The Scoggins Report: November 2013 Spec Market Roundup

The Scoggins Report
by Jason Scoggins & Landon Rohwedder
December 2, 2013

November 2013
Spec Market Roundup

As we hoped, November’s spec market maintained October’s heady pace, notching the second month in a row of 2011/2012-style numbers as you can see from the month-over-month grid below. As we noted last week, last month’s numbers are the highest for a November since 2007, and the combined October/November number rivals 2011’s crazy high total from the same period (28).

Here are our favorite highlights:

November’s raw numbers are below, followed by the usual weekly breakdowns and the details of each sale. Enjoy.

Year-Over-Year Breakdown

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

Genre Breakdown

The above percentages reflect just those that came out and sold in November.

Weekly Activity Breakdown

Week of November 4:

Week of November 11:

Week of November 18:

Week of November 25 (Thanksgiving):

Spec Sales (alphabetical by title)

Project titles in the report are linked to the corresponding Spec Scout page, so you can click to see which of the below we’ve covered and scored there.

BLOOD TIES

Writer: Steve Hanulik

Reps: Unrepped

Buyer: Nasser Entertainment

Genre: Heist thriller

Attachments: Dennis Lee (“Jesus Henry Christ”) is attached to direct. Brothers Jack and Joseph Nasser (“Recoil”) will produce.

Logline: A disgraced hostage negotiator is called in to resolve a crisis at a bank, only to discover that the hostage-taker is his estranged father.

BUS 757

Writer: Stephen Sepher

Reps: Unrepped

Buyer: Emmett/Furla/Oasis Films

Genre: Action thriller

Attachments: Sepher will produce with Randall Emmett, George Furla and Alexander Tabrizi. Untitled’sBeth Holden-Garland will executive produce with Dan Grodnik and Emmett/Furla’s Brandon Grimes. Tim Sullivan will co-produce.

Logline: A Las Vegas card dealer puts a crew together to rob a bank and hijack a city bus as collateral.

FROM HERE TO ALBION

Writer: Rory Haines & Sohrab Noshivani

Reps: UTA and Oasis Media Group (Benjamin Rowe)

Buyer: Participant Media

Genre: Thriller

Notes: Jonathan King and Erik Andreasen will oversee for Participant. This is the first sale for the neophyte scribes.

Logline: A tragic accident sets a chain of violence in motion in a coastal English town, leading a malevolent stranger to seek revenge on the perpetrators and the detective who covered it up.

IT'S ON

Writer: Scott Rothman (“Draft Day”)

Reps: CAA (Bill Zotti, Chris Till) and Kaplan/Perrone (Aaron Kaplan)

Buyer: Gulfstream Pictures

Genre: Comedy

Attachments: Gulfstream’s Mike Karz and Bill Bindley will produce.

Notes: Josie Rosen will oversee for Gulfstream.

Logline: Kept under wraps.

LINE OF DUTY

Writers: Cory Miller

Reps: APA (Adam Perry, Chris Ridenhour) and Luber Roklin (Bryan Brucks)

Buyer: Lotus Entertainment

Genre: Thriller

Attachments: Brucks and Matt Luber will produce.

Logline: A police-thriller version of Macbeth: The tragic rise and fall of a heroic NYPD narcotics detective who is pushed to the dark side of police corruption.

NEMESIS

Writer: Chris Wheeler

Reps: UTA

Buyer: Warner Bros.

Genre: Action thriller

Attachments: Akiva Goldsman will produce through his Weed Road Pictures with Safehouse Pictures’Joby Harold and Tory Tunnell and Animal Logic’s Zareh Nalbandian and Jason Lust.

Notes: Craig Rosenberg (“The Quiet Ones,” “Jurassic Park III”) is already rewriting.

Logline: Kept under wraps.

STOLEN

Writer: Joe Burke & Kevin Oestenstad

Reps: APA (Sheryl Petersen) and Principato Young (Peter Principato)

Buyers: 1984 Private Defense Contractors

Genre: Horror

Attachments: 1984’s Adi Shankar and Spencer Silna will produce.

Logline: A young city couple’s short trip turns into a rural nightmare when one of them steps out of a quiet local movie theater to answer her phone and never returns.

THE CIVILIAN

Writer: Brian Pittman & Rachel Long

Reps: UTA (Ramses IsHak) and Management SGC (Scott Carr)

Buyer: Millennium

Genre: Action thriller

Attachments: Millennium’s Mark Gill will produce with the customary long list of Millennium executive producers: Avi Lerner, Trevor Short, Boaz Davidson, John Thompson and Christine Crow.

Notes: Reportedly sold for mid-six figures.

Logline: When an American doctor has his identity stolen, the only way he can clear his name is to assume the dangerous mission of the spy who stole it.

THE POLITICIAN

Writer: Matt Bass & Theodore Bressman

Reps: WME (Solco Schuit) and PYE (Bressman: Peter Principato) and Circle of Confusion (Bass: Julian Rosenberg)

Buyer: Columbia

Genre: Comedy

Attachments: Mark Gordon will produce through his eponymous production company with Grey Point Pictures’Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and James Weaver.

Notes: Reportedly sold for mid- against high six figures. Writers are proteges of Rogen and Goldberg. Hannah Minghella and Andrea Giannetti will oversee for the studio.

Logline: “Bad Santa” meets “Midnight Run.” A disgraced Governor and his accomplice go on the run from the FBI and US Marshal Service. Along the way, the governor gets kidnapped by a crazy, disgruntled constituent.

THE UNSEEN

Writer: John Travis

Reps: APA (Steve Fisher, Chris Ridenhour) and Industry (Ava Jamshidi)

Buyer: Fox

Genre: Horror

Attachments: Hutch Parker will produce through his eponymous production company.

Notes: Adapted from John Connolly’s short story “Mr. Pettinger’s Daemon.”

Logline: Kept under wraps, but said to have the tone of “The Others.”

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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