The Return of the Spec Market?
It’s long been spoken around Hollywood that the spec script market is dying. But a recent bidding war over Shawn Christensen’s script “Abduction,” followed by a hot, million-dollar sale to Lionsgate, has suggested that maybe things are ready to perk up again.
A script written “on spec” means that the writer has written it with no promise of compensation, as opposed to it being written on assignment (a company is paying the writer to write a specific idea or story). An agent, manager or other representative of the script will circulate it to buyers (in industry parlance is this known as “going out with the script”) in hopes of making a sale. The attachment of a high-wattage star, or an A-list director, will often sweeten the deal.
Obviously, having a spec sold for a million dollars is the dream of any hopeful screenwriter. But in recent years, that dream has become more and more distant as fewer and fewer specs are sold. Buyers are hanging onto their money, developing more projects in-house and then hiring already proven writers to adapt them on assignment. It’s dreary news for writers hoping for a big break, because as the spec market dries up, fewer agents and managers are willing to take a chance on circulating the work of a new talent. Success stories like M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense,” or Michael Martin’s “Brooklyn’s Finest,” which inspire bidding wars and huge sales, are few and far between.
That’s why it’s welcome news that “Abduction” became such a hot commodity. Every studio wanted it; Lionsgate finally got it. (It helped that Taylor Lautner, who plays Jacob in the “Twilight” movies, is attached.) Because Hollywood is a place of trend-following, another spec, by writers Sonny Lee and Patrick Walsh, was just picked up by Montecito Pictures, which has a deal at Paramount. Could we be seeing the return of the spec market? For the sake of the new, undiscovered talent out there, let’s hope so.
