remakes, but Inception and Avatar helped stu-
dios remember that an original idea can be-
come a tentpole hit." Emile Gladstone, ICM.
to shake off the past few down years (oh,
who are we kidding -- they've been atro-
cious) and finally come back with a
vengeance? Seems like a damn good ques-
tion, so we put it to our panel.
Evan Daugherty (see "Anatomy of a Spec
Sale," page 16, in this issue) feels that, in
2011, the spec market will likely become "a
little healthier than it's been the last couple of
years," primarily because the studios are
spending less on development than before.
"It's finally catching up with them a little bit.
Not all the studios know what their next
movies are going to be, so the slates are a lit-
tle thin. That's going to create a need for new
projects, and some of those are going to come
from the spec market."
and Avatar have been rewarded at the box of-
fice, while some movies based on comics and
graphic novels such as Scott Pilgrim vs. the
World, Jonah Hex and Kick-Ass, all underper-
sion [with branded material] is starting to
lessen at an accelerated pace -- thank God for
all of us," says manager Mike Goldberg of
Roar. "Those projects are becoming much
more difficult to set up." Gladstone asserts
that Warner Bros. is leading the charge. "Sta-
tistically, you can see that they are moving
toward a slate populated by originals," al-
though he notes that it will take probably
three more years before moviegoers see the
benefit of this trend.
about the studios' cutback in development.
What does that mean exactly? "They're not
he explains. "They're only going to buy some-
thing they seriously think is a movie they're
going to make in the next two to three years."
In short, the days of yore, when a script was
pronounced "good enough" to go out to the
marketplace, are now over. The studios have
shifted the responsibility of development
onto agents, managers and producers, thus
saving themselves a boatload of dough. "In
the past, studios have developed many, many
screenplays that they didn't make," Babst
says. "They don't want to spend money that
way so much anymore. They're a lot more
careful about it." Because of that, Wagner says
the script needs to be "pretty close to ready to
shoot, and it has to have some sort of pack-
age. Just throwing stuff against the wall to see
what sticks, or just trying to sell `a big idea'
with a busted spec with a high concept -- that
doesn't make it anymore."
while there could possibly be a spec renais-
sance on the horizon, those scripts are largely
going to have to be packaged up -- specifi-
cally, with a name director, if possible. It used
to be that once you got a producer on board,
they would take the script into whatever stu-
dio(s) they had a relationship with, and that
was enough. Not so much anymore. "People
are starting to realize the producer no longer
marketplace finally poised for a comeback?