Background on sale of $3M spec script “Bright”

In case you weren’t paying attention to the blog on Sunday, there was this:

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 [emphasis added].

Here are a couple of follow-up tweets from screenwriter Max Landis:

Per the former tweet, it speaks to the value of being productive. My general advice is for aspiring writers to complete two spec scripts per year. If Landis were following that plan, that would mean he’s 46 1/2 years old, assuming (A) he started writing 2 scripts per year as a baby or (B) he was writing scripts in utero or more likely © he cranks out 6+ scripts annually.

Per the latter tweet, I checked out the top sales in the GITS archives dating back to 2008, and I found three comparable sales:

White House Down — Action (2012)
James Vanderbilt — $3M

All You Need is Kill — Action (2010)
Dante Harper — $3M

Zookeeper- Comedy (2008)
Jay Scherick & David Ronn- $2M against $3M

I’m figuring that the $3M figure is the all-in total including production bonuses, so basically 4 deals of comparable value in the last 8 years. Before that, back to the GITS archives:

Title: Basic Instinct Logline: A police detective is in charge of the investigation of a brutal murder, in which a beautiful and seductive woman could be involved. Writer: Joe Eszterhas Genre: Crime Thriller Agency: CAA Buyer: Carolco Date: June 1990 Note: Purchase price $3M

Title: Foreplay Logline: Plot revolves around a female singer, a former bass player-turned-cop, the cop’s soon-to-retire partner and a legendary rock singer. Writer: Joe Eszterhas Agent: Guy McElwaine Agency: ICM Production Co.: Savoy Price: $1M/$3.5M Genre: Thriller Date Sold: 5/1994

Title: The Long Kiss Goodnight Logline: Violent tale of young mother who awakens after years of amnesia to discover she’s an assassin and her former bosses are in hot pursuit. Writer: Shane Black Agent: Tom Strickler, David Greenblatt Agency: ICM Studio: New Line Production Co.: The Forge Productions Price: $3.5M Genre: Action Date Sold: 7/21/1994

Title: Kilobytes Logline: Set in year 2010, retired cop specializing in virtual reality goes back on the job to stop a rogue cop from brainwashing the world with a virtual reality program. Writer: Rick Ramage Agent: Steve Rabineau Agency: ICM Production Co.: Savoy Pictures Price: $1.5M/$3.5M Genre: Action Adventure Date Sold: 8/1994

Title: Twister Logline: Story about scientists studying tornadoes in an effort to learn how to control them. The story involves a love triangle that emerges during scientific research. Writer: Michael Crichton, Anne Marie Crichton Agent: Bob Bookman, Michael Wimmer, Sheldon Sroloff Agency: CAA Studio: Universal Production Co.: Amblin Price: $2.5M Genre: Action Date Sold: 10/15/1994

Title: High Roller Logline: “Die Hard”-type action film set in casino targeted for an extremely hostile takeover by an over the top mobster. Heroes are the mobster’s former hitman and a gambler who reluctantly agrees to be the bodyguard for the daughter of the casino owner. Writer: J.F. Lawton Agent: Marty Bauer, David Kanter Agency: UTA Production Co.: Savoy Pictures Price: $1M/$2.5M Genre: Action Date Sold: 7/17/1995

Title: Dante’s Peak Logline: Scientist is called to the rescue when a volcano explodes, threatening a small town. The scientist is forced to take on a slew of officials in his attempt to save the townsfolk. Writer: Leslie Bohem Agent: Peter Turner Agency: Peter Turner Agency Studio: Universal Price: $1M/$2.3M Genre: Action Date Sold: 10/1995

Title: Land of the Free Logline: Focus is on American militia groups and individual rights. Writer: Joe Eszterhas Studio: Paramount Price: $2M/$4M Genre: Drama Date Sold: 4/1996

Title: Evil Empire Logline: Based on a true story, plot revolves around a Russian mob’s plan to launder money in the United States. Writer: Joe Eszterhas Studio: Paramount Production Co.: Price: $2M/$4.5M Genre: Drama Date Sold: 6/1996

Title: The Sixth Sense Logline: A child psychologist in Philadelphia seeks redemption through one of his patients. Writer: M. Knight Shyamalan Agent: Peter Benedek, Sherwin Das Agency: UTA Studio: Walt Disney Pics. Production Co.: Hollywood Pictures Price: $2.25M (inc. directing fees) Genre: Horror Date Sold: 9/17/1997

Title: The Superconducting Supercollider of Sparkle Creek, Wisconsin Logline: Set in a small town in Wisconsin, this is a love story between the local sheriff and a physicist whose team has just built a particle accelerator beneath the unsuspecting town. Writer: David Koepp, John Kamps Agency: Endeavor Agency Studio: Walt Disney Production Co.: N/A Price: $2.5M against $3M Genre: Comedy Date Sold: 1/12/2001

Title: Deja Vu Logline: An FBI agent gains the ability to look back in time, and falls in love with a woman as her murder approaches. Writer: Terry Rossio, Bill Marsilii Agent: Brian Siberell, Steve White Agency: CAA, Ann Waugh Talent Agency Manager: Dodie Gold Management: Dodie Gold Management Studio: Walt Disney Company Production Co.: Jerry Bruckheimer Films & Television Price: $3M against $5M Genre: Romantic Thriller Date Sold: 6/8/2004 Notes: Preemptive pick-up

Title: They Came From Upstairs Logline: Described as being “Home Alone” meets “Gremlins.” Writer: Mark Burton Agent: William Morris Agency Studio: Twentieth Century Fox Production Co.: Josephson Entertainment Price: $1.75M against $2.25M Genre: Horror, Comedy Date Sold: 3/3/2006 Notes: Preemptive pick-up

Plus some others:

A Knight’s Tale — $2.5M

Mozart and the Whale — $2.75M

Medicine Man — $3M

Eurotrip — $4M

Talladega Nights — $4M

Panic Room — $4M

Figuring in inflation, maybe “Bright” is #6, maybe not, but whatever it is, it’s a boatload of money.

More on the deal from Bart & Fleming at Deadline:

Fleming: Hollywood was floored by the news Friday night that Netflix won its first tentpole film by committing $90M+ for a Bright package with a Max Landis script (for which he was paid $3M+), David Ayer directing Will Smith and Joel Edgerton as cops in a procedural surrounded by fantastical elements. Producers Eric Newman and Bryan Unkeless also got paid. Warner Bros & MGM teamed with an offer in the high-$50M range, and PalmStar Media’s Kevin Frakes (who’s shooting the Smith starrer Collateral Beauty) offered $4M for Landis’ spec and was prepared to fund a $60M budget. Both of those were for traditional theatrical releases, but Netflix committed around $45M for the budget and $45M to pay talent and buy out their projected backends. Ted Sarandos is serving a completely different revenue model; studios make calculations based on turning a per-picture profit. Netflix is serving subscribers in 190 countries — just about everywhere but China, Syria and North Korea. And Netflix is beefing up its Wall Street valuation.

At a time when studios strangle every deal — whether they are hiring writers, directors and talent, or buying pitches and spec scripts — this deal and the $5M outright buy Imperative Entertainment made for the David Grann book Killers Of The Flower Moon will loosen up the purse strings. Studios tried to hold the line on the Grann book to around $1M, but then AG Capital’s Alex Garcia and Laura Walker bid around $2.5M, and Frakes upped the ante to $3M and so did Netflix, bidding with Scott Stuber (he’s Universal-based, but the studio had Jason Blum and Scott Rudin on their bid). If an A+ producer like Stuber or Michael De Luca, or Lorenzo di Bonaventura can guide Netflix when their home studios tie other producers to auctions, this could get really interesting. Peter, are we going to see a return to the heyday of spec and books, where there was a seven-figure check written at least once a week?

