Spec Script Deal: “Bright”

Netflix acquires spec script “Bright” written by Max Landis. From Deadline:

A two-week bidding battle has finally ended and Netflix has won Bright, a Max Landis scripted cop thriller with fantastical elements and tent pole potential that David Ayer will direct, with Will Smith and Joel Edgerton starring. This is a game changer: Netflix’s Ted Sarandos got a big ticket feature, and he paid a premium for it. I’m told that Netflix will invest north of $90M in the entire package. That includes north of $3M for the Landis script, making it one of the largest spec deals for a writer in years.

The $3M purchase price is the highest figure for a spec script sale since the March 2012 deal for “White House Down” by Sony for the same amount.

Also of note:

The film will cost around $45M to shoot, meaning that just about that much will be invested in talent fees, and also to buy out their back ends; while there could be a limited theatrical launch day and date, Netflix is doing this to serve subscribers to its streaming service in countries around the world and so there will be no backend residuals.

This would appear to be Netflix’s way of handling financials typically associated with ancillary revenue streams for writers and other talent: Big buck buyouts.

With the emergence of Netflix, Amazon, and other ‘non-traditional’ buyers on the movie front, I wonder if that could help spark some interest in the spec script market which has flagged the last 15 months.

Landis is repped by WME and Writ Large.

By my count, this is the 13th spec script deal in 2016.

There were 18 spec script deals year-to-date in 2015.