The Scoggins Report: December 2012 Pitch Sales Roundup

The Scoggins Report is a compilation of sales and trends in the industry. The Report is reprinted on ScriptMag.com by permission of the authors.

The Scoggins Report
by Jason Scoggins & Cindy Kaplan
December 27, 2012

December 2012
Pitch Sales Roundup

Remember that unsettling Pitch Roundup from four weeks ago, wherein just one pitch had sold in November through the 26th? Well as we’d hoped, two additional pitch sales were announced the week after Thanksgiving, so we ended up with a total of three in November (thank heavens indeed). We’ve included the details of both in the alphabetical list of sales below.

And what a list it is: December’s nine pitch sales is the second highest monthly total of 2012, behind April’s 14. We’ll be double-checking our numbers for our 2012 Year-End Pitch Sales Scorecard over the next couple of weeks, but as of now it looks like we’ll end up with 82 pitch sales for the year, down 23% from 2011‘s 106.

In the meantime, December’s monthly raw numbers are below, along with the usual weekly breakdowns and the details of each sale. Happy New Year, Hollywood.

Weekly Activity Breakdown

Week of November 26:

• “Firemen” (November 29)

• “Untitled Connolly & Newton Project” (November 30)

Week of December 3:

• “Terra Incognita” (December 3)

• “Boston Strangler” (December 5)

• “Untitled Don Quixote Project” (December 5)

• “Get Hard”(December 7)

Week of December 10:

• “Friend Request”

• “Wither” (December 10)

Week of December 17:

• “Untitled Secret Service Comedy” (December 17)

• “Theory of Everything” (December 19)

• “Revoc” (December 20)

Week of December 24 (Christmas):

• No pitch sales announced…yet.

Pitch Sales (alphabetical by title)

Boston Strangler

Writer: Chuck Maclean (“Bridges on the Fort Point Channel”)

Reps: CAA (Billy Hawkins) and Oasis (Benjamin Rowe)

Buyer: Warner Bros.

Genre: Thriller

Attachments: Casey Affleck is attached to star. Kevin McCormick will produce through his Langley Park Productions.

Logline: Follows the search for the serial killer who terrorized Boston during the early 1960s.

Untitled Connolly & Newton Project

Writers: Derek Connolly (“Safety Not Guaranteed”)

Reps: Verve (Adam Weinstein)

Buyer: Disney/Pixar

Genre: Comedy

Attachments: Teddy Newton (Pixar’s “Day & Night” short) is attached to direct.

Logline: Under wraps.

Untitled Don Quixote Project

Writers: Steve Pink & Jeff Morris

Reps: UTA (Josh Hornstock, Ramses Ishak, Michael Sheresky), Mosaic (Langley Perer) and Caliber (Adam Marshall)

Buyer: Disney

Genre: Action adventure

Attachments: Infinitum Nihil’s Johnny Depp and Christi Dembrowski will produce.

Logline: A modern re-imagining of Don Quixote.

Firemen

Writer: Rob Liefeld

Reps: Energy (Brooklyn Weaver)

Buyer: Meteor Entertainment

Genre: Action adventure

Notes: Meteor is developing the feature and videogame versions simultaneously.

Logline: Under wraps, but said to be a high concept PG-13 tentpole in the tone of “Transformers.”

Friend Request

Writer: Christopher Baldi

Reps: CAA (Bill Zotti) and New Wave (Josh Adler, Mike Goldberg)

Buyer: Nickelodeon Movies

Genre: Comedy

Logline: Under wraps.

Get Hard

Writers: Ian Roberts & Jay Martel (“Key and Peele”)

Reps: Verve (Bill Weinstein) and Principato Young (Allen Fischer, Peter Principato, Susan Solomon)

Buyer: Warner Bros.

Genre: Comedy

Attachments: Will Ferrell will star with Kevin Hart and produce through Gary Sanchez Productions.

Logline: When a rich, soft-handed investment bank manager is sentenced to a maximum security prison for a crime he didn’t commit, he hires the streetwise guy who normally washes his car to get him ready to do hard time in the 30 days before he has to report to prison.

Revoc

Writer: Olaf de Fleur Johannesson (“City State”)

Reps: WME (David Karp, Philip Raskind) and Thruline (Josh Kesselman, Danny Sherman)

Buyer: Lionsgate

Genre: Sci-fi thriller

Attachments: Mandeville’s David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman will produce.

Logline: Under wraps, but said to be in the vein of “District 9” and “Moon.”

Untitled Secret Service Comedy

Writers: Aaron Buchsbaum & Teddy Riley ("El Tigre")

Reps: Paradigm (Andy Patman, Mark Ross, Ida Ziniti) and Mosaic (Michael Lasker)

Buyer: Parkes/MacDonald

Genre: Action comedy

Attachments: Parkes/MacDonald’s Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald will produce and Marc Restighini will executive produce.

Logline: Under wraps.

Terra Incognita

Writer: Nicole Perlman (“Guardians of the Galaxy”)

Reps: CAA (Chris Till) and Management 360 (Jill McElroy)

Buyer: Disney

Genre: Action adventure

Attachments: Justin Springer (“TRON: Legacy”) will produce.

Logline: Under wraps.

Theory of Everything

Writer: Daniel Casey (“Hitman 2”)

Reps: WME (Mike Esola)and Circle of Confusion (Noah Rosen)

Buyer: Fox

Genre: Sci-fi action thriller

Attachments: Dan Jinks will produce through his eponymous company. Top Cow’s Marc Silvestri and Matt Hawkins will executive produce. Nick Nantell, who contributed to the story, will co-produce.

Notes: Based on the Top Cow one-shot from its 2011 “pilot season.” Mike Ireland will oversee for Fox.

Logline: Follows a disgraced scientist as he seeks to rescue his wife -- a woman previously assumed dead -- from a parallel dimension.

Wither

Writer: Stephanie Koff

Reps: New Wave (Josh Adler, Mike Goldberg)

Buyer: Prospect Park

Genre: Sci-fi thriller

Attachments: Aly and AJ Michalka are attached to produce and star.

Notes: Based on the first novel in the “Chemical Garden” trilogy by Lauren DeStefano.

Logline: In the future, scientists have succeeded in engineering a perfect generation of humans, free of illness and disorders...but with a lifespan of just 25 years.

About The Scoggins Report:

The Scoggins Report is a terribly unscientific analysis of the feature film development business based on information assembled from a variety of public and non-public sources. The numbers in the reports are by no means official statistics. Caveat emptor. Mol??n labé.