadn't been able to confirm the reps involved in the sale, so for now I've given it to Rouse's reps, APA and 3 Arts.

As you can see from the below, August did in fact end up the slowest month of 2009 so far. September is already ahead, at least in terms of the number of scripts on the market. Let's keep our fingers crossed that sales pick up as well.

Overall Spec Numbers:

All Specs	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep*	Total
Specs	28	60	78	46	40	48	15	8	10	333
Sales	3	10	9	9	10	6	4	3	2	56
Percent	11	17	12	20	25	13	27	38	20	17

Wide Specs	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep*	Total
Specs	27	56	71	42	31	39	11	4	8	289
Sales	1	6	2	5	1	0	1	0	0	16
Percent	4	11	3	12	3	0	9	0	0	6

* - Through September 15.

Note: The above grids show the sales of scripts in the month they originally went out, adjusted from month to month as necessary. The below grids are a straight tally of each month's sales.

Spec Sales By Genre:

Genre (sales)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Total	% of Sales
Action		3	1	2	1	1	1	1		10	18
Comedy	1	2	4	4		3	1	3		18	32
Drama			1		4	1			1	7	13
Sci-Fi/Fantasy			2	1	2				1	6	11
Thriller	1	2	1	4	3	2	2			15	27

Spec Sales By Buyer:

Buyers (Studios)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Total
CBS Films						1				1
Disney				1						1
DreamWorks			2	1						3
Fox				1	1					2
Fox Atomic	1	1								2
Fox Searchlight			1							1
Lionsgate							2			2
MGM			1							1
Paramount			1			1			1	3
Screen Gems			1			1				2
Sony		1		1	1		1	1		5
Sony Animation				1						1
Universal		2	1					2		5
Warner Bros.		1		1	3					5

Buyers (Other)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Total
Appian Way			1							1
Alcon							1			1
Beloved					1					1
Chockstone						1				1
Dimension				1						1
The Film Dept.				1						1
Imagine						1				1
Intrepid				1	1	1				3
Mandate									1	1
MRC				1						1
Montecito								1		1
National Lampoon			1							1
New Regency			1							1
Relativity					1	1				2
Reliance					1					1
Reliant	1									1
Sidney Kimmel		1								1
Starz Media Anim.					1					1
Summit		1								1

The significant new item in the above grid is Mandate's first spec purchase of the year: Jason Ubaldi's "Dream On," from ICM and Tom Sawyer Entertainment (more on this below).

Spec Sales by Seller:

Sellers (Agents)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Efficiency
Alpern Group						1				1/1 100%
APA							1	1		2/21 10%
Bohrman			1							1/8 13%
CAA		1	1	3	3	2		1	1	12/29 41%
Endeavor		2	2		1					5/8 63%
Gersh		1			1					2/8 25%
ICM			1	1		2	1		1	6/26 23%
Kohner	1									1/2 50%
Original Artists				2		1				3/6 50%
UTA		2	1		2		1	2		8/22 36%
WMA		2	2	3	1					8/17 47%
WME								1		1/10 10%

Looking back over the summer (for the purposes of this note, let's call it Independence Day through Labor Day), UTA had the best season, with three sales despite essentially going on vacation for the final three weeks of the holiday (they haven't taken out a spec since my mid-August Scorecard). ICM would have tied APA and CAA (make that Ava Jamshidi at ICM would have tied them) with two each if the sale of the above-mentioned "Dream On" had happened a week earlier.

Sellers (Managers)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Efficiency
3 Arts										1/3 33%
Abstract			1		1					2/4 50%
Anonymous					1					1/6 17%
Art/Work				1						1/1 100%
Benderspink		2		1	1					4/11 36%
Brillstein				1						1/5 20%
Category 5					1					1/1 100%
Circle of Confusion		1								1/12 8%
Epidemic			1							1/1 100%
Gotham Group					1					1/4 25%
H2F							1			1/8 13%
Hung				1						1/2 50%
Industry	1									1/4 25%
Justin Silvera Mgmt						1				1/1 100%
Kaplan/Perrone	1				1	1				3/8 38%
Luber/Roklin		1	1							2/4 50%
Madhouse Ent.							1			1/1 100%
Management 360						1				1/2 50%
Marty Shapiro Mgmt					1					1/1 100%
Mosaic		1								1/3 33%
Principal				1						1/6 17%
Principato/Young			1							2/5 40%
Radmin					1					1/2 50%
Rain Mgmt Group								1		1/1 100%
Tom Sawyer Ent.									1	1/2 50%
Underground				1		1				2/5 40%

