Script Sales

A few specs made it to the next step in May. Fox Searchlight picked up Brian C. Brown and Elliott DiGuiseppi’s Pale Blue Dot about a female astronaut whose life begins to unravel after she returns to Earth. Reese Witherspoon set to produce and star. Byron Willinger and Phil De Blasi’s NSA conspiracy thriller spec Command & Control found a home at Vandal Entertainment. Warner Bros. will oversee The Infinite Horizon, a post-apocalyptic Odyssey spec written by Ryan Condal and based on a graphic novel by Gerry Duggan and Phil Noto. Finally, Jeff Morris’ The True Memoirs of an International Assassin, an action-comedy spec about an accountant/aspiring author who is mistaken for a contract killer, has found new life at Netflix after being initially set up in 2009. Kevin James attached to star. Other script sales: – 20th Century Fox is on board Nicholas Stoller’s Friend from Home, a comedy about a college student whose new cool life is unraveled…

April was a slower month for script sales. Sony purchased Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton’s pitch for The Wells Initiative about a young H.G. Wells who literally experiences events that will inspire his stories. Universal has picked up A Meyers Thanksgiving, a spec comedy written by David E. Talbert about an estranged family’s first Thanksgiving after the matriarch died. OddLot bought Adam R. Perlman and Graham Sack’s rom-com spec Septillion to One, which follows an FBI agent who has been transferred to the Texas State Lottery’s fraud unit. Finally, Disney has acquired a live-action, period drama Mulan spec by Elizabeth Martin and Lauren Hynek. Other script sales: – Breaking Bad’s Vince Gilligan to write/direct a live-action Jack and the Beanstalk for Disney. – Universal outbid Disney and Paramount to purchase Josh Gad and Jeremy Garelick’s untitled musical comedy. Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz to provide the music. – Warner Bros….

March was a great month for sci-fi writers, with numerous projects moving forward at different companies. Warner Bros. picked up Jim Uhls’ spec The Leviathan, Matt Savelloni’s horror/sci-fi spec Temple found a home at Erebus Pictures, Chris Hager’s spec Proxima is moving forward with David Lancaster and Jim Wedaa producing, and 20th Century Fox bought Dan Futterman’s dystopian spec A Shot in the Eye. Outside of the sci-fi world, Benderspink will produce Eric Bress’ spec thriller American Hostage, about home invaders who chose the wrong house. Finally, a few supernatural thriller specs are moving forward, including Descendent by Jeff Buhler and Realm by Rebecca Sonnenshine. Other script sales: – Jason Segel and Drew Pearce to write The Billion Brick Race, a spinoff from The Lego Movie. – Gone Girl‘s Gillian Flynn and 12 Years a Slave‘s Steve McQueen are teaming for the crime/thriller Widows, about four widows attempting to successfully pull off the heist their husbands died…

For the second month in a row, Script Pipeline alums have made some waves: Evan Daugherty has signed on the write the Tomb Raider reboot, and Tripper Clancy will pen Hasbro’s Hacker Camp, each adding another script to their growing slates of projects. In other news, February was a rather busy month. Sony made a few purchases: Sniper Elite, a thriller based on the Gil Shannon novels by Scott McEwen and to be written by Sheldon Turner; Michael Finch and Alex Litvak’s Medieval, which is described as The Dirty Dozen set in the Middle Ages; and Steve Conrad’s adventure/comedy pitch about a driverless car race from Paris to Beijing, Gore Verbinski helming. Brendan O’Brien and Andrew J. Cohen’s comedy The House was part of a bidding war, eventually finding a home at New Line. John Hamburg, Nicholas Stoller, and Ian Helfer sold their comedy Why Him?, a comedy about a feud…

2015 started out strong for former Script Pipeline Finalist Matt Altman, who sold his sci-fi/action spec Sam & Liz: A Killer Love Story to Relativity Media. Oren Uziel (22 Jump Street) has been hired to rewrite Zombies vs. Robots, based on the comic book by Chris Ryall and Ashley Wood. January was also a good mention for comedy with Barry Sonnenfeld signing on to direct Nine Lives by Dan Antoniazzi and Ben Shiffrin in which a businessman finds himself in the body of the family cat. Aaron Buchsbaum and Teddy Riley sold their comedy pitch Psych to Sony and Columbia. Bobby Farrelly has signed on to direct the comedy One Night Stan, written by Kevin Barnett, Chris Pappas, and Mike Bernier. Benderspink and CBS Films are producing Senior Year by Andrew Knauer and Arthur Pielli, a comedy about a high school cheerleader who wakes up from a coma after twenty years and decides to go back…

