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EXCLUSIVE: Ending what turned out to be a brisk week for material, New Line Cinema just closed a spec deal in the $300,000 range for Category Six, a script by John Swetnam for a “found footage” natural disaster movie. The film takes a first-person POV through video cameras and cell phones to tell the story of high school students who try to survive the worst tornado in U.S. history. The film will be produced by Todd Garner through his Broken Road banner. Garner hatched the idea. David Boxerbaum at APA and Jake Wagner made the deal. Broken Road’s Jeremy Stein and Sean Robins will also be involved in producing capacities.
The material market has been sluggish until recently, but this is the latest in a flurry of specs and pitches that sold this week. In fact, Category Six is the second one today that deals with extreme weather: Fox just acquired Riders On The Storm, a pitch that will be penned by Sean O’Keefe about a crew that pulls a series of heists in an extreme weather event. The scribe most recently sold his script Evidence to Bold Films.
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Sounds like it’ll be a race to get this and the other to the theaters.
John is just killing it these days! And to think I knew him back when he worked for the #1 research firm in LA. Good for him, he worked his ass off to get where he is now, he deserves every ounce of success he’s having.
Working his ass off following trends? Aren’t we over this yet?
Hey, Goon-
Want some whipped cream with those grapes?
John kept writing, while working full time. So he basically had two full time jobs. That’s working your ass off. We’re all incredibly happy for him.
^ Word.
Not sour grapes… simply voicing my opinion, like you did, knee-jerk. I read the Bold script. Not interesting. And, again, that’s my opinion. I don’t care if the guy worked four jobs. Crap is crap.
Good luck with your career, Goon. Can I get some fries with that?
Go Into The Story tracks spec sales and this year is on track to set an all time high for a single year.
I love movies about wind!
wasn’t the writers other sale about finding footage on cell phones and video cams also?
Yep! It sure was (EVIDENCE). Great concept, but execution needs a lot of work.
Agreed…. Evidence was basically a very… Very… standard slasher movie ala old-school Friday the 13th. Bunch a people in an isolated location – picked off one by one… Nothing new or inventive about the characters or the killings. In fact, all the characters were pretty weak with forced conflict. But half the action plays out through the gimmick of “found footage” so I guess that’s “original.”
Problem is the footage is weak. And horrible, horrible ending that both rips off Usual Suspects and undermines much of the action you’ve already seen.
But hey… Shit’s selling so keep on writing. Movie will likely end up like the director’s last one though — straight to Streaming and a Showtime debut.
Ugh, I second “Anon” about Go into the Story. With the sale of “The End” earlier, the spec market was up 84% from last year.
An EIGHTY-FOUR PERCENT increase. How is that sluggish?
Sounds like a no brainer, wish I’d thought of this! Swetnam’s movie Evidence is already in post, he’s on fire.
Kudos to Jeremy Stein of Broken Road for pushing this one over the top!
Go Swetnam! Kickin’ ass and takin’ names!
congrats to John, Jake, Box, and the trackingb contest who discovered Swetnam in their contest last year… Nice success story for all involved.
Point of order question:
This is a “spec” by the writer but Garner “hatched the idea”?
So the writer “took the producer’s idea” and “wrote a spec”?
Todd is a WGA signed producer right?
This type of activity is against all union rules.
A producer having a writer write the producer’s idea without paying him is not allowed under the current WGA agreement and Todd is an idiot for publicly “taking credit”.
And Boxerbaum and Wagner let him do this to their client.
Everyone named in this piece knows better.
Yeah, it turned out okay for the writer in this case but that will not help the hundreds of other writers who will be taken advantage of because “everyone is doing it” and producers pointing to this article as why it’s okay.
I look forward to the WGA’s letters.
Thanks for posting Lytton, and educating people on how to read between the lines. And thanks for having the balls to sign your name. Intelligence, integrity are always nice to discover.
I doubt “Lytton Strachey” is his real name. It’s the name of an early 20th century critic.
Shut the fuck up! Get a job…
Holy CRAP! You REALLY have no clue how this business works!
Are you the same guy that’s filed a racial discrimination suit against CAA because they didn’t read your crappy script?