In addition to the missed Luber/Roklin sale in March and 3 Arts' sale in July, the other significant adjustment to the above grid is Tom Sawyer's first sale of 2009 last week (Jason Ubaldi's "Dream On"), their second attempt of the year. The script was based on Rachel Miller's concept, and she will produce alongside Laurence Mark. Way to go, Rachel and Jesse.

About The Scoggins Report

The Scoggins Report is a semi-monthly, terribly unscientific analysis of the feature film spec script market based on information culled from a variety of public and non-public sources. The Report does not include pitch sales nor the film rights to underlying material. The aggregated data in the Report are by no means official numbers, just a fairly complete summary of periodic market activity. Past installments of The Scoggins Report can be found in the BOSI archives at http://www.thebusinessofshowinstitute.com/newsletter/past-newsletters.hml, as well as on Jason Scoggins' website, http://www.lifeonthebubble.com.

About Jason 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. After getting his start in the entertainment business as an assistant at ICM in 1995, Scoggins became a TV Lit agent at Gersh, followed by a stint at Writers & Artists Agency and then several years in the wilderness (Park City, Utah, to be specific). He returned to the business in 2007, just in time to be impacted by the run-up to the WGA strike.

Who does Scoggins think he is?

A commenter posted a series of questions/comments about my Spec Market reports from a friend (I think the person is a screenwriter, based on some of the comments) on the July Scorecard that I thought warranted a separate post in response.  The commenter edited the friend's emails to keep company- and person-specific information out of the conversation, and I've edited a bit further for clarity in this context.  I'm not trying to sugarcoat anything, though, and you can read the original post here.

Where's/how's [Scoggins] getting his data?  Our own management company isn't on these charts, so we know there are at least 4 more specs than recorded, right?  With 0 sales.  What about the 100 other management companies their size, [A, B and C] for example (all small 1-3 person lit management companies)?  And those are just the three that I've personally worked with.  Did they not send out a single spec?

I collect and confirm my data from a bunch of sources:

• tracking boards, including www.trackingb.com (which I highly recommend) among half a dozen others; 
• the trades; 
• several sites that boil down the trades, including DoneDealPro.com and FilmNewsBriefs.com (which I also highly recommend); and 
• personal conversations with agents, managers, producers and executives.  

Based on those conversations, I'm pretty confident I'm collecting information on basically all the scripts that go wide, but I know I miss the bulk of those scripts that get slipped out to just a few people and don't hit the bigger boards.  This is the reason I started separating the numbers for specs that go wide from the others:  The sales percentages for the latter are meaningless, since I don't have enough data on the ones that don't sell.  I've been pretty up-front about this in several of my Spec Market articles, in particular the June Scorecard.

Regarding specific management companies that haven't made the Scorecard, the point of the Scorecard is to list the studios and other buyers who have bought specs this year, and the agents and managers involved in selling those scripts.  It doesn't list companies who haven't sold or bought anything this year, so if the management companies this person references are in this category, they would by definition not be included in the Scorecard.  That said, the grid I use to pull my numbers together includes the information for hundreds of such scripts, including who sent them out.  If the material these companies sent out hit the boards, chances are I've captured it.

It's hard to imagine he's tracking every spec that "goes out".  And what is "going out"?  Submitted to all major/mini-major buyers?  Or one manager giving one spec to one friend (maybe even a producer, not a buyer), in which case it COULD sell, right?  This data is not making the charts...except, my guess is, only in the rare occasion that it sells...creating a bias toward good news...

