The Scoggins Report: June 2013 Spec Market Roundup
The Scoggins Reportby Jason Scoggins & Cindy KaplanJuly 8, 2013 June 2013 Spec Market Roundup Since we’re still a bit distracted by long weekend-related visions of tropical vacations (not that…
The Scoggins Report
by Jason Scoggins & Cindy Kaplan
July 8, 2013
June 2013
Spec Market Roundup
Since we’re still a bit distracted by long weekend-related visions of tropical vacations (not that we went on any ourselves, alas), we’ll skip the quasi-analytical intro and get straight to our favorite highlights from the June spec market:
- This is the third year in a row that June spec sales hit double digits. As has been the case all year, non-studio buyers did most of the heavy lifting. New buyer BCDF Pictures got into the game in a big way with four spec purchases in June, making the company the single biggest buyer of the year so far.
- Speaking of double digits, Energy Entertainment’s Brooklyn Weaver set up three scripts in June, which brings his 2013 total to 10, besting his 2012 year-end tally. Madhouse Entertainment had a great month, too, with its own three sales.
- And speaking of three’s, UTA sold three specs for the third month in a row, extending its halftime lead over 2nd place WME to four (13 for UTA, 9 for WME).
The details and loglines of each of June’s spec sales are below, along with the usual breakdowns. Enjoy.
Year-Over-Year Breakdown
1 Total sales in June 2 Sales percentage of scripts that came out and sold in June
Genre Breakdown
The +‘s in the above grid indicate scripts that sold in those genres that went to market prior to June 2013. The percentage reflects just those that came out and sold in June.
Weekly Activity Breakdown
Week of June 3:
- 6 new specs hit the tracking boards, 1 of which has sold so far:
- Don’t Mess With Texas (6/7)
- 1 additional spec sale was announced:
- Young Agatha (6/5)
Week of June 10:
- 10 new specs hits the tracking boards, none of which has sold yet
- 5 additional spec sales were announced:
- 3022 (6/12)
- Eden (6/12)
- 12/24 (6/13 - originally went out in 2012)
- Hostile Engagement (6/13 - went out in April)
- Catfight (6/14)
Week of June 17:
- 5 new specs hit the boards, none of which have yet sold
- 4 additional spec sales were announced:
Revelation fka Lord of Light (6/18 - went out in April)
Cops And Robots (6/19)
Criminal (6/19 - went out in May)
Outside The Wire (6/20)
Week of June 24:
- No new specs hit the tracking boards
- 2 additional spec sales were announced:
Tranquility Base (6/26)
No Quarter (6/28)
Spec Sales (alphabetical by title)
Project titles in the report are now linked to the corresponding Spec Scout page, so you can click to see which of the below we’ve covered and scored there.
Writer: Matt Lieberman
Reps: WME (Simon Faber, Roger Green, Philip Raskind) and Madhouse Entertainment (Adam Kolbrenner)
Buyer: Ocean Blue Entertainment
Genre: Holiday action comedy
Attachments: Chris Columbus, Michael Barnathan and Mark Radcliffe will produce through 1492 Pictures. David Guggenheim will also produce with Madhouse's Kolbrenner.
Notes: Project originally went to market in December 2012.
Logline: Two brothers set out to prove that Santa Claus is real, using their home video camera. The boys get more than they bargained for when they end up joining Santa’s epic Christmas Eve ride. After inadvertently causing Santa’s sleigh to crash, the brothers must work together to save Christmas.
Writer: Ryan Binaco
Reps: Hollander Entertainment (Russell Hollander)
Buyer: BCDF Pictures
Genre: Psychological sci-fi thriller
Note: This is one of two Binaco scripts purchased by BCDF in June.
Logline: Under wraps, but said to be set on a deep space exploration.
Writer: Amelie Gillette
Reps: Management 360 (Eryn Brown, Guymon Casady)
Buyer: Screen Gems
Genre: Comedy
Attachments: Will Gluck will produce under his Olive Bridge Entertainment banner. Brian Gatewood and Alex Tanaka will executive produce.
Notes: Clint Culpepper will oversee for the studio.
Logline: An insecure high school girl from a single parent household gets a scholarship to an elite private high school and attempts to reinvent herself. All goes well until she finds out the boy she's dating has a psychotic ex-girlfriend, who suddenly returns from juvie and challenges her to fight it out after school. Now, our sweet and innocent hero has just a few hours left in the school day to figure out how to take down this maniacal beast on behalf of everyone who has ever been bullied.
Writer: Matteson Perry ("Guidance")
Reps: Caliber Media (Will Rowbotham)
Buyer: BCDF Pictures
Genre: Action comedy
Logline: An odd couple police duo – one a veteran cop, the other the world’s first android officer – must learn to work together to avoid being replaced by newer models.
