Screenwriter Todd Berger sells “Isaac Gray, W.D.”:

Thom Mount‘s Reliant Pictures has ponied up $300,000 for Todd Berger‘s script “Isaac Gray, W.D.,” an adventure comedy about a witch doctor who uses his power to free patients from evil curses.

UPDATE: Josh asked in comments “do you think there’s a bubble on comedies like this, and that it may reach critical mass before too long?” If Josh means the “Proper Name Colon Occupation” movie titles ala Ace Ventura: Pet Detective or Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, hard to say. There were two PNCO (hey, a new screenwriting acronym!) spec scripts that sold last year:

“Ian McBain: International Tennis Star and Proper English Geezer”

“Dan Minter: Badass for Hire”

I suppose you could also include another spec that sold last year because it has a proper name in its title:

“Executive VP David M. Murch’s Adventures in Zamethera”

One thing that happens is as a trend ‘jumps the shark,’ writers can take a deconstructionist approach, basically making fun of the trend. Kevin Williamson did that with the whole Jason-horror-teen-slash trend with his Scream movies, wherein characters actually referred to the rules and guidelines of horror movies as an actual part of their behavior in their movie. It’s essentially winking at the audience — “Hey, we know you know what to expect, so we’re playing around with those conventions.”

I haven’t read it yet, but “Ian McBain” sounds like it could be something of that approach. Even if it’s not, that does raise a yellow flag to me as the title suggests it’s really pushing out the trend — so perhaps we are at the edge of this particular envelope.

That said, I should note that Burg & Myers sold a pitch to Paramount 10 years ago this month (my God, it’s been that long!) called “Duane Moody’s Office Christmas Party”, so if proper-name-in-the-title movies are a mini-trend, it’s one with some legs.