The Scoggins Report: October 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
November 5, 2012

October 2012
Spec Market Roundup

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: October 2012’s spec sales tally pales in comparison to a year ago. But we knew that was coming, right? Nobody expected last month to match 2011’s single month sales record (20). True, it would have been nice to break double digits, especially given the flood of material that hit the market, but it is what it is.

Regardless, here’s the real takeaway from last month’s spec market activity: We’re still on track to break 2011‘s 15-year record high total annual spec sales. By our count, 107 spec scripts have sold so far this year (84 that came out this year, plus 23 that originally went out pre-2012), compared to 2011‘s 119.

So just a baker’s dozen scripts need to get set up between now and the end of the year to set a new modern era record. We think it’ll happen.

Here are October’s overall numbers and year-over-year comparisons, followed by the usual breakdowns and project details, including loglines.

1 Total Sales in October

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

Say it with us, Hollywood: Yes, we can.

Weekly Activity Breakdown

Week of October 1

Week of October 8

Week of October 15

Week of October 22

Week of October 29

Genre Breakdown

Oof. Tough beat, Comedy. That’s gotta sting.

Spec Sales (alphabetical by title)

Almanac

Writers: Andrew Stark & Jason Pagan

Reps: WME (Mike Esola)

Buyer: Paramount Pictures

Genre: Thriller

Attachments: Dean Israelite (writer/shorts director) is attached to direct. Platinum Dunes’ Michael Bay, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller will produce.

Notes: Writers wrote the script on spec and have been developing it over the past year with Platinum Dunes.

Logline: Found footage thriller; story TBA.

Currency

Writer: Mark DiStefano (“Breaking the Girls”)

Reps: APA (David Saunders, Jim Gosnell) and Anonymous (Steve Golin, Alix Madigan)

Buyer: Participant Media

Genre: Thriller

Attachments: Ric Roman Waugh (“Snitch”) is attached to direct. Golin and Madigan will produce.

Logline: Centers on two Secret Service agents in pursuit of a private mercenary’s powerful and sophisticated counterfeiting operation.

The Join

Writer: Justin Rhodes (“Contract Killers”)

Reps: ICM (Lars Theriot) and Madhouse (Adam Kolbrenner)

Buyer: Legendary Pictures

Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller

Attachments: Legendary’s Alex Hedlund will executive produce.

Logline: Set in the wake of a terrible particle accelerator accident, story follows a first response hazmat team sent in to investigate, only to find themselves targeted for assassination as soon as they emerge. In the vein of “Three Days of the Condor,” crossed with “Inception” and “Looper.”

Patrol

Writer: Jayson Rothwell (“The Order of the Seven”)

Reps: WME (Rich Cook, Philip D’Amecourt, Marc Korman) and Anonymous (Bard Dorros)

Buyer: Paramount Insurge

Genre: Action thriller

Attachments: Stefan Sonnenfeld will produce through his Sunnyfield Productions.

Notes: Sarah Perlman Bremner developed this and will oversee for Sunnyfield.

Logline: When a US Marines patrol chases drug smugglers to a remote island, their mission takes an unexpectedly deadly twist.

Our Name Is Adam

Writer: T.S. Nowlin (“Agent 13”) and Mark Levin & Jennifer Flackett (“Journey to the Center of the Earth”)

Reps: WME (Dan Cohan, Mike Esola) and Caliber (Adam Marshall)

Buyer: Paramount and Skydance

Genre: Sci-Fi

Attachments: Tom Cruise is attached to star. Mary Parent will produce under her Disruption Entertainment banner.

Logline: Per Spec Scout: “A wimpy boy, in the shadow of his talented brother, finds himself pulled into unlikley adventure when his future self appears on a time travelling quest to save the world.”

Somacell

Writer: Ashleigh Powell

Reps: Gersh (Bob Hohman, Bayard Maybank, Devra Lieb) and Benderspink (Jake Weiner)

Buyer: Warner Bros.

Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller

Attachments: David Goyer will produce under his Phantom Four banner.

Logline: In the near future, a female prison guard discovers that the virtual reality rehabilitation process that they use on prisoners is not what it seems to be, and struggles to solve the mystery.

Subdivision

Writers: Alex Ankeles & Morgan Jurgenson (“Hyperdrive”)

Reps: CAA (Bill Zotti), APA (Ryan Saul), Kaplan/Perrone (Aaron Kaplan) and Hung Entertainment (Jonathan Hung)

Buyer: Universal Pictures

Genre: Sci-Fi Comedy

Attachments: Justin Lin (“Fast Five”) to direct and produce through his Barnstorm Pictures.

Logline: Per Spec Scout: “After falling from a roof and hitting his head, a rebellious teenage boy starts to see unexplainable things in his seemingly normal suburban neighborhood.”

Triple Time

Writers: Peter Billingsley & Michael J. Wilson

Reps: CAA (Spencer Baumgarten)

Buyer: Scott Pictures International

Genre: Action Thriller

Attachments: Billingsley (“Couples Retreat”) will direct. Vince Vaughn will star and produce with Victoria Vaughn through their Wild West Picture Show. Scott Pictures’ Scott Steindorf will produce, and Pete Fruchtman, Scott LaStaiti and Dylan Russell will executive produce.

Logline: Follows a broke US Marshal (Vaughn) tasked with escorting a prisoner accused of an environmental disaster to Washington, D.C. When their transport plane explodes, the unlikely pair must work together to figure out who’s behind the conspiracy, which may include one of them.

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.