The Scoggins Report: October 2011 Pitch Sale Scorecard
The Scoggins Report is a compilation of spec sales and trends in the industry. Archive editions of The Scoggins Report can be found at The Business of Show Institute and on www.thewrap.com. Details on every person, project, and company covered by the Report can also be found at www.ItsontheGrid.com. The Report is reprinted at Scriptmag.com by permission of the authors.
2011 Pitch Sale Scorecard through October 15, 2011
We updated the Spec Sale Scorecard and this Pitch Sale Scorecard simultaneously this week, and looking at the stats side-by-side provided an interesting view of the business that we hadn’t seen before. Here are our favorite highlights:
- The buying pattern for specs and pitches has been nearly identical this year:
Thirty of each type have been set up since the beginning of June;
Sales were strong for both types of project throughout the summer; and
Sales were highest in March and June for each type. - Warner Bros.’s healthy appetite for specs this year hasn’t prevented it from aggressively buying pitches as well. Taken together, the studio has bought an impressive 22 new projects so far this year. Universal and Paramount are in second and third place with 15 and 14 total purchases, respectively, despite buying just 4 spec scripts each so far in 2011.
- Comedy pitches have outpaced thrillers so far this year (38% of sales for comedies vs 24% for thrillers), but the trend for specs has been nearly the exact opposite (38% thrillers vs 25% comedies).
- The top four agencies are still running neck-and-neck for spec sales this year (WME, CAA, UTA and ICM, in that order), but when you look at combined pitch and spec sales the agencies break down into three clear clusters:
WME and CAA, with 30 and 29 total sales, respectively;
UTA and ICM, with 19 and 16 17, respectively; and
Gersh and Paradigm, with 8 total sales each.
As you go through the pitch sale stats below, remember that no one has perfect data on how many pitches make the rounds every year. The below are tallies of the pitches that have made it into the public eye so far this year.
Overall Pitch Numbers[1]:
Pitch Sales By Genre:
Pitch Sales By Buyer (Studios):
Pitch Sales By Buyer (Other Buyers):
Each of the following production companies has been attached to at least one pitch sale so far this year:
21 Laps
3 Arts
33andout
Apatow Productions
Atlas
Bad Robot
Blind Wink Productions
Broadway Video
Bruckheimer
Chernin (3)
Chris Morgan Productions
Color Force
Contrafilm
Di Bonaventura
Dickhouse
The Donners’ Company
Electus
Evergreen Media
Escape Artists
Gary Sanchez
The Gotham Group
Hope Town Entertainment
Hollywood Gang
Imagine (3)
The Jinks/Cohen Company
Leverage
Lightstorm
Lin Pictures
Little Stranger, Inc.
Laurence Mark Productions
Mosaic
Original Film (2)
Overbrook
Panay Films (2)
Rat Entertainment
Red Hour (2)
ROAR
Roth Films
The Safran Company
Smokehouse
Stuber
Team Disney
Thunder Road (2)
Ulterior Productions
Weston
Wonderland
Pitch Sales by Seller (Agencies):
Pitch Sales by Seller (Management Companies):
Pitch Sales: July 14 through October 15 (Alphabetical by Title)
Writer: David Guggenheim
Genre: Drama
Reps:APA and Madhouse
Buyer: Universal
Attachments: Ron Howard will direct; Brian Grazer and Erica Huggins will produce through Imagine Entertainment.
Writer: Adam Gibgot
Genre: Thriller
Reps:WME (Adriana Alberghetti), Stewart Brookman
Buyer: Warner Bros.
Attachments: Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey and Ben Silverman will produce through Team Downey and Electus. Team Downey’s David Gambino will executive produce with Gibgot.
Writer: Cory Goodman
Genre: Thriller
Reps: WME (Scott Agostoni, Daniel Cohan, Mike Esola) and Aperture (Adam Goldworm)
Buyer: Strange Weather Films
Attachments: Strange Weather’s Andrew Adamson, Aron Warner and Jeff Fierson will produce.
Writer: Daniel Kunka
Genre: Sci-Fi, Heist
Reps: ICM and Madhouse
Buyer: Universal
Attachments: Chris Morgan will produce through his eponymous, Universal-based shingle. Daniel Trachtenberg is attached to direct.
Writers: Chester Hastings & Dean McCreary
Genre: Thriller
Reps: Gersh (Sandra Lucchesi)
Buyer: Paramount
Attachments: Zoe Saldana is attached to star and produce. Robbie Brenner is attached to produce.