I LITERALLY had to read your post twice. First time I thought, “He’s just kidding.” Second time “Holy CRAP!”
For the record, you ARE correct.
For the record, if you are a writer you will spend the rest of your career asking “Why didn’t I get that job?” (Yes. I know. You’re a showrunner. A screenwriter with a 7 figure quote. I know.)
Holy crap Indrid YOU obviously have no clue how this business works!
Todd Garner’s last four films have grossed over $1,000,000,000.00 worldwide. He did this using WGA writers and following WGA guidelines and becoming a SIGNATORY PRODUCER to the WGA — meaning he doesn’t pull stuff like having writers write his scripts for free. End of story.
You want to pull that “hey, it’s how the business works!” crap, you probably also tell that to actresses who get sexually assaulted on the casting couch. “Hey, you gotta put up with it if you want to get ahead in this business!”
Wrong. You don’t. Garner has amassed a personal fortune from the work of WGA writers and needs to honor his own agreement with the guild when writers develop his ideas. End of freaking story.
Yeah this is embarrassing for Boxerbaum and Wagner as far as I’m concerned. Sending their writers out to write scripts for producers for free isn’t cool, and as much as people say otherwise it isn’t the new normal either. At least not for legit reps actually taking care of their clients and their long-term interests.
Reps need to grow a pair and actually REPRESENT the interests of their client, not be middlemen to Todd Garner’s little slave factory.
A very naive way to look at how a representative works. I hate the fact that producers are demanding free rewrites – agents and managers ONLY make money when the client makes money. But when you have a client complaining that no one will buy their scripts because studios are so slammed with sub-par material that they bought over the years that they have the luxury to say “no” – what are you suppose to do? You need a champion. On the other side I have told many a client that they won’t pay unless there are a few rewrites and we should move on, but clients – especially new ones – still want to work in hopes that something will happen. A representative gets it from ALL sides.
No one is talking about free rewrites (which sucks but is an entirely separate issue). We’re talking about an arrangement where your clients work for free for people like Todd Garner.
And no, we’re not even talking treatments and outlines, we’re talking entire freaking specs, start to finish, from Garner’s half-baked idea through treatments and outlines and God-knows-how-many drafts and rewrites. For free. For a script Garner has paid not a red cent for, and yes, for all practical intents and purposes, owns.
You’ll say that he technically doesn’t own the script, the writer does, but everyone knows Boxerbaum and Wagner ain’t taking this script anywhere else. It’s Garners, he could drop it in his trash can and forget about it and the script is dead. No one wants to take that material to a new buyer, Garner “hatched” the idea and has to be brought in or bought out even if he never even read the script and has forgotten all about it. Sure, that sounds appetizing to a different producer.
These arrangements are absolutely horrible for writers and reps need to stop letting it happen. When the Todd Garners of the world realize they can’t get quality writers to work for them for free because the legit reps won’t let them, guess what? They’ll stop doing it.
There’s already a movie titled “Category 6: Day of Destruction.”
I got a “Category SEVEN” spec that’s going to blow this out of the water. Concept came while I was doing “five minute abs”.
when does Boxerbaum start at Paradigm?
Excellent points about why this should never happen with producers and writers. That being said the wga is a bunch of spineless pussies who will do nothing about it and writers will continue to work for free. and you can’t blame swetnam for writing for a big name, although a complete deuche-bag like garner. the wga does nothing to protect its members. thanks for nothing wga!
Correct, can’t fault Swetnam for doing this, but you sure as hell can fault his reps and Garner and his minions at Broken Road and the WGA.
Shitty situation all around that this kind of thing is tolerated and now openly reported.
You can’t blame WGA if the writer isn’t in the union.
Yawn…
First of all, Congrats to John. Another scribe makes it from a forum that a lot of screenwriters frequent (which I’m not going to name for fear of the sudden influx of Finke/Fleming stalkers).
Just a point I wanted to raise. For everything Lytton mentioned to be relevant, wouldn’t John need to be a WGA signatory? I don’t know if he is or isn’t, but two possibilities could be-
1) He chose not to sign. Not everyone does. And I can’t imagine WGA fighting the corner of a scribe outside their union.
