The Scoggins Report: 2013 Year-End Spec Market Scorecard

The Scoggins Report
by Jason Scoggins, Cindy Kaplan & Landon Rohwedder
January 24, 2014

2013 Year-End

Spec Market Scorecard

Welcome to the 5th annual Year-End Spec Market Scorecard edition of the Scoggins Report. Like last year, we’ve (mostly) inserted our year-over-year analysis into the individual sections below, the better to get straight to the good stuff. To wit: Here are our three favorite take-aways from the 2013 Spec Market.

After a relatively slow first half of the year, during which the studios barely seemed to be paying attention to spec scripts, the second half ended very strong: Four out of the last six months of the year saw the highest monthly spec sale numbers since we started keeping track in 2007.
The total number of new screenplays hitting the market in 2013 (280) was off 17% from 2012’s 338, yet the total number of sales (124) was just 6% below 2011’s and 2012’s record high 132.
UTA led the agencies for the first time, thanks to its strong and steady pace of spec sales throughout the year, followed by CAA and WME. Last year, the ranking for the big three was WME, UTA, CAA.

There are plenty more high value tidbits in the pages below, but let’s get to everyone’s favorite year-end feature: The Top 5 lists. (As with years past, don’t take “Top 5” too literally.) The following are the lists of the top Buyers and Sellers of 2013. The number of sales for each company or person is to the right of their names.

Download the 50-page PDF of Scoggins Report - 2013 Year End Spec Scorecard by clicking on image: