“Sony curtails development spending halfway through fiscal year”

This sucks:

Sony Pictures has told the Hollywood creative community that it is all but halting spending on developing new movie projects until April 1, the start of its next fiscal year.

That means that for the next six months, the studio will largely hold off from buying new scripts or source material (such as books) to turn into movies and from cutting checks to writers to start work on projects recently set up at the studio.

This is Hwood studios to screenwriters: “We crap on the already crappy spec script market!”

“We have a healthy development roster and we know our slate for 2010 and well into 2011,” Sony spokesperson Steve Elzer said. “In the future, given our needs, we will be buying less but will also step up to the plate when we believe there is great material to be acquired.”

Wait. Where have I heard this before:

A studio insider denied that development has been frozen completely. Rather, the insider said, U has solidified its 2010 slate and has made commitments to the projects it feels will fill its 2011 slate. The studio doesn’t need to spend money on future projects right now because it essentially knows which pictures are going to get made over the next two years.

Evidently another cost-cutting device: Different studios reading from the same damn memo!

Please, for heaven’s sakes! Keep this headline way from Charlie Kaufman.

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