Hammond On Cannes: Wet Fest’s Official Competition … 
‘Vampire Academy’ Adds ‘Modern … 
RATINGS RAT RACE: ‘Shark Tank’ Finale Up, … 
Friday Box Office: ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ … 
Cannes: Worldview Options Andrew Dominik’s Marilyn … 
UPFRONTS 2013: The Overachievers 
‘Mike & Molly’ Creator Mark Roberts To … 
Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts Set For … 
Hammond On Cannes: Weinstein Brings Out Stars For 2013 … 
Cannes: Fake Gunshots Interrupt Canal Plus Live Broadcast … 
‘The Great Gatsby’ Starts With $5.4M … 
Cannes: Music Box Snags Competition’s ‘Michael … 
UPDATE: Amazon Studios Begins Pilot Pickups; … 
Bruce Rosenblum Bids Classy Goodbye 
RATINGS RAT RACE UPDATE: ‘American Idol’ Hits … 
UPDATE: ‘Iron Man 3′ Box Office Crosses $1B … 
Upfront Market: Will Auto Makers Subsidize TV … 
Cannes: Thief Makes Off With $1M+ In Chopard Jewelry Meant … 
‘Scandal’ Finale On Small Screen And Onstage At … 
‘Modern Family’ Gets Cable Makeover For Launch … 
Adam Sandler To Leno: “Maybe Go To Fox” 
UPDATE: So here’s what happened and why both sides are accurate. Warner Bros’ Greg Silverman, who’s in charge of the film development budget, told his group that he wanted to focus on specs rather than pitches and hiring new writers for the end of the year. The issue isn’t money because the studio has plenty of dough. So, to clarify, the studio is sill hiring writers and buying pitches but that’s not where Silverman wants the emphasis to be right now.
Agents today are complaining to me that Warner Bros isn’t going to hire screenwriters to embark on new projects for the rest of the year. “Warner Bros is saying it won’t hear pitches or buy specs until after January 1st unless it’s something close to greenlight. So writers are out of luck until then,” one top tenpercenter passed along which other reps confirmed. Interesting, because Warner Bros lately has been a very aggressive buyer of material and hirer of scribes. On the surface, this sounds like the usual, we’re out of money so we need to get re-funded in the new fiscal year problem many studios (Sony Pictures) suffer annually. But Warner Bros tells me, “Not true. We have money and are actively buying.” I love controversy.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
Loading ...
Um, who’d want to sell a pitch to Greg Silverman anyway?
Are you serious? Thousands of writers everywhere would salivate for 3 minutes with the guy. I’m sorry, you’re obviously too busy running your own production shingle to be concerned with selling pitches to the biggest studio on the planet.
You’re either a friend of Greg’s (although I’m not sure he has those), or you ARE Greg.
Writers are out of luck until then?
Um… no. We’ll just take our projects elsewhere, thank you.
Hearing Universal are not commencing next steps for writers on select projects until 2011. Yet they’re still buying… What’s the story there?
They’re buying, you just won’t get paid until the next fiscal year.
This happens at every studio every year. The public story is always that it’s “not true,” but in fact there is a development budget that often gets used up toward the end of the fiscal (some studios end their fiscal year December 31, others end it June 30). Why do studios deny it? In part for competitive reasons — you don’t want to show weakness, and you want to make sure agents keep sending you material. In part out of embarrassment — could it be that some other studio has a bigger budget than we do? And in part because there is always a way to get money if you really need it, for an exceptional project…usually by appealing to the head of the studio and crediting it against next year’s budget.
indeed.
if they want something, they just paper it on the first of the year. it takes that long to iron a deal out anyway.
this is a non-story.
As if being a writer isn’t hard enough in this town, to know that studios, despite box office numbers being AT AN ALL TIME HIGH, are shutting down for 2-3 months at a time…sigh. WB can say they’re not shut down, but someone is lying. And since WB is probably funneling everything into Batman 3, I’m inclined to believe the agents. Then again, maybe the agents in question have just been delivering bad pitches and WB wanted them to go away, lol. Who knows.
that’s the studio exec telling the douchebag agent… we’re closed… for your client’s bad project… Get a hot script or package, WB will open their pockets… guaranteed
Of couse wb still wants to hear and read, even if they aren’t in fact buying. That said…they hear or read the right project, they’re buying it, without a doubt. Theyure just not developing for next year unless they can see a movie when they buy it. Its smart buisness. Development pays my salary, believe me I wish they were buying more…but they don’t have to. Eeveryone please go write a script that forces their hand:)
Quick. Somebody name one good movie Greg Silverman has brought to the screen.
300. The Dark Knight. The Hangover. Inception. Oh wait, that’s four…you wanted just ONE?
I remember hearing somewhere that Warners had close to 400 movies in development. Can anyone by chance vouge for that?
Yes, I can vouge all over that.
lol
There’s usually a slowdown at the end of the year. Always used to screw me up, but I got throughit.
Umm you just reported that yesterday they were throwing MILLIONS of dollars around on the Triffids project that they ultimately didn’t get. Did Greg drop that money on Lattes overnight?
Whatever. It’s all nonsense. They buy it if someone else likes it.
Are you kidding? One of the nicest, most genuine and smartest execs in town. My first mentor in this industry, he has always been there for me over the past decade, no matter what. Great story sense, great vision and great relationships! You sound like someone who didn’t get his project bought by Greg, and ae bitter. But what you’re saying doesn’t reflect reality.
A little short sighted by WB if true. There are a couple of very hot specs about to hit the market that I know of.
One is a good horror flick with solid attachments and the other is a completely original 4 quadrant tentpole that is the best fucking thing I’ve read all year. Not dropping names in here for fear of being accused of pimping and/or losing my job.
That said, this all could be posturing by WB. I know we were told Uni was out of development money about a year ago and they suddenly opened the checkbook for a project they had to have.
For the record, studios should not be actively buying pitches. It’s bad business. There are very few writers who can take a sold pitch and turn it into a quality first draft.
One of the agents I’ve worked for told me he’d rather focus on clients who can spec their ideas/scripts out since it’s proof they have real chops. He had one client from NYC who sold multiple pitches in the room and couldn’t spec out any of them to save his life.
It would be wise of the business to put a cap on pitches and get back to the days where the spec market drove the industry.
Then writers would actually have to put their best work forward for a change instead of trying to come up with a perfect 10 minute pitch that they have no clue how to spec out.
alright get back to the mailroom ‘future mogul’
jim,
Can I get you anything first? Perhaps a Pellegrino with a Prozac on the side?
Chill out. He was just offering some comments and thoughts. There’s no harm to that.
Greg Silverman – no comment. He is as he appears to most. As for WB buying – there is always money for the right project – and for the rest – no, no, and no.
I love it, 45 million screen writers in this world and they buy a couple scripts and their phones are ringing off the hook. PR is self destructive / media suicide.
Makes me wonder now if they were just hyping their old school friends so they can get other deals and walk away.
Ari is a douche bag.
Wait a minute — didn’t we read this same story a year ago? Maybe it was Universal then…
In any case, this is just confusion and hysteria in the face of the new reality of the studios – these are huge corporations that have to look at costs, and how those costs fit within the constrains of fiscal years.
Nothing to see here, movies will continue to be made, just maybe not as many and the studios are perhaps trying to show restraint by not throwing money at every crap idea or project that comes along (despite the best efforts of studio execs to acquire such crap, and not to say that much crap is still being financed and produced).
Since I have a project going out in a couple of weeks, I certainly hope the whole “we’re buying specs, not pitches the rest of the year” update is true. That being said, my experience is that studios always have money for a project they really want..and, considering how hard it is to sell a project, that doesn’t change regardless of which fiscal period you’re going out on the market.