Again, I think I'm getting more or less every script that goes wide to producers, and I trust people will point out the few projects I miss.  But I definitely can't capture the scripts that stay below the radar unless the rep contacts me directly to let me know.  (And by the way, I wish more reps and assistants would do this; I'm perfectly capable of keeping the details on the DL, and it would be great to have a better dataset to mine for insights into the market.  Email me directly at jscoggins at lifeonthebubble dot com.)  Often, the first time I hear about a script that went directly to just a couple of people is when news of the sale hits the trades.  I wish I had a better window on this part of the market, but it is what it is.

I don't think I'm biased toward good news; if anything I've been pretty pessimistic about the numbers.  You only have to read the opening remarks of my articles to get a sense of this.

Which is only to say those companies (including the one WE work with...)  ARE submitting specs (the three above all did for me, some of them multiple times...)...but are below the radar...and the numbers are FAR worse than we imagine. 

I think the numbers are pretty solid for the the stuff that goes wide, but yes, it stands to reason that the bulk of the numbers I don't have are for scripts that go out to select producers/buyers and then don't sell, which would mean the sales percentages are much worse than the Scorecard shows.  

Where's he getting his numbers?  Reverse engineering from sales?  TrackingB?  Well, two of our acquaintances' screenplays were [on TrackingB] and not included on these tables, so he's not getting his numbers there, right?  So, he's probably just counting on data he collects personally from agents and managers?  He could be going from sales recorded in Variety and Done Deal, etc., but then how does he capture data on "non-sales"?  Voluntarily submitted by agencies and managers?  That would be suspect (though you think it'd be higher with self-reporting).  Tracking boards?  That'd be best, I suppose, but what about things that didn't make tracking?  What about submissions by companies/individuals below the radar?

Again, I'm covering all of the above sources pretty thoroughly, but I welcome additional input from the community to make sure the numbers are as complete as possible.  If the two acquaintances' scripts went out wide but didn't sell, I'd bet I have them on my grid.  If they did sell and I haven't included them in my numbers, I'd like to hear about it.  There was a case a week or two ago where a script that sold in March, before I locked down my methodology, didn't make it onto my grid.  I've since corrected that and will make a note of it in my next Roundup and Scorecard (sorry, Luber-Roklin), and I invite anyone else who thinks their script sales aren't in my numbers to let me know so I can fix the problem.

What's the difference between "Wide" and "All Specs"...what category(ies) are being added to "Wide" to get it to "All"? 

"Wide" is any script that gets sent out widely to the town.  Admittedly, this is pretty subjective, and I basically have to rely on the reps themselves to label their strategy appropriately.  For example, if a script is said to be "out to select producers" or goes "direct to buyers," it's not being sent "Wide" (even though everyone who wants it will eventually get their hands on it) and I keep it out of the "Wide" numbers.  "All Specs" means those that went Wide plus the rest (projects that get reported as sold in the trades, plus those few scripts each month that hit the boards or come up in conversation that aren't going wide).  If I had better data for "Select" scripts, I'd list those numbers in their own grid, but at this point those numbers are meaningless, so I simply list "Wide" and "All."  

If you go through the 7 months he's tracked the average sale rate is 20.7% which seems WILDLY high to me and is skewed by the 1 in 5 sale he lists for the first half of July...which seems more like 20% than 33% to me...and the asterisk doesn't seem to explain that deviation...this is the only math I checked, but only because it stood out as highest, but maybe there's something in the numbers I don't get.

There was definitely an error in one "Wide/Percent Sold" cell in the July Scorecard (it should indeed have been 20% instead of 33%), and by the time you read this I'll have fixed it.  I can't tell where the above 20.7% number comes from, though. The two sets of numbers seem pretty straightforward to me, but if that's just because I'm familiar with them and other people are confused at how I've laid them out, please don't hesitate to suggest alternative ways to go.

Lastly, I think there's not really enough data here to constitute a statiscally significant sample -- 304 specs might be large enough, but the ones that sold...may not be really.  When we say 30% of those sold are comedies, we're talking about a very small number of screenplays (14).

I totally agree, the dataset is not a statistically significant sample, with the possible exception of the "Wide" numbers, since I think I have pretty good underlying data for that category. Regardless, the "About The Scoggins Report" blurb at the bottom of my monthly articles specifically acknowledges that it's a "terribly unscientific analysis."  I do think the numbers are interesting in and of themselves, and I think one can draw some conclusions about the market as a whole from them.  But I wouldn't decide to sign with one agency or management company over another, for example, just because one had a higher spec sale batting average.  I might take into consideration a total lack of sales in 2009, perhaps, but that number really doesn't paint the picture of the agent's or manager's or company's capabilities.

