The Scoggins Report: November 2012 Spec Market 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 3, 2012

November 2012
Spec Market Roundup

It’s official: As of today, more specs scripts have sold in 2012 than sold in 2011. Way to go, Hollywood! By our count, November’s nine spec sales plus the one that sold today (Scorn) puts us at 120 for the year, one more than last year. And we still have all of December and the feeding frenzy that is the annual Black List to look forward to!

November’s activity was fueled by several very familiar names on the Sellers’ side (Energy, UTA and WME sold two scripts each last month), as well as by a combination on the Buyers’ side of some frequent names (Paramount, Millennium), some familiar but less frequent ones (Big Beach, Good Universe, QED, Silver) and some that were outright unfamiliar, even to us (Arclight, BUF).

Four of November’s sales were announced last week, after Thanksgiving, as were a couple of additional November pitch sales after we published last week’s Pitch Sales Roundup. We’ll have corrected numbers in next week’s Pitch Scorecard.

Before we sign off, we can’t resist putting in a teaser plug for Jason’s new web venture, SpecScout.com. It soft launched today, and you’ll hear more about it in the next few days. Click through and check it out after you’ve enjoyed the Roundup, won’t you?

1 Total Sales in November

2 Sales percentage of scripts that came out and sold in November

Weekly Activity Breakdown

Week of November 5

• 4 scripts hit the tracking boards, 1 of which has sold (“Sanctuary”)

• 2 additional sales were reported (“Cherries,” from October, and “Me Him Her”)

Week of November 12

• 5 scripts hit the boards, none of which have sold

• 1 additional sale was reported (“Romeo aka Romeo/Juliet,” from October)

Week of November 19 (Thanksgiving)

• 2 scripts hit the boards, 1 of which has sold (“Straight Edge”)

• 1 additional spec sale was reported (“High Value Target,” from October)

Week of November 26

• 7 scripts hit the boards, none of which has sold yet

• 3 additional sales were reported (“52 Percent,” “Leave” and “Priority Run,” which originally went out in 2009)

Genre Breakdown

Spec Sales (alphabetical by title)

52 Percent

Writer: Zina Zaflow

Reps: Chad Snopek Management (Chad Snopek)

Buyer: QED International

Genre: Romantic comedy

Logline: When a longtime married couple contemplates divorce, a clash develops between their daughter, who hopes for reconciliation, and a jaded young divorce attorney, who’s unwilling to lose a client without a fight.

Cherries

Writers: Brian & Jim Kehoe

Reps: DMG Entertainment (Chris Fenton)

Buyer: Good Universe

Genre: Action comedy

Attachments: Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg will direct and produce with DMG’s Dan Mintz, Chris Cowles and Fenton. Good Universe’s Joe Drake and Nathan Kahane will executive produce.

Logline: Three naive dads band together to stop their high school sophomore daughters from making good on a prom night sex pact. “The Hangover” meets “Taken.”

High Value Target

Writers: Spenser Cohen (story by Cohen & Zach Luna)

Reps: Energy (Brooklyn Weaver)

Buyer: Millennium

Genre: Action thriller

Attachments: Cohen will direct. Vinson Films’ Tripp Vinson will produce with Weaver. Vinson’s Lisa Zambri will executive produce, and Anna Halberg will co-produce.

Notes: Project originally went out in March 2012 as a pitch from Cohen and Luna, with Cohen attached to direct. Cohen ended up writing the script on spec solo.

Logline: An international squad of private military contractors infiltrate a cargo ship overrun by pirates in order to capture and extract a seemingly impossible “High Value Target.” “Black Hawk Down” meets “The Raid.”

Leave

Writers: Andrew Barrer & Gabriel Ferrari

Reps: WME (Mike Esola, David Karp) and Prolific Entertainment (Will Rowbotham)

Buyer: QED International

Genre: Thriller

Logline: A Vietnam-era thriller which follows a group of U.S. soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress while on leave in Thailand.

Me Him Her

Writer: Max Landis

Reps: WME (Danny Gabai, David Karp) and Circle of Confusion (Britton Rizzio)

Buyer: Big Beach Films

Genre: Comedy

Attachments: This is Landis’ directing debut. Big Beach’s Peter Saraf and Marc Turtletaub will produce.

Logline: Follows three Los Angeles twentysomethings who are hung up on their sexual identity.

Priority Run

Writer: Terrance Mulloy

Reps: UTA (Jon Huddle) and Benderspink (Jake Wagner)

Buyer: Arclight Films

Genre: Action

Attachments: Arclight’s Mike Gabrawy will executive produce and Gary Hamilton will produce with Paradox Entertainment’s Fredrik Malmberg.

Notes: Project originally went out in 2009 but didn’t sell; was in development at Platinum Dunes in 2010.

Logline: Centers on a small group of correctional officers and inmates who must band together to fend off a mysterious attack when their prison bus is sabotaged on a remote stretch of highway.

Romeo aka Romeo/Juliet

Writer: Will Simmons

Reps: UTA (Jason Burns, Geoff Morley) and Energy (Brooklyn Weaver)

Buyer: BUF

Genre: Action thriller

Attachments: Weaver will produce with Hicham Benkirane, Derrick Eppich and India Osborne.

Logline: A modern-day re-imagining of the classic play, with Romeo an undercover DEA agent tasked with infiltrating a Miami crime syndicate controlled by Juliet’s father. Tonally in the vein of “Fast & Furious”.

Sanctuary

Writer: Alan Trezza (aka Todd Warner, per the script’s cover page)

Reps: Magnet Management

Buyer: Paramount Pictures

Genre: Supernatural action

Attachments: Silver Pictures’ Joel Silver and Andrew Rona will produce; Alex Heineman will executive produce.

Notes: Elizabeth Raposo will oversee for Paramount.

Logline: A young woman who is possessed by a powerful demonic force seeks refuge within the Sanctuary, a Vatican-run secret organization that teaches the possessed to channel their inner demon and use its power as a weapon against evil. “Wanted” meets “Blade,” but with demons.

Straight Edge

Writer: Rich Wilkes

Reps: Verve (Adam Levine) and Management 360 (Daniel Rappaport)

Buyer: Silver Pictures

Genre: Action thriller

Logline: TBA, but said to center on a heist gone wrong. Tonally in the vein of “48 Hrs.” and “Lethal Weapon.”

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.