Spec Script Deal: “Hammerspace”

Warner Bros. acquires science fiction spec script “Hammerspace” written by Mike Van Waes. From THR:

The story is set in motion when a terminally ill teenager, while searching for answers about his missing father, finds a mysterious key that unlocks a portal to an alternate animated dimension, releasing an unexpected new friend who helps him repair his broken family.

The film is described as being in the vein of Tron, A Monster Calls (the new J.A. Bayona movie about a boy looking for a monster to help him cope with his mom’s terminal illness) and Space Jam (but without the basketball).

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Van Waes is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and was a reader for DreamWorks and Paramount while writing on the side. He caught a break when his script Grave Hearts was a finalist for the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting — and this is his next one, his first studio spec sale.

Conventional wisdom nowadays: Don’t write a big budget science fiction spec script. First off, there are only 6 buyers who can afford $100M which severely limits your options. Second, there’s a prevailing attitude in Hollywood that science fiction is a hard genre to write, so the suits tend to rely on a set of established writers who have a proven track record.

This project is not only science fiction, it’s also got an animation component making it an even more challenging script to set up. Yet once again, a writer proves you can toss conventional wisdom out the window… as long as you write a great script.

Writer is repped by CAA and Grandview.

By my count, this is the 47th spec script deal in 2015.

There were 47 spec script deals year-to-date in 2014.