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Spec Market Scorecard: 2009 to Date (October 16)
by Jason Scoggins
October 21, 2009

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.

MARKETING DO I HAVE A GO FOR FILMING?

I met a writer for drinks last night. Not a client, a writer who I’d given some pro bono advice to in the past. This writer had come to L.A. with a degree from a prestigious eastern film school, worked at breaking into the business for 4 years, made little headway and now was moving back home.

We talked about the type of movies he liked to write and why it was so incredibly difficult, if not impossible to get anyone to pay attention to his work. Mind you this was not a discussion of the quality of his writing, just the subject matter. This writer hates violence and usually dislikes just about every film in the current top 10 box office, and his screenplays reflect this.

I pointed to a phrase my partner Rima often uses “Anytime a movie gets made, it’s a miracle.” There is a lot of truth in that. With the average cost of a studio film topping at over $70 million, a lot of people get to comment on whether or not your script should become a movie: Creative, Marketing, Legal, Finance, Producers, Actors, The Director, Budgeting, Distribution (Domestic & Foreign) etc, etc.

Unless all of these disparate groups find it in their own self-interest to make your movie, it won’t happen. So it needs to be a “win-win” for everyone, not just the writer.

I include this video from the space shuttle launch as a metaphor for this. Simply replace the departments at NASA with the departments listed above.

You might want to think about this when choosing your next subject.