Writers: Douglas Cook & David Weisberg (“The Rock,” et al.)
Reps: Resolution (Adam Kanter) and Benderspink (JC Spink, Jake Wagner, Dan Vang)
Buyer: Millennium Films
Genre: Action thriller
Attachments: Millennium's Mark Gill will produce with Benderspink's JC Spink and Chris Bender. Millennium's Avi Lerner, Trevor Short, Boaz Davidson, John Thompson, Christa Campbell, Lati Grobman and Christine Crow and Benderspink's Jake Weiner will executive produce.
Logline: The right man in the wrong body. A dead CIA operative’s memories, secrets and skills are implanted into an unpredictable and dangerous prison inmate in hopes he will complete the operative’s mission.
Writers: John Quaintance & David Feeney
Reps: CAA (Andrew Miller), UTA (Larry Salz) and Art/Work Entertainment (Cindy Adams)
Buyer: Universal
Genre: Action comedy
Attachments: Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara are attached to star. RW will produce with Bruna Papandrea under their Pacific Standard banner with Dana Fox.
Logline: An uptight cop (Witherspoon) finally gets a chance to leave her desk and work in the field when a female police escort is needed for the wife (Vergara) of a Colombian drug lord. They need to get to Dallas, but when a surprise shootout leaves the drug lord dead, Reese must keep a reluctant Sofia in tow while proving her chops as a police woman.
Writer: Ryan Binaco
Reps: Hollander Entertainment (Russell Hollander)
Buyer: BCDF Pictures
Genre: Western
Note: This is one of two Binaco scripts purchased by BCDF in June.
Logline: A rancher left for dead in the desert awakens to find he has no memory.
Writer: Josh Campbell & Matt Stuecken
Reps: UTA (Charlie Ferraro, Emerson Davis), Energy Entertainment (Brooklyn Weaver) and Madhouse Entertainment (Adam Kolbrenner)
Buyer: The Solution
Genre: Action comedy
Attachments: Kolbrenner and Weaver will produce.
Logline: An aging CIA operative is forced to work a dangerous mission with his unfavorable future son-in-law if he ever hopes to regain the trust and love of his only daughter.
Writer: Alessandro Camon & Michael Wilson
Reps: Original Artists (Jordan Bayer, Matt Leipzig) and Management 360
Buyer: Thunder Road
Genre: Crime thriller
Attachments: Thunder Road's Basil Iwanyk will produce with Michael De Luca.
Logline: Set in Los Angeles in 2007, two friends who were combat Marines and side by side survived some of the toughest fighting in the Iraq war find themselves on opposite sides of the law. One becomes a star cop in an elite undercover unit while the other gets into a heist crew involved with a drug cartel. These men, who once depended on each other for survival, see their friendship and loyalties put to the test.
Writer: Rob Yescomb
Reps: UTA (Charlie Ferraro, Emerson Davis) and Energy Entertainment (Brooklyn Weaver)
Buyer: Automatik (IM Global)
Genre: Sci-fi military action thriller
Attachments: Automatik's Brian Kavanaugh-Jones will produce.
Notes: This is Yescomb’s first sale; he is a top videogame writer/designer.
Logline: TBD.
Writer: Hernany Perla
Reps: Original Artists (Chris Sablan) and Madhouse Entertainment (Ryan Cunningham)
Buyer: Lotus Entertainment
Genre: Supernatural thriller
Attachments: Circle of Confusion's David Alpert and Stephen Emery will produce with Anil Kurian. Lotus' Jim Seibel and Bill Johnson will executive produce.
Notes: D.J. Guggenheim will oversee for Lotus.
Logline: “12 Monkeys” meets “Silence of the Lambs.” A prison psychiatrist meets a death row inmate on the verge of his execution who claims to be the only thing stopping the end of the world. As she begins to investigate his predictions, she finds them to be eerily accurate, and that she may be a central figure in the events to come.
Writer: Daniel Turkewitz
Reps: Energy Entertainment (Brooklyn Weaver)
Buyer: Fox
Genre: Sci-fi thriller
Attachments: Ridley Scott, Michael Schaefer and Mike Pruss will produce for Scott Free with Brooklyn Weaver and Jonathan Krauss. Rock Shaink will co-produce.
Notes: Preemptive purchase; price tag was mid-six figures. Writer was a finalist in Tracking-Board’s 2013 Launch Pad screenwriting competition.
Logline: When a global disaster strikes Earth, fifteen astronauts fight to secure a spot in a moon base designed to support only six.
Writer: Jamie Dawson
Reps: Plumeria Entertainment Management (Rhonda Bloom)
Buyer: BCDF Pictures
Genre: Period drama
Logline: During WW1, years before becoming a world renowned author, young nurse Agatha Christie undertakes the investigation of a wounded soldier who was murdered while under her care.
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.
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