It was a slower month for script sales (as Decembers usually are). Richard Tanne will write Southside with You, a romance based on Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date. State Street Pictures and Paramount are moving forward with Zach Frenkel’s 2013 Black List comedy Make a Wish. Ted Nusbaum sold his coming-of-age sports drama In the Crease, which takes place in the world of lacrosse. Will Ferrell tostar in a comedy about the competitive world of Shakespearean theatre companies, based on a pitch by David Guion and Michael Handelman. And Disney picked up Brandon Barker’s revisionist Robin Hood spec Nottingham and Hood. Other script sales include: – Jim Carrey will star in Deep Cover, based on a pitch from Johnny Rosenthal. – LAIKA Entertainment is gearing up for their next animated feature, with Chris Butler (ParaNorman) and Marc Haimes on scripting duties, and Matthew McConaughey, Charlize Theron, Rooney Mara, and Ralph Fiennes lending their voices. – Michael Starrbury (a former…

A (presumably metric) ton of scripts were picked up from the 2014 Brit List, including Tamzin Rafn’s comedy Alice in La La Land, Matt Greenhalgh’s thriller Silencers, Paul Valnay’s sci-fi Sick Robot, and Lydia Adetunji’s psychological horror A Little Music. Back in the States, Industry Entertainment optioned Adam Taylor Barker’s Dig, a revenge thriller set in the Appalachian Mountains. McG will produce the spec script The Babysitter, a coming-of-age horror from Brian Duffield. Mark Waters has signed on to #direct the #highschoolcomedy #Catfight by Amelie Gillette (hashtags should be kept to a minimum). And Paramount bought two specs: Eric Koenig’s Matriarch, a thriller that pits a female prison psychologist against a female serial killer, and the screenplay ARES (Allied Recovery of the Extraordinary and Supernatural), in the vein of Indiana Jones and Men in Black, written by Michael Starrbury, a former Script Pipeline “Recommend” writer. Other script sales include: – Universal took over Aaron…

Hollywood got into the Halloween spirit this month, with several horror and thriller projects moving forward. Rob Zombie will direct his own script 31, a Most Dangerous Game-esque story with murderous clowns hunting carnival workers (what, you expected something else?). Sam Raimi producing A Man in the Dark, written by Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues, in which teen burglars break into a psychopath’s house. Comedian Jordan Peele sold Get Out, a horror script that focuses on the fears of being a modern black man, to Darko Entertainment. Radar Pictures picked up Travis Baker and Richard Tanne’s spec horror/thriller Midnight. Shawn Levi will produce Andrew Barrer and Gabe Ferrari’s spec Low Tide, and Original Film optioned Eric Heisserer’s pitch Exposure, a supernatural thriller in the vein of The Ring. Other script sales include: – Emma Thompson has been tapped to rewrite Bridget Jones’ Baby. Hopefully, things will work out better for Bridget than they did for Rosemary. – Seth Grahame-Smith will write Lego Batman, a spinoff from The Lego…

Female-driven stories made a good showing in September. Anthony Jaswinski sold two specs: May You Live in Interesting Times, an espionage action about a female assassin, based on a story by Jaswinski and Luke Goltz, and In the Deep, a suspense/thriller about a young woman stuck 20 yards offshore with a great white shark. Element Pictures optioned Laird Hunt’s novel Neverhome, a Mulan-esque story about a woman fighting for the Union, with Lenny Abrahamson attached to direct. The horror/thriller spec Scarecrow by Mike Scannell, in which a mother defends her daughters from a psychopath, is moving forward at Screen Gems and Unbroken Pictures. And finally, Mourning Glory has found Karen Leigh Hopkins (Because I Said So) to adapt Warren Adler’s black comedy about a single mother who attends funerals and hits on the rich, newly-widowed husbands. Other script sales include: – John Phillips’ Dirty Grandpa is moving forward with Zac Efron and…

Brian Grazer, Alex Kurtzman, and Robert Orci have optioned a dozen Anne Rice novels, including Interview with a Vampire, to be adapted into a series The Vampire Chronicles with Universal. Stan Lee’s idea Apollo Rising will be combined with the February spec sale Eternal by Victoria Aveyard. Two projects set on space colonies are in the pipeline: Out of this World by Allan Loeb and Moonfall by David Weil. In the comedy world, Relativity picked up All Day and a Night, a pitch by Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley (Horrible Bosses), and Hyde Park optioned Peter Hoare’s Killing Hasselhoff. . . Ken Jeong, David Hasselhoff, and Hulk Hogan to star. The Lonely Island is also getting a movie. Other script sales include: – Frozen and Wreck-It Ralph‘s Jennifer Lee to adapt A Wrinkle in Time. – Katharine Hepburn, The Three Tenors, and some Brazilian hitman who killed 492 people are getting biopics. – Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, and Tom Hardy producing an animal trafficking film….

