Spec Market News

Hit List, Black List & Launch Pad Alum Matt Tente Lights up the town with his latest spec heading into most territories ahead of the weekend, with more on their way!

Year Six is here, and the competition that has led to more signings, success stories and careers than any other writing competition in the world is now underway. With more than 403 signings, 134 projects set up, 61 writers staffed, 150 appearances on annual best of lists such as the Black List, Blood List, Hit List, and the Young & Hungry List, as well as 6 bidding wars, the Launch Pad Competition has become the premiere hub for Hollywood discovering new talent. We’re thrilled to see this new list of writers joining our Launch Pad community!

Matt Bereson, Kamron Saraye, and Unique Features are all among the producers taking this into studios!

Broken Road Productions, Unique Features, and Alexa Faigen are all among the producers taking this into studios!

Lawrence Grey, DeVon Franklin, Bill Gerber & Matt Tolmach amongst the producers taking this one into every studio!

The project, which will also see McDaniel adapt, will be fast-tracked as a new series for the company as part of the first look deal.

Following his most recent spec sale which saw Joe Dante board to direct Stiglets lands with new reps, hits the market with his next, and signs on to two new projects under Eris’ newly launched Eric Content.

Vertigo Entertainment, LuckyChap, Captivate, Mad Chance, Intrepid and Unique are Amongst the Producers Heading into Buyers with the Project Tonight!

Producers from Darkest Hour, Big Little Lies and The Danish Girl team up as A-list packages circle going into the weekend.

Project centers on the assassination attempt of President Ronald Reagan from three unique view points – those protecting, those investigating & those making power plays behind the scenes.

The $125 million dollar commitment from Netflix sets the record for a spec package, a record that was also previously set by Netflix just two years ago when they committed $90 million to the Will Smith, David Ayer, Max Landis spec package for Bright.

After hitting the market late Monday, multiple studios started moving aggressively for the project, culminating in a deal that included Safehouse and Aperture Entertainment producing.

Written by Ryan Riley, who previously saw his short story “Encyclopedia Dad” sell to WBTV and his feature spec “Take Back The Night” land with New Regency following a bidding war, the project is being pitched as a socio-political thriller that focuses on the world of tomorrow.

The red hot pitch SACI from Pumpkinhead reboot writer Nate Atkins has the town abuzz going into the weekend, as multiple offers are reportedly already in, with more anticipated as the day continues.

Written by Rachel Long and Brian Pittman, who previously wrote the Black List script The Civilian, the plot involves a cataclysmic event that erases humanity’s memories. When a woman wakes up with no memory of her young daughter, she uses her maternal instincts and clues that she left for herself to find her child amid the chaos.

Written by Peter Malone Elliott, the story finds the mercurial Frank Sinatra at the apex of his career when he’s forced to team up with the FBI to rescue his son from a group of inept kidnappers, giving Ol’ Blue Eyes the chance to repair their broken father-son bond.

Written by Scott Blaszak, the script follows a psychology grad student who comes to believe that her new patient holds the key to the mystery surrounding her sister’s disappearance 13 years earlier. When no one believes her, she takes matters into her own hands and sets out to find her sister by any means necessary.

The script hails from the writing team of David Rabinowitz and Charlie Wachtel, who penned Spike Lee’s Black Klansman, which sounds like it could be Lee’s first commercial hit since his 2006 heist movie Inside Man.

Gary Scott Thompson (The Fast and the Furious) penned the original spec, which has since been rewritten by Run All Night scribe Brad Inglesby. Storyscape Entertainment is producing with Pioneer Pictures.

Hot off selling Body Cam to Paramount Players, Richmond Riedel’s new script is set against the backdrop of an aggressive, politically-motivated deportation raid that escalates into an explosively violent standoff in East Los Angeles.

Sherryl Clark will produce the horror thriller, which follows the sole survivor of a plane crash, who washes ashore on a mysterious island where she faces her worst fears.

John Swetnam and Harris Wilkinson wrote the script, and according to those who have read it, it’s a home invasion movie set during an alien invasion.

Written by Kenny Kyle, the script follows Daulerio’s meteoric rise from obscure sports blogger to the EIC of Gawker during the wild, heady early days of the digital journalism boom.

The film follows small-town sheriff Evie Hartley who arrives to find the entire town murdered, except for two missing young siblings. The project hails from Launch Pad’s Nicolina Torres and is the first announcement from Silverman’s new company.

Written by Taylor Materne, the story follows a washed-up basketball scout who discovers a Chinese streetball phenom and talks him into coming to Los Angeles to train for the NBA draft. The young phenom is overwhelmed by the transition and struggles with being away from his family, while the scout deals with his own family problems.

Several scripts have already been written about Christa McAuliffe and the crew of the Challenger, as well as the Rogers Commission, which was formed by the government to investigate the disaster, but no one has ever written a script about Bob Ebeling and Roger Boisjoly, whose story is fascinating in its own right.

Brandt co-created NBC’s Chicago Fire and its two spinoffs, and currently serves as an EP on all three Chicago series. He also directed the 2011 Richard Gere thriller The Double, and co-wrote Wanted and 3:10 to Yuma with Derek Haas.

Brad Peyton (San Andreas) is nearing a deal to direct the film, which follows a rookie female marine who gets stranded on a hostile planet during humanity’s space colonization with nothing but an Exo-suit that’s running out of fusion power.

While the official logline is being kept under wraps, Green Rush is described as a dramatic heist thriller in the vein of Hell or High Water, but in an urban setting, and with a father-daughter dynamic instead of two brothers.

James DeMonaco and Sebastien Lemercier will produce the genre film from up-and-coming scribe Ryan Riley, who recently landed a spot on the 2017 Young & Hungry list.