I'm glad he's doing this, and even if it's invalid, it's better than nothing as far as guidance for what to write and what representation to seek or sign with.  And maybe it IS valid, but...what can we really learn from it?  WGA stat:  40,000 scripts registered annually (and that's if all are registered which they're not), so...75% EVER get circulated..."20%" of those circulated ever sell...meaning... .15% sell, I think?  1.5 in every thousand written?

I don't think it's useful for aspiring writers to consider the total number of scripts registered with the Guild as a baseline.  Relative quality varies so widely among that cohort that in many cases you might as well be comparing a child's drawing to a Picasso.  Or at least, a 2nd Grader's self-portrait with that of someone who had been to art school for a year or two.  Don't get me wrong, the numbers are definitely daunting, and breaking into the business as a writer is still a crapshoot.  But there are screenwriters and there are screenwriters, if you know what I mean.

So?  What if we like the odds?  We write.  What if we don't?  We still write.

Well said.

Spec Market Scorecard: 2009 to Date (August 15)

Spec Market Scorecard:  2009 to Date

By Jason Scoggins

August 15, 2009

Since there's been so little activity in the past couple of weeks (not a single spec went wide the week of August 10, for example), my clever opening is simply an update of a few of the stats I've been watching lately:

• Summer vacation: August is on track to tie July for the slowest month in overall spec activity (7 so far in August, compared to 14 total in July), though it's already tied January and July for fewest sales (with 3).


• Going out wide remains a terrible sales strategy: Just 2 of the 84 scripts that went wide after May 1 have sold. That's 2.4% over the past 15 weeks. Time to assemble a death panel.

Overall Spec Numbers:

All Specs	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug*	Total
Specs	28	60	77	46	40	48	14	7	320
Sales	3	9	8	9	10	6	3	3	52
% Sold	11%	15%	10%	20%	25%	13%	21%	43%	16%

Wide Specs	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug*	Total
Specs	27	56	71	42	31	39	11	3	280
Sales	2	5	2	5	1	0	1	0	16
% Sold	7%	9%	3%	12%	3%	0%	9%	0%	6%

* As of August 15. 

Reminder: While the below grids tally each month's sales, the above are adjusted to show the sales of scripts in the month they originally went out. 

Spec Sales By Genre:

Genres (sales)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Total	% of Sales
Action		3	1	2	1	1		1	9	17%
Comedy	1	2	4	4		3	1	3	18	35%
Drama					4	1			5	10%
Sci-Fi/Fantasy			2	1	2				5	10%
Thriller	1	2	1	4	3	2	2		15	29%

Spec Sales By Buyer:

Buyers (studios)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Total
CBS Films						1			1
Disney				1					1
Dreamworks			2	1					3
Fox				1	1				2
Fox Atomic	1	1							2
Fox Searchlight		1							1
Lionsgate							2		2
MGM			1						1
Paramount			1			1			2
Screen Gems			1			1			2
Sony		1		1	1			1	4
Sony Animation				1					1
Universal		2						2	4
Warner Bros.		1		1	3				5

Let's hear it for Universal, stepping up with two purchases in August despite internal drama in the wake of a tough year at the box office. Both its purchases are smart (if conservative) plays that demonstrate the studio's intention to make budget-conscious comedies with the potential to break out, à la "The Hangover:" One is from that film's credited writers ("Change Up," by Jon Lucas & Scott Moore, from CAA), and the other has one of the film's stars attached (Ed Helms, to "Central Intelligence," by Ike Barinholtz & Dave Stassen, out from APA and Principato/Young). Now that Paramount's own management shakeup is behind them, I'm sure a Bradley Cooper-starring, Jeremy Garelick-penned action comedy will be set up at the Melrose studio by Thanksgiving. (Oh, wait, half of that scenario is already a done deal. Clearly the smart move now is to hedge the bet and slam Cooper into the picture; he'll look right at home in board shorts, I'm sure.) 

