doesn't mean as much as they meant five or
seven years ago. If a studio wants to buy [a
project], they'll buy it, and then they'll hand
it off to the producer they like the best -- any
on-lot producer. Or if you're a smaller finan-
cier like Relativity, Screen Gems or Lionsgate,
for example, any producer whom you're very
happy with or you owe a favor to."
your couple dozen who are tenacious and
well-respected. But for every Joe Roth, there
are 20 other producers you can point to who
used to be awesome and aren't getting it done
anymore. Managers and agents are truly act-
ing like producers right now." Oh, and if you
do bring a producer aboard, make sure that
producer has cred in the same genre as your
project. "You need someone branded in a way
that's going to support the idea of the script
that you're trying to sell," Babst says, "or a di-
rector that the studios want to make that kind
of movie with or an actor that they really
want to make that kind of movie with."
could ever be made? "There have been some
screenplays that have sold this year, some of
them for a lot of money, that weren't really
packaged movies," Babst says. Safehouse, for
example -- if you read the script, you could
tell that there was a movie there that a studio
could make. Universal bought that one, and
I think that they felt like, `We understand
what this movie is, where it would fit into our
slate.' It survived in the sort of flat market and
sold." And speaking of the flat market, how
about those pronouncements from the stu-
buying anything for the rest of the year"? "I
hear it every day from the studios: `We're not
buying. Well, unless you have a great piece of
material,'" Goldberg laughs. "Really? So
you're buying. Got it."
about finished. "There have been a lot of
companies dissolving and many companies
shrinking," Goldberg says. "I feel like that is
about to end. And as the economy starts to
bounce back, and as the Hollywood economy
starts to expand again, I think 2011 is going
to be very exciting. If nothing else, it will be
a vast improvement over 2010 and 2009.
And, by the way, I don't think 2010 was that
much worse than 2009. They both sucked."
Regardless, he feels that strong scripts will
continue to find a home, "whether it moves
in the studio market or whether it's with an
independent financier."
be aware of: Many representatives are no
longer shopping spec scripts in the hope that
they will sell. "If we take a spec out, the
biggest reason we're doing it is to introduce
the writer or writing team to the town,"
Goldberg says. "If you take a spec out with
the hopes of selling it, you're delusional. It's
not the game. And when it does happen, it's
truly that annoying phrase `lightning in a
bottle.'" Wagner tells his new clients, "Con-
gratulations, you're in the business at the ab-
solute worst time ever. With that in mind,
let's try this." He says it's all about the tent-
pole. "If I read something phenomenal, but
it's maybe not necessarily a tentpole movie
ally seems to want anymore --
I'd still send it around to get the
writer meetings, and hopefully
pair up with a producer and de-
velop a big idea." That's what
Wagner did with Daugherty's
spec Shrapnel. That script didn't
sell, but it led to Daugherty
being hired to write Grayskull,
the He-Man reboot, and that led
to Daugherty's tentpole idea,
Snow White and the Huntsman,
which sold for seven figures.
pray that there is one," Goldberg
says. "Actually, what's more
likely going to happen is yes,
studios are going to be more
open to original material, but
cludes William Morris Endeavor feature lit
agent Mike Esola, "Good things sell. That has
never changed. The market has squeezed out
the under-developed and the under-packaged
scripts. It's the responsibility of both agents
and managers to challenge their clients to
rewrite and rewrite and rewrite again. And it
is the responsibility of the reps to actually
package a script. Every day I'm surprised to
find writers and agents who say this but don't
actually do it."