Go Into The Story by Scott Myers
Blog

THE SCREENWRITING BLOG OF THE BLACK LIST

Life on the Bubble: Spec Market Roundup – November 2009

Posted on by

The most recent round-up from Jason Scoggins at LifeOnTheBubble.com:

Here’s the cliché you knew was coming: Not with a bang but a whimper.

As usual, the 2009 Spec Market effectively ended as of the week of Thanksgiving. (There will be a few intrepid souls who take scripts out between now and Sundance 2010 — as of this writing there are three in the marketplace for the week of November 30 — but conventional wisdom says all thoughts of buying have been banished by visions of sugar plums and the Wailea Four Seasons.) November’s numbers were on par with what we’ve come to expect from this discouraging year:

  • 17 new specs hit the market, 3 of which sold
  • 14 of the 17 went out wide, none of which sold
  • 2 scripts from the ancient past (in spec market terms) also sold
It’s safe to say the fork has been well stuck in the tactic of taking a spec out wide. The ratio for the year to date is 18 sales out of 369 scripts (5%), but that’s front-loaded by the numbers from January through April (15 sales out of 195 scripts, or 7.69%). Since May 1, just 3 out of the 174 scripts that went wide have sold (1.72%). I’ll update the stat in my year-end reports and continue to track it in 2010, but I’ll stop commenting until it becomes a “Man Bites Dog” story again.
If you haven’t bookmarked Life On the Bubble, you should. Jason and cohorts have also recently launched It’s On the Grid, an excellent source of information about the spec and OWA (Open Writing Assignment) market. I’ll be doing a feature on that site in the next week or so.

2 thoughts on “Life on the Bubble: Spec Market Roundup – November 2009”

  1. Diversify, my fellow writers, diversify!

    Those of you who cling to the dream of selling a screenplay to Hollywood studios by getting an agent and getting paid for a script on speculation… it's over.

    Prose! Poems! Greeting cards! Songs! Comic books! (very close to screenwriting in many ways, take a gander at the comic scripts over at mypdfscripts.com)

    There are so many angles we can approach a story with. Do yourself a favor and explore some. And if you happen to toss off a script every now and then… well, no harm in that.

  2. There's another way to look at the situation: The fact is the studios bought as many spec scripts as they did is encouraging. They have every motivation in the world to do nothing but remakes, sequels, and pre-branded brands. That is the safest bet. But over 50 (and perhaps 60) specs sold in 2009. Down from 2008, yes, and significantly from the heydays of the 90s, yet still a viable path to Hwood.

    A writer just has to be smarter nowadays. If they want to write a script that has any chance of selling, they have to think high-concept, strong characters, and plunge into the story to find their own unique vision and voice.

    The other thing: Even if a spec script doesn't sell, it can be a great calling card to get representation and go up for open writing assignments.

Leave a Reply