Buyers (other)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Total
Appian Way			1						1
Alcon							1		1
Beloved					1				1
Chockstone						1			1
Dimension				1					1
The Film Dept.				1					1
Imagine						1			1
Intrepid				1	1	1			3
MRC				1					1
Montecito								1	1
National Lampoon	1								1
New Regency			1						1
Relativity					1	1			2
Reliance					1				1
Reliant	1								1
Sidney Kimmel		1							1
Starz Media Anim.					1				1
Summit		1							1

Spec Sales By Seller:

Sellers (Agents)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Jul	Efficiency
Alpern Group						1			1/1 100%
APA								1	1/20 5%
Bohrman			1						1/8 13%
CAA		1	1	3	3	2		1	11/28 39%
Endeavor		2	2		1				5/8 63%
Gersh		1			1				2/8 25%
ICM			1	1		2	1		5/24 21%
Kohner	1								1/2 50%
Original Artists				2		1			3/6 50%
UTA		2	1		2		1	2	8/22 36%
WMA		2	1	3	1				7/16 44%
WME							1		7/9 11%

The big four agencies continue to perform consistently, with UTA enjoying the best summer so far (3 sales in the last two months, compared to the others' 1 each). WME finally got on the board at the end of July, thanks to a spec taken out by Endeavor in February ("Prisoners," by Aaron Guzikowski, sold to Alcon, its first purchase of the year). Interestingly, if you combine Endeavor's and WMA's numbers with WME's, the blended firm would have sold 13 scripts in 33 attempts (39%) this year, on par with CAA. APA also had its first spec sale of 2009, the above-referenced "Central Intelligence," out of 20 tries.

Sellers (Managers)	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Efficiency
Abstract			1		1				2/4 50%
Anonymous					1				1/6 17%
Art/Work				1					1/1 100%
Benderspink		2		1	1				4/11 36%
Brillstein				1					1/5 20%
Category 5					1				1/1 100%
Circle of Confusion		1							1/12 8%
Epidemic			1						1/1 100%
Gotham Group					1				1/4 25%
H2F							1		1/8 13%
Hung				1					1/2 50%
Industry	1								1/4 25%
Justin Silvera Mgmt						1			1/1 100%
Kaplan/Perrone	1				1	1			3/8 38%
Luber/Roklin		1							1/3 33%
Madhouse Ent.		1					1		1/1 100%
Management 360						1			1/1 100%
Marty Shapiro Mgmt					1				1/1 100%
Mosaic		1							1/3 33%
Principal				1					1/6 17%
Principato/Young			1					1	2/5 40%
Radmin					1				1/2 50%
Rain Mgmt Group								1	1/1 100%
Underground				1		1			2/5 40%

Madhouse posted its first spec sale of the year toward the end of July ("Prisoners," discussed above), and Rain Management Group had its first as well a few days ago (the cleverly titled "Doc & Howie Whack A Granny," by Steve Leff, out in concert with UTA, sold to Montecito). Kudos, too, to Principato/Young, which managed to lever no fewer than five of its executives into the "Central Intelligence" deal (2 Producer slots, 2 Executive Producer slots and a Co-Producer slot). More power to them, I say, though I wonder just how rich the writers' deal could have been with that much overhead coming along for the ride. 

About The Spec Market Scorecard:
The Spec Market Report and the Spec Market Scorecard are terribly unscientific analyses of the feature film spec script market based on information culled from a variety of public and non-public sources. They do not include pitch sales nor the film rights to underlying material. Past editions of the Report and the Scorecard are collected at http://www.lifeonthebubble.com and in the BOSI archives at http://www.thebusinessofshowinstitute.com/newsletter/past-newsletters.html. 

About Jason Scoggins:
Jason Scoggins is a manager and partner at Protocol, a literary management and production company. He represents writers, directors and producers of film and TV alongside Protocol's founding partners Brian Inerfeld and John Ufland. After getting his start in the entertainment business as an assistant at ICM, Scoggins became a TV Literary Agent at The Gersh Agency, followed by a stint at Writers & Artists Agency and then several years in the wilderness. He returned to the business in 2007, just in time to be impacted by the run-up to the WGA strike.