Scoggins Report: April 2012 Spec Market Roundup

The Scoggins Report is a compilation of sales and trends in the industry. The Report is reprinted at ScriptMag.com by permission of the authors.

The Scoggins Report

by Jason Scoggins & Cindy Kaplan

May 7, 2012

April 2012

Spec Market Roundup

Year-over-year spec sale totals are down slightly (36 so far in 2012, compared to 40 by end of April 2011), but we’ll take it, since there have been so many positive signals coming out of the market over the past couple of weeks.  Here are our favorite highlights.

•       After sitting out March, Warner Bros. picked up two specs in April and is now in second place among studio buyers, with four for the year (behind Columbia Pictures – see below).  Warner’s 2012 buying pattern is similar to 2011, when it bought two in February and one in April…and went on to buy a total of 17 for the year.

•       Speaking of Columbia, the Culver City studio bought another two specs in April, on the heels of its three in March, for a first place total of six so far in 2012.

•       WME led the agency pack again with three spec sales in April, putting its 2012 tally at an impressive 16.  ICM and Paradigm tied for second last month, with two each.

Here are April’s overall numbers, with year over year comparisons with Aprils past:

Genres Sold

2 Action

3 Comedy

1 Horror

3 Thriller

1 Unknown

2 Action

2 Comedy

2 Drama

1 Horror

1 Sci-fi

2 Thriller

1 Western

3 Action

3 Comedy

1 Drama

1 Sci-Fi

4 Thriller

2 Action

4 Comedy

1 Sci-fi

4 Thriller

^{1 Total Sales in April}

^{2 Sales percentage of scripts that came out and sold in April}

Weekly Activity Breakdown

Week of April 2 (Passover/Easter)

•       3 scripts hit the tracking boards, none of which sold

Week of April 9

•       8 scripts hit the boards, 1 of which has sold (“Lore”)

•       1 additional sale was reported (“The Disappointments Room”)

Week of April 16

•       6 scripts hit the boards, 2 of which have sold (“The Fall” and “Ground Control to Major Tom”)

•       2 additional sales were reported (“Comancheria” and “Savage Planet”)

Week of April 23

•       8 scripts hit the boards, 1 of which has sold (“El Tigre”)

•       3 additional sales were reported (“The Bloody Benders,” “Cardiac” and “Son of a Bitch”)

Week of April 30

•       1 script hit the boards and has not yet sold

•       1 additional sale was reported (“The Current War,” sold in May)

Genre Breakdown

One of April’s sales – “Cardiac” – originally went out in March.

Spec Sales (alphabetical by title)

The Bloody Benders

Writer:  Adam Robitel

Reps:  APA (David Saunders)

Buyer:  Necropia Entertainment and Angryfilms

Genre:  Horror

Attachments:  Necropia’s Guillermo del Toro and Angryfilms’ Susan Montford and Don Murphy will produce.

Logline:  Based on the true story of the Benders, a husband, wife, son and daughter who ran a hotel in Kansas on the outskirts of the prairie in 1873. As many as 20 guests checked in to the hotel and never checked out: The guests were robbed and murdered by their hosts, and the killers were never punished.

Cardiac

Writer:  Lars Jacobson

Reps:  CAA (Craig Brady & Adam Kanter) and Brian Lutz Management (Brian Lutz)

Buyer:  Fox

Genre: Thriller

Attachments:  John Davis and John Fox will produce for Davis Entertainment.

Logline:  In the vein of TAKEN and SAFE HOUSE, involving a father who has six hours to find the criminals that have stolen a heart intended for his daughter’s transplant surgery.

Comancheria

Writer:  Taylor Sheridan

Reps:  Gersh (Bayard Maybank) and Elevate (Jenny Wood)

Buyer:  Sindey Kimmel

Genre:  Action

Attachments:  Sidney Kimmel will produce with Film 44’s Peter Berg and Sarah Aubrey.

Logline:  A heist flick set in west Texas.

The Disappointments Room

Writer:  Wentworth Miller

Reps:  ICM (Nicole Clemens, Nigel Meiojas, Dar Rollins, Adam Weinstein) and The Gotham Group (Lee Stollman, Lindsay Williams)

Genre:  Thriller

Buyer:  Voltage Films and Killer Films

Attachments:  Nicholas Chartier, Zev Foreman, Pamela Koffler and Christine Vachon will produce.

Logline:  Follows a family that moves into a mysterious old house with a dark past.

El Tigre

Writers:  Aaron Buchsbaum & Teddy Riler

Reps:  Paradigm (Ida Ziniti, Mark Ross) and Mosaic (Michael Lasker)

Buyer:  Columbia

Genre:  Comedy

Attachments:  Mosaic’s Jimmy Miller and David Householter will produce.

Notes:  Jonathan Kadin, Matt Riley, and Josh Church will oversee.

Logline:  Under wraps.

The Fall

Writer:  Christopher Cosmos

Reps:  Benderspink (JC Spink, Chris Bender, Jake Weiner)

Buyer:  QED Entertainment

Genre:  Thriller

Attachments:  QED’s Bill Block will produce.

Logline:  After a blood-borne virus twice as deadly as the Black Plague ravages the world, a man carrying a cure for the epidemic has to travel from LA to DC while being hunted by men who want the cure for themselves.

Ground Control to Major Tom

Writer:  Jason Micallef

Reps:  WME (Rich Cook)

Buyer:  Disney

Genre:  Romantic comedy

Attachments:  Seth Gordon to direct and executive produce. Michael De Luca will produce through his eponymous company with Underground Films and Management’s Trevor Engelson and Josh McGuire.

Notes:  Disney’s Jocelyn Diaz will oversee for the studio.

Logline:  Under wraps.

Lore

Writer:  Cory Goodman & Jeremy Lott

Reps:  WME (Daniel Cohan, David Stone), Paradigm (Trevor Astbury) and Aperture (Adam Goldworm)

Buyer:  Warner Bros.

Genre:  Action fantasy

Attachments:  Dwayne Johnson is set to star. Mad Chance Productions’ Andrew Lazar will produce with Circle of Confusion’s Rick Jacobs and David Alpert. Miri Yoon, Ted Adams and Ashley Wood will executive produce. Goldworm will co-produce.

Notes:  Based on the IDW Publishing comic by Ashley Wood and TP Louise. Had been in development at Circle since 2010.

Logline:  Pitched as MEN IN BLACK with mythological creatures.  Centers on a young man who reluctantly becomes a member of an elite secret order charged with protecting humanity from the beasts of folklore who invade our world.

Savage Planet

Writer:  Cole Haddon

Reps:  ICM (Lars Theriot) and Anonymous Content (Bard Dorros, Alex Goldstone)

Buyer:  Columbia

Genre:  Unknown

Attachments:  Matt Tolmach and Ari Arad will produce through their eponymous companies with Anonymous’s Dorros and Goldstone.

Notes:  Originally went out in May 2011.

Logline:  Under wraps.

Son of a Bitch

Writer:  Kelly Oxford

Reps:  WME (Cliff Roberts, Lisa Harrison) and Anonymous Content (Steve Golin, Kelly Kohansky Roberts)

Buyer:  Warner Bros.

Genre:  Comedy

Attachments:  Anonymous Content will produce.

Logline:  A popular party girl tries to maintain her image despite recently becoming pregnant.

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.

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