2) Whilst Evidence only recently sold, he set about writing this on spec before the sale. Therefore before he’d signed with WGA.
I’ve been pitched a number of producer ideas being outside of WGA. As a non-WGA’er, I’m not sure any union rules apply. Bottom line, best not to make assumptions till you know Swetnam’s situation.
But it ….ahemmm….. *drum roll*…. certainly looks like John’s hit the Swe(e)t spot!…….. *sigh*
“…as a non-WGAer, I’m not sure union rules apply.” No, obviously you’re not sure and don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe you should think about before posting?
No one cares if you or Swetnam is WGA or not, the point is that TODD GARNER is a WGA signatory producer, meaning that Garner has signed contracts stating he only works with writers according to guild guidelines. That means not writing scripts for free, among other things.
The party the guild is concerned about in these arrangements is not you or Swetnam or any other obscure writer who’s willing to work for nothing, it’s the many professional guild writers who are screwed out of paying employment because people like Todd Garner earn millions off of WGA writers when they feel like it and then turn around and flaunt their guild agreements when they want scripts written for free.
The fact it’s so publicly flaunted and even reported as such in the trades is pretty dismal. It’s essentially rubbing the WGA’s noses in their own inability to enforce their own contracts.
They already made this movie. It was called Twister and made a lot of money while being utter shit. Instead of adults, we can have good looking “teens” who cannot emote to save their lives.
I have an idea for a found footage movie: a writer’s nuts are in a vise, which is slowly squeezing them. All he has to do is come up with an original dialogue driven movie with zero special effects. At the end of the 80 minutes, after we the bastard run through every unoriginal piece of shit plot he can think of, his nuts explode. At that point, he is rewarded with a job as studio head.
Send my royalties to No One Cares at…
@bevo: HAHAAAHAAAHAA! That made me laugh out loud. OMG. !! thank you.
Sounds like a TV movie-of-the-week, or some junk dollar rental movie.
Correct, so it’s basically a disaster movie WITHOUT the special effects? That’s why people go to disaster movies in the first place, geez, not to see shaky-cam nausea-inducing found footage crap.
It’s combining the worst of both genres.
Why is the script called “Category 6″ when the plot concerns a tornado?
WGA is a bunch of little dicked pussy men. They won’t take action. Hell, the only time the Guild ever gets aggressive is during a strike and then they come down on perceived strike breakers like witches in Salem. Maybe that’s warranted, but I’d love to see the WGA take draconian action vs. people who take advantage of writers not just its own members who stray from the rules. Is that asking too much, little dicked she-men of the WGA?
How does that work? Does Garner see any of that money since it was his idea? I hope not.
Yes Lytton Strachey, you should be commended for your courage to sign your name. Also, sorry about your death 70 years ago.
Lay off Swetnam, if this is his path to the big leagues: SO BE IT. Congrats John!
Dude no one is laying into Swetnam — we’re laying into producers like Todd Garner who earn millions off WGA writers and then turn around and break their guilt contracts and get hungry writers to write scripts for them for free.
We’re laying into people like Stein and Robins for elbowing their way into producing credits off a hungry writers’ free labor and a hungry writer assuming an outsized amount of risk.
We’re laying into reps like Boxerbaum and Wagner who just throw a bunch of their clients out there to work for free and hope one out of ten of their efforts pays off but DON’T stand up for them and DON’T do their part in enforcing guild guidelines.
Swetnam and writers like him benefit from a strong build that protects their interests and doesn’t get muscled around at every turn.
It’s a writer’s conundrum these days to be sure. And it sucks when “legit” companies/ producers ask writers to work on spec. But really, what’s the alternative… Sitting at home in a vacuum. Writing on spec? I mean, that’s what Swetnam would’ve been doing. Writing a spec he created on his own. Then would’ve come the challenge of getting a producer interested etc… Instead, he completed a script and immediately had a very gung-ho producer pushing it for a sale. Sure it wasn’t Swetnam’s “original” idea. But he wrote it himself. He’ll get full credit. And he gets a fat paycheck.