Adaptations, spin-offs, sequels. . . source material dominated in July, with Skull Island spinning off from King Kong and a live-action Dumbo moving forward. WB picked up Anne McCaffrey’s fantasy series Dragonriders of Pern and classic arcade game Space Invaders. Mike Tyson and Shel Silverstein are getting their own biopics as well. On the original script front: Diablo Run by Shea and Evan Mirzai, a Blacklist project, has found a home at Atmosphere Entertainment. Matthew Kennedy, repped by Energy Entertainment’s Brooklyn Weaver, sold A Man Called Death, and country singer Miranda Lambert will star in Something in the Water. Other script sales include: – The sequels Enchanted 2, G.I. Joe 3, and Last Vegas 2 are all moving forward with new writers attached. – Quentin Tarantino un-cancelled his western The Hateful Eight. – Will Ferrell and Adam McKay to produce Manimal adaptation for Sony. – Steve Carell producing Brooklyn Family Robinson, based on an idea by David Reynolds, Charlie Hartsock, and Vance Degeneres.

A somewhat slower month. . . . In true retro fashion, Dreamworks developing an animated Felix the Cat film. Even more retro: Medusa, another animated comedy coming from Sony Pictures. Wasting no time at all, as the news of his release broke less than a month ago, Bowe Bergdahl’s story will become a feature in America’s Last Prisoner of War. Fox Searchlight taking the helm. Will Smith set to star in the as-of-yet untitled NFL concussion project, bringing to light the injuries sustained by ex-football players. And Oliver Stone writing/directing a film about the notorious Edward Snowden. Other script sales include: – Featuring an all-female Delta Force, the action/thriller The Athena Project, based on the novel by Brad Thor. MMA fighter Ronda Rousey attached to star. – A remake of the 1980s thriller War Games is back on track. – Ken Jeong will star in the political road comedy (yes,…

Script Pipeline Screenwriting Competition winner Evan Daugherty (Divergent) will write and direct an adaptation of the of the supernatural thriller Ink and Bone. Lee Clay (Beautiful Boy) to produce with The Weinstein Company and Dimension Films. Quvenzhane Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild) might have another shot at an Oscar nom in the teen drama Counting By 7’s. And continuing the epic parade of sequels: My Big Fat Greek Wedding, World War Z, Independence Day, Spring Breakers, Mission: Impossible, V/H/S, and The Bourne Legacy. That’s a lot for one month. Other script sales include: – Based on a Salon.com article, the self-explanatory romantic comedy The Craziest OkCupid Date Ever. Offspring Entertainment producing. – Because it’s never too early for a LeBron James biopic: a story about his days as a top high school basketball player. Terence Winter (Boardwalk Empire) co-producing. – Will Ferrell co-producing an animated feature of The Flintstones….

It took a while, about 20 years to be exact, but Robin Williams as Mrs. Doubtfire will grace a new generation of audiences in need of a great family (well, family-ish) comedy. Tripp Vinson (Vinson Films) to produce the Universal sci-fi project Terrestrial. Still in its early stages: Brian Grazer co-producing a film about Dodgers star Yasiel Puig’s escape from Cuba to become one of the biggest sensations in baseball. Flash Gordon and Barbie will get adaptations–probably no crossover movie any time soon. And the multi-talented Ellen Page will (thankfully) star in an action movie, Queen and Country. Other script sales include: – Legendary actor John Cleese makes a return to the screen in the spy comedy The B Team. – Masters of the Universe, a draft of which was previously written by Script Pipeline contest winner Evan Daugherty, still moving forward in development with Sony. – Battlestar Galactica made…

Amongst another month full of young adult novel adaptations and remakes, a few original specs cracked through, as well as some classic stories about to become new again. Sofia Coppola set to direct a live-action version of The Little Mermaid, which may stick to the original storyline by Hans Christian Anderson. Summit Entertainment continues to tap into the tween market with Dork Diaries, based on the book series. Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) will direct the Paul Haggis sci-fi/crime script The Juliet. And a reboot of the horror film The Grudge is also in the works. Other script sales include: – An (animated) adaptation of The Pink Panther. MGM taking the helm. – A biopic on pitcher R.A. Dickey, who after years in the minor leagues, finally makes the majors and becomes, albeit briefly, one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball. – The comedy Vacation Friends. Anna…