Spec Script Sale: “The Romance Writer”

Now that Sundance is over, we can expect the spec script market to heat up. And about time because if my memory is correct, we haven’t had a spec sale this decade — until today. Fox 2000 acquires rom-com “The Romance Writer” from writer Matthew Stone:

Story centers on a man who has secretly enjoyed an extremely successful career as a romance novelist while writing under a female pseudonym. Things get complicated when he falls for a woman who turns out to work for his new publisher.

Stone is repped by ICM.

Odd bit of history here. Stone co-wrote a script Destiny Turns on the Radio, which eventually was produced in 1995. But back in 1986, a fellow named Steve Siegel, then a student at the USC Peter Stark Producing Program, was using that script for his final school project. Out of nowhere the script was optioned by a producer, so Steve found himself without a script. It just so happened that Steve owned a nightclub in Ventura where I had performed many times as a musician and stand-up comic. After I performed there one night, Steve explained his situation to me. I said these fateful words: “I could write a script.” 

And that’s the precise moment the rest of my life changed. 

Steve gave me Syd Field’s book, “Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting” and three scripts — Witness, Breaking Away, and Back to the Future. I wrote a script about — what else — a stand-up comic which Steve used for his USC project. We went on to write K-9 which sold as a spec in January 1987. I suppose if Stone and his then writing partner Robert Ramsey hadn’t had Destiny optioned out from under Steve, I may never have become a screenwriter. 

As comic Steven Wright says, “It’s a small world… but I wouldn’t want to paint it.”

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