Bryan Unkeless

Between July 1st and July 31st, we tracked a total of 19 feature specs out. This is a decline from the specs out the previous month, but it was to be expected with many taking long-awaited vacations, coupled with the bottlenecking we’re seeing in the development chain. However, it’s not the drop-off we anticipated and is still on par with the past month’s numbers.

CAA is out with SON OF A GUN by Daniel Steward & Noah Griffith.

A buck-hunting competition and unexpected pregnancy start a war between two families that envelopes an entire Minnesota town.

A determined fourteen year-old wrestler, the only girl on what has been the all-boys wrestling team, prepares for her first, co-ed high school match. But no amount of practice on the mat can prepare her for the challenge she faces at her first match.

The Me and Orson Welles scribes are once again teaming up with director Richard Linklater to adapt Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go Bernadette. Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter wrote a previous draft of the script.

Margot Robbie is attached to the role of the infamous Olympic skater Tonya Harding in the big screen film I, Tonya. Harding’s athletic career was eclipsed when her husband attempted to incapacitate fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan during the 1994 Olympic Games.

Story centers on the irony free, wildly contradictory, totally true interviews with Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly.

In one of the biggest packages we’ve seen so far this year, Will Smith and Joel Edgerton are attached to star in the Max Landis spec Bright, with David Ayer on board to direct. Let the bidding begin…

Logline: In a world where magical creatures live side by side with humans, a human cop is forced to work alongside an Orc to track down a powerful wand that everyone is willing to kill for.

Logline: An adopted young woman who, after being raised in an stuffy, upper-crust household, sets out to find her birth mother–only to discover that she’s a total disaster.

On the morning of May 1, 1947, Evelyn McHale, arrived by train to New York’s Penn Station, calmly walked to the Empire State Building and leapt to her death. In her wake were left six people forever impacted by the choice she made on a cold, grey day in spring, and whose stories would become unwittingly intertwined. From the Ruins is an honest and provocative story about love, faith, art, obsession, and how every action has unpredictable reactions.

On the morning of May 1, 1947, Evelyn McHale, arrived by train to New York’s Penn Station, calmly walked to the Empire State Building and leapt to her death. In her wake were left six people forever impacted by the choice she made on a cold, grey day in spring, and whose stories would become unwittingly intertwined. From the Ruins is an honest and provocative story about love, faith, art, obsession, and how every action has unpredictable reactions.

Keep up with what’s happening in the industry with the inside information on who’s getting hired, promoted, and let-go.

Logline: A boy loses his mother in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He survives the explosion and absconds with Fabritius’ painting, “The Goldfinch.” A rich, Upper East Side family takes him in and he later reunites with his father – an alcoholic gambling addict who takes him to Las Vegas.

Logline: A rookie LAPD officer loses his partner in a shooting and, in a form of therapy, is tasked with taking care of a German Shepherd who lost her Marine handler in Afghanistan and who now suffers from PTSD.

Logline: Three wealthy pedigreed Chinese families whose predilection for gossip, backbiting and scheming reaches a fever pitch when the heir to one of the most massive fortunes in Asia brings home his American-born Chinese girlfriend to the wedding of the season.

Logline: A human is chosen to command an army’s first-ever platoon of robotic soldiers.

Logline: Story follows the disappearance of a once famous architect-turned-recluse, which forces her teenage daughter to find her.

Variety breaks down the hottest upcoming power players in the industry right now.

Logline: A man finds a girl’s audio diary from the 1980s at a swap meet, so he vows to track her down and return them.

Logline: As he fends off his father’s attempts to make him more of a man (the threat of military school looms), Greg’s hapless adventures include handing out anonymous valentines expressing his true feelings, attempting to impress his classmate Holly and single-handedly wrecking his soccer team’s perfect season.

Logline: Story follows a man who is in love with a woman but is forced to woo her surreptitiously on behalf of a far more handsome but less expressive suitor.

Logline: Greg Heffley is back with problems new and old, but none more prominent than the punishments of his older brother Rodrick.

Logline: Story revolves around Dexter and Emma, who meet for the first time during their graduation in 1988 and proceed to meet one day a year for the next 20 years. In “When Harry Met Sally …” fashion, the story tracks their lives and loves until they realize they were meant for each other.

Logline: Story takes place in a future world where young boys and girls are forced to participate in a televised battle to the death.

Logline: Story centers on a family of djinn (genies) who are able to pass for human, but still have the power to grant wishes.