Boo Hoo, we can’t pitch to Warner Bros for a whole THREE MONTHS. What’s the world coming to?
More like a package with an A-list director attached or endorsing the guy you want, and some idea of how you’re going to do the budget and financing.
The “great script” market has been more or less dead all year. Too much work involved for the execs, too much chance of being wrong.
This whole attachment epidemic is getting ridiculous. If I were a studio exec I’d much rather have the ability to choose the director of my choice rather than have one attached to a spec that is going to need a few steps to be ready.
Some of the directors being chased for attachments just don’t deserve that honor.
It’s giving Directors all the power and their ability to take other projects and delay development/production makes the whole thing a risky bet.
Heck, if I were an exec I wouldn’t even want the producers attached to the script. I’d prefer scripts come in clean as possible so I could control costs and not get bogged down with ridiculous quotes and fees.
But then the execs would have to really answer for their flops and we all know they want to shift the blame to anyone but themselves.
And for any writers reading this, believe me, you’d much rather sell something now and get paid January 1. You’d lose a fortune in taxes in the next couple of months before you legitimately had a chance to write anything off. Get the money on January 1st and get a good accountant and your tax bite for the year would be minimal. If I were an agent that’s what I’d be telling my clients.
“But then the execs would have to really answer for their flops and we all know they want to shift the blame to anyone but themselves.”
Bingo! So sadly nothing you wrote could possibly ever happen
This is a non-story and has been for years. Disney and Warners end their fiscal year in mid-October. The studios functionally stop buying by Thanksgiving anyway as people begin to scatter to the four winds. Then there’s Sundance. Yes, there are a million exceptions and the “spring buying session” is getting longer and longer each year, but this is nothing new.
and what about the fact that in about two weeks holiday shutdown will begin at all agencies and studios like it does every year, each time beginning earlier and earlier?
This business uses and abuses writers like no other. WB, Universal, Sony, Paramount, Fox are all lying scumbags. There is no accountability. The media barely covers it.
One of the reasons Nikki Finke is the success she is, is because she is doing the impossible — which is trying to hold these shameless douchebags at the studios accountable, simply by telling the truth.
Nikki has a strong sense of justice which many writers are grateful for.
These studios are like secret societies who make their own rules to hold their power and make money. They don’t care how they treat writers only directors. The WGA and the media fail to hold the studios accountable for their multiple abuses and violations.
Nikki Finke tries to bring these issues to light and it can sometimes makes her a target of derision. I think she is a hero and writers will look back and 20 years and thank her.
can’t we thank her now?
Thank you Nikki for taking a stand and actually reporting the abuse and garbage that goes down by these power hungry execs.
Writers have chosen to be marginalized and allowed the WGA to give more credence and power to directors. As we fall so does the quality of all the moves out there. The situation is worse now that a group of writers who direct have given away the sanctity of the first position credit so that any director who claims he wrote 33.5 of a movie can take money out of the writers pocket. Sad. The studios know the WGA is weak and basically just all out for themselves. Nikki reports on the flagrant abuses as she finds them.
I thank you Nikki and I am grateful.
Good post, Jane. But I wish Nikki would do an expose on how truly pathetic the WGA is and how it utterly fails to protect its members. If a guild cannot protect its membership from working for free, what is the guild’s value?
Jane is absolutely correct. If only the lousy media reporters at Variety, The Wall Street Journal, LA Times, NY Times gave a rats ass.
So THAT explains it…
No wonder Warner hasn’t gotten back to me on my original pitch: “Manimal: A 3D Beast Feast”
The numbers speak for themselves. Warner is definitely taking charge of the spec market. The latest Scoggins report (http://bit.ly/dCtvIn) has them at 7 spec purchases so far this year, more than any other studio, and one more than they bought last year.
Try to sell a script or play the lotto? Not much difference.