What You Can Learn from These 5 Hollywood Spec Sales

This is what we are taking away from the recent spec sales in Hollywood...

by Emily J on December 26, 2024

For many, 2024 has felt slow and stagnant with countless doom and gloom headlines wondering if this is the “end” of the entertainment industry. It’s important to remember that the industry has periods of contraction and expansion and is ever-evolving, same as any other industry, but that people always have a need for entertainment (especially if they’re feeling “down”).

But for anyone who thought studios and production companies weren’t interested in making anything new, a spree of major spec script sales occurring in just one month could prove the naysayers wrong.

From late October through November, there were five spec script sales, turning the heads of writers and buyers. You don’t typically see a lot of big film deals towards the end of the year as many executives head out for the holidays.

But if these sales are any indication, 2025 may already be trending upward for writers. Here’s what we can learn from these recent sales…

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What Are They Buying

The first thing to do is look at what people are buying, so here we go:

Alignment by Natan Dotan was purchased preemptively. This means that the script was sent to a select few companies (rather than all over the town in the hopes of creating a bidding war). Fifth Season and Makeready, who made a deal before the script was taken out to a bigger market where they may have to spend even more money to lock it down. Fifth Season bought the script for $1.25 million against $3 million if/when the film is produced. Fifth Season is known for lower-budget/independent projects, but this project looks to expand the kinds of projects the brand is known for going forward. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the script tells the story of a board member at a booming AI company who wrestles with corporate politics and warped incentives as he tries to prevent his colleagues’ willful ignorance from causing a global catastrophe.

Searchlight Pictures nabbed Clean Break from Ryan Brennan with Scott Free producing. When a fiercely independent pool hustler finally meets her match in a fellow pool shark, their irresistible but destructive attraction to one another leads to deadly consequences she can’t outrun. This is Brennan’s first major spect sale.

Original action spec Test Drive by Matt Venne has landed at 20th Century Studios with Safehouse Pictures. According to Deadline, Venne received a solid mid-six figures against a seven-figure deal for the script. Venne is not a new writer having worked in television on Showtime’s Dexter spin-off and previously selling his series Cruel Summer to Legendary TV. He also previously set up the features Black Box at Dark Castle Entertainment and Dark Star at Sugar23.

Lionsgate locked the rights to the action comedy spec Three Hitmen and a Baby by Dave Matalon and Matt Altman. There isn’t a public logline, but I’m sure you can guess what it’s about from the title. 87North are producing. Matalon previously worked on Totally Killer for Blumhouse and Amazon, and Altman sold a female-driven actioner Red Widow to STX in a bidding war.

Amazon won the bidding war for Love of Your Life by Julia Cox (who wrote the critically acclaimed NYAD) for around $2 million. Ryan Gosling is attached to produce along with Jessie Henderson through General Admission. The script is about a young woman who loses her young husband and follows her on a journey to regain her foot and find a reason to carry forward, similar in vein to Eat Pray Love.

Julia Roberts as Elizabeth "Liz" Gilbert contemplating at a dinner table in 'Eat Pray Love.'

'Eat Pray Love' (2010)

3 Lessons Learned from These Spec Sales

So what trends are we seeing in all of these scripts?

1. Concept Is King

All of these scripts have strong concepts so they stand out even if you haven’t read the script. For some of them, you don’t even need a logline, like Three Hitmen and a Baby. You know what that story is, the tone, the general characters, the setpieces, etc.

In the case of Love Your Life, which doesn’t necessarily have big setpieces or a clear structure from the concept, you still can reference successful “comps”, like Eat Pray Love, that excite studios and big-name actors.

For Alignment, thrillers are typically strong concepts but you combine that with the topic of AI, which is so hotly debated right now, and “global catastrophe,” and you have something that gives people a sense of urgency to see the film early on.

When a script goes out to producers, they often don’t have a lot of time to read the script and make an offer before their competitors. So the stronger and more marketable a concept is, the better.

2. Relationships Lock the Sale

When we’re talking about “relationships," we’re talking about within the script through significant roles in the spec market.

As a quick briefer on that, when a representative has a script they want to “take out to the town,” they reach out to their connections who are set up with deals or strong relationships at specific studios. A producer could also take a spec script out to other producers with studio deals or studios directly if they have the relationships.

This is why you see both producers and studios listed on all of these deals, or a financier in the case of Alignment.

Now back to the relationships within these scripts. If concepts are what draw people to a script, then the relationships within the script are what lock down their interest.

Clean Break is a clear two-hander, Alignment is a time-sensitive thriller in the vein of Margin Call which had a small cast, Three Hitmen and a Baby centers on three hitmen and a baby, and so on. The core of any story, no matter how “loud” the concept, is the relationships and arcs of its characters. You don’t just want all “flash” to win over executives.

3. Action Plays Internationally

A big topic of conversation the past year has been productions moving out of the US. This is because of the cost, but also because audiences are international. Subtitles don’t hold back viewers the way people previously thought. So when companies are looking at projects, they’re looking at where they can film them, and how to get the most people watching them.

Oftentimes, genres that play the best internationally are action and thrillers. Comedies can be trickier since humor can often be more specific to an area, but an action comedy can have an easier time crossing borders.

This is why we’re seeing three of the five spec sales either being action or thriller (Alignment, Three Hitmen and a Baby, and Test Drive). But even Clean Break has a thriller/crime element to it since it’s about pool hustling, and if Love Your Life is similar to Eat Pray Love, then it may include a bevy of ideal international locations.

Our Major Takeaways from These Spec Sales

So what does this mean for you? First and foremost, it means that there’s money to be spent and the industry may finally be coming out of hibernation to spend it.

Second, the writer of Alignment had one great entertainment connection and a script they worked very hard on to make sure it was ready, with a very strong concept. If you haven’t “broken into the industry yet,” don’t beat yourself up or fear it’s impossible. Make sure your script is tight, has a strong concept, and that you’re building your connections for when you’re ready.

While you shouldn’t write to chase trends, it’s clear that actioners and thrillers typically are still doing well. And while they weren’t part of this run of sales, there is still very much an audience for horror scripts (the genre is daily consistent performance-wise), and the market for comedies has been growing with the return of romcoms and comedies, as well as erotic thrillers which have been on the rise for the past few years. A well-written script can always find its audience.

As you approach the new year, go into it with clear eyes and hope that the industry might not look like it did previously, but these spec sales show it’s not going anywhere.

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