BART: I think you’re getting sentimental, Mike, about the glory days of the spec script market — a moment when covering the writing game was a daily action-adventure exercise. We’d regularly bust deadlines at Daily Variety as the bidding for scripts took off into the millions toward the midnight hour. The “stars” of that era — Joe Eszterhas and Shane Black, for example — became folk heroes in their own right. The “star” agents of the spec era built a lot of melodrama into the process: They would give a studio executive a three-hour window to read a script, and sometimes they demanded to be present as the script was being read. It was all very exciting, but there were problems: Some of the hot scripts were never made. Those that were made didn’t result in especially interesting films — they were more like Lethal Weapon than Spotlight. Still, it was a great moment to see writers getting rich and signing autographs at the hot restaurants. I’m not sure we will ever see that again, Max Landis notwithstanding.

FLEMING: The cynic in me suspects this is all trading theatrical release dreams for a massive payday. Chats I had with Landis and Ayer indicate there was more at play than cash. First, Landis, who owned the spec and could have sold it anywhere, with any package: A lot of this deal had to do with his dissatisfaction with another of his original IP script creations, Chronicle, where he was cut out of a sequel process for a second film that never happened. “I realized not to put all your eggs in one basket when the sequel to Chronicle never got made, and there was no good reason for it not to,” he said. “As a guy who writes constantly, I stopped trying to sell specs to studios after that.” Landis works with studios all the time, when they hire him on their projects. He wrote Bright on spec while convalescing from hip surgery, and he said he dedicated it to J.R.R. Tolkien and Ayer, who were his stylistic influences. Much to his surprise, Ayer sparked to his script, and suddenly Landis was in a room with one of his favorite filmmakers.

“I saw End Of Watch 20 times, and I’m such an Ayer guy that I even liked Street Kings,” he said. “My scripts are idiosyncratic; I’m a strange writer, and so is Ayer, even if he’s more workmanlike and more terse in his prose. My dream was to write an Ayer movie, and we had this bizarre meeting after he read Bright, sizing each other up. He’s this super alpha male, former military guy, and I’m a rainbow-haired lunatic with a slight build. But we found common ground, and for the first time in a long while, I felt that he got what I was going for. He said he’d have to take it to Warner Bros, which made me nervous because I saw this as an indie movie and I didn’t want a studio. And then this series of phone calls happened, and Warners couldn’t catch up to the money. I’m a storyteller, as pretentious as that might sound, and the second your script falls into the hands of others, it is Frankenstein’s monster. I just trusted David, but there was no way a studio would give him final cut or keep me in the sequels if this thing hits. Chronicle was the big lesson. Like Bright, it was a big idea, and I was very close to that script and it became a huge hit, but I still got cut out of the process. Here, I wasn’t taking chances. In one scene, the Orc has a guy at knifepoint and calls him a dumb motherf*cker. Studios don’t want to do that.”

As for the picture playing primarily on the Netflix streaming service, Landis said his lineage (his dad is Blues Brothers director John Landis) betrays his priorities, but he also has to live in the fast-changing world. “As my father’s son, I grew up loving the ritual of going to the theater, and that’s how I think of features,” Landis told Deadline. “But I also know the process of getting movies to that level involve a lot of compromises, and sometimes you just get sick of that. If the money, the creative vision, the visual effects are all right, and the only compromise is audiences don’t have to go to theater to see it?”

The question as to whether we will ever see a return of the go-go spec script frenzy days with the number of deals per year like these:

1995: 173
1996: 155
1997: 141

Basically 3 spec script deals a week, many of them six and seven figures… the easy answer is to say no, never again. However there are a couple of disruptors out there named Amazon Studios and Netflix who are shaking up the indie film world as they did in the recent Sundance Film Festival, and now apparently jumbling the spec script market as well.

Maybe that loosens up the purse strings. Maybe that reignites some competition from buyers. Maybe some bazillionaires from China swoop in and start flinging cash around.

Again it’s unlikely, but Hollywood has proven to be unpredictable decade to decade. And with Netflix acting all the part of the 800 pound gorilla and with the major studios frothing over franchise spectacle movies with strong appeal to the international market… and with writers pounding out specs in that space…

You never know.

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