The Scoggins Report: August 2012 Pitch Sales 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
August 27, 2012

August 2012

Pitch Sales Roundup

If you’ve been reading our newsletter for more than a couple of months, you know we lean towards the “glass half full” side of things. This month is no exception: True, August has been a fairly anemic month for pitch sales, but it’s supposed to be. We’re on par with 2011’s numbers, as you can see from the below year-over-year comparison.

If we continue to follow 2011’s pattern, September will be fairly subdued for pitches as well, since Labor Day, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur will each have an impact. But here’s your silver lining: As you’ll see on next week’s Spec Market Roundup, August was another great month for specs, more than doubling August 2011’s tally, and we’re still on track to improve on last year’s combined sales numbers.

Here are August’s overall numbers, followed by the usual breakdowns and project details. We hope you have a fantastic final week of summer.

Weekly Activity Breakdown

Week of July 30:

• 1 pitch sale was announced (“Cupid”)

Week of August 6:

• 1 pitch sale was announced (“Untitled Cohen/Johnston James Bond Spoof”)

Week of August 13:

• 1 pitch sale was announced (“Untitled Southern Action Project”)

Week of August 20:

• No pitch sales were announced

Pitch Sales (alphabetical by title)

Untitled Cohen/Johnston James Bond Spoof

Writers: Sacha Baron Cohen & Phil Johnston

Reps: CAA (Gregory McKnight, John Garvey), WME (Adam Venit, Jeff Gorin) and Management 360 (Eryn Brown)

Buyer: Paramount

Genre: Comedy

Attachments: Reports say Sacha Baron Cohen is likely to star in and produce through his Four by Two Films.

Logline: A James Bond-like spy is forced to go on the run with his long-lost brother, a moronic soccer hooligan.

Cupid

Writer: Joe Nussbaum

Reps: WME (Kimberly Bialek) and Principato Young (Allen Fischer)

Buyer: Warner Bros.

Genre: Comedy

Attachments: Branded Films’ Russell Brand and Nik Linnen will produce.

Logline: The god of love is forced to create the perfect romance.

Untitled Southern Action Project

Writer: Dutch Southern

Reps: Gersh (Eric Garfinkel) and Energy Entertainment (Brooklyn Weaver)

Buyer: 1984 Defense Contractors

Genre: Action

Attachments: 1984‘s Adi Shankar will produce.

Logline: An all-female take on “The Expendables.”

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.