Writer: Johnny Rosenthal
Genre: Comedy
Reps: Paradigm and Apostle
Buyer: Media Rights Capital
Attachments: Ben Stiller will produce through Red Hour. Ed Helms is attached to star and produce.
Notes: Remake of the 2010 French film.
Writers: Jon Gunn & John Mann
Genre: Drama
Reps:WME and Mosaic
Buyer: Universal
Attachments: Chernin Entertainment’s Peter Chernin and Dylan Clark will produce.
Notes: Audrey Chon will oversee for Chernin.
Writers: Sam Pitman & Adam Cole-Kelly
Genre: Comedy
Reps: WME (Mike Esola) and Management 360
Buyer: New Line
Attachments: Red Hour Films’ Ben Stiller and Stuart Cornfeld will produce. Erica Steinberg will exec produce.
Writers: James Erwin (screenplay, source material)
Genre: Action, Adventure, Period
Reps: Madhouse (Adam Kolbrenner, Robyn Meisinger)
Buyer: Warner Bros.
Attachments: Kolbrenner and Meisinger will produce with Hollywood Gang’s Gianni Nunnari.
Notes: Based on Erwin’s Reddit posts. Chris Gary and John Ridley will oversee for Warner Bros. and Hollywood Gang, respectively.
Writer: Billy Ray
Genre: Adventure
Reps: CAA (Todd Feldman, Brian Kend)and Management 360 (Guymon Casady)
Buyer: Paramount
Attachments: JJ Abrams will produce through Bad Robot.
Writer: Joe Ahearne, based on an idea by Jon Silk
Genre: Supernatural thriller
Reps: ICM, United Agents and Principal Entertainment
Buyer: Warner Bros.
Attachments: Dan Lin will produce through his Lin Pictures; Silk will co-produce.
Notes: Matt Cherniss will oversee for Warner Bros.
Writers: Jack Angelo & Sam Brown
Genre: Comedy
Reps: UTA and Anonymous Content
Buyer: Paramount
Attachments: Miley Cyrus is attached to star and produce with Tish Cyrus through their Hope Town Entertainment banner along with Panay Films’ Andrew Panay and Adam Glass. Hope Town’s Jodi Zuckerman will executive produce.
Writer: Andrew Jay Cohen & Brendan O’Brien
Genre: Comedy
Reps:CAA
Buyer:Universal
Attachments: Seth Rogen and Zac Efron are attached to star. Rogen and Evan Goldberg will produce. Cohen and O’Brien will executive produce.
Writer: Matt Sazama & Burk Sharpless
Genre: Adventure
Reps: ICM and Echo Lake (Sophy Holodnik)
Buyer: Chernin
Attachments: Chernin’s Peter Chernin and Dylan Clark will produce with Blind Wink’s Gore Verbinski and John Krauss.
Untitled Shauna Cross Project
Writer: Shauna Cross
Genre: Romantic comedy
Reps:WME and Jaret Entertainment
Buyer: Fox 2000
Attachments:Escape Artists’ Todd Black and Steve Tisch will produce. Lance Johnson and Chris Coggins will co-produce.
Writer: Todd Strauss-Schulson & Chris Galletta
Genre: Comedy
Reps:UTA, Anonymous Content and Mosaic
Buyer: New Line
Attachments: Todd Strauss-Schulson will direct and produce through his Ulterior Productions banner. Mosaic is attached to produce.
Writers: Andrew Goldberg
Genre: Romantic comedy
Reps: WME and Underground
Buyer: CBS Films
Notes: Maria Faillace and Wolfgang Hammer will oversee forCBS Films.
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. Archive editions of The Scoggins Report can be found at The Business of Show Institute (http://bit.ly/2HRZ67) and in their beautiful new home on www.thewrap.com.
Details on every person, project and company covered by the Report can also be found at www.ItsontheGrid.com, the only place mere mortals can find listings of Hollywood’s active open writing and directing assignments, not to mention comprehensive spec market data and active film development information.
If the above is your cup of tea, you’ll love IOTG’s blog, which lives on the site here: www.ItsontheGrid.com/news It includes daily highlights of recent updates plus individual posts on every spec and pitch that hits the market. You’ll find buttons to subscribe to the blog’s feed right where you’d expect them, and you can follow the site’s Twitter feed here: http://twitter.com/itsonthegrid.
[1] This grid tallies monthly sales in the month the project originally went out. Total Sales includes one that went out in December 2010. All other grids tally sales in the month they sold.
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