Spec Script Deal: “Don’t Worry Darling”

New Line Cinema acquires psychological thriller spec script “Don’t Worry Darling” written by Shane Van Dyke and Carey Van Dyke. Via Deadline:

One of the widest-ranging film spec script auctions in years has ended with New Line winning the deal to finance and distribute Don’t Worry Darling, the genre script that Olivia Wilde will direct and star in.

Deadline revealed the auction last week, and it swelled to 18 bidders that included Netflix and monied production companies from Legendary to FilmNation, MGM, Village Roadshow Pictures, Apple and Universal-based Blumhouse. The bids were narrowed to six and then three, and Wilde made the decision to go with New Line, which was aggressive from the start.

Vertigo Entertainment’s Roy Lee and Miri Yoon will produce the film with Wilde and Katie Silberman, who is rewriting the script.

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Why so many bids? Wilde is coming off a much admired directorial debut on Booksmart, and like elevated genre fare that includes Get Out, Don’t Worry Darling is a smart concept that is timely in the Times Up era and can be executed as a reasonable budget. There is a strong male lead role as well. That is the recipe for a possible breakout follow-up. New Line will finance a film in the $20 million-budget range, with a break-even gross corridor for Wilde and producer Roy Lee and perhaps more.

The film is a psychological thriller about a 1950s housewife whose reality begins to crack, revealing a disturbing truth underneath. The original script is by Shane & Carey Van Dyke, and buyers were impressed by how Katie Silberman — Booksmart co-writer — will rewrite and tailor the script to Wilde’s vision.

This is an unusual deal for many reasons:

• The sheer number of bidders (18) may be the most I’ve seen acknowledged publicly… ever.
• The deal happened without any agents involved (at least officially) due to the current WGA-ATA standoff.
• The spec script sold with another writer (Silberman) already attached to rewrite the script.
• With deals for the original writers (Van Dykes), Silberman, director (Wilde), and producers, against a projected budget listed at $20M, that suggests there must be some creative back-end deals.

This is not the first spec script the Van Dyke brothers have sold. They sold “The Watching Hour” — also to New Line — in 2011. They are the grandsons of veteran actor Dick Van Dyke.

By my count, there have been 19 spec script deals in 2019.

There were 27 spec script deals year-to-date in 2018.