I know you mainly cover features but do those sites you listed track projects in development for television? Do you know of any others that may?

Thanks for being all over the trends before anyone else, Scott. Your blog provides valuable information for both the creative and the business sides of screenwriting. I really appreciate it.

DoneDealPro.com follows TV deals as well as movies.

Toot it, baby! When I see an "update" on a spec sale, I always have the same *meh* reaction--saw it already on GITS. :) Viva la GITS, and the best of luck to spec writers!

Scott, any idea why spec sales are up in the economy we have? Is it simply a function of the pre-strike stockpile finally emptying, or is there something different at work?

Scott: The K-9 Kid. Keep doing you. Now get me an agent. I have a "found footage" spec.

Scott - Great reporting as always, my friend. GITS always gets it done. Richard Botto Stage 32 www.stage32.com

In the article it states 302 spec scripts have hit the market. Where does this number come from? I would imagine a lot more than 302 specs have been sent to agencies, management companies, etc. What qualifies a spec as having "hit the market"?

The article mentions a few things we have discussed on GITS this year: * Some franchises, most notably Harry Potter, are faded or done. Warner Bros. in particular has been super active with specs (14 acquisitions in 2011) to try to fill the gaps and find new franchise possibilities. * Some studios simply stopped buying specs back at the end of 2009 and pretty much sat on the sidelines last year in order to run through what they had in development. They need to replenish their slates. * A related dynamic, the decision by some studios to reduce the number of movies they produce and release each year. All costs associated with making a movie have skyrocketed, especially marketing, the studios are trying to find that magic spot -- make the fewest number of movies to get the maximum amount of revenue in order to cover their fixed costs and make profits. By most measures, they went too low this year, so we are going to see an uptick in film production and by extension film acquisitions to fuel development. * It looks they have more development funds available. Not only with specs, but also across the board -- pitches, novels, non-fiction. Also reflected by the fact that after several years of retrenchment in terms of inking producer deals, that number has gone up slightly this year. Of course, it could also be that the scripts are better.

The numbers in the article come from Jason Scoggins and It's On The Grid, which is owned by The Wrap. That online resource tracks scripts that go out for submission. There are tons more that get 'slipped' to producers, even studios for an unofficial look. And yes, beyond that there are thousands that funnel through management companies and agencies each year.

Simple question, Scott - Do you see this trend continuing? Since the market seems to be hot, is now a better time to go out with a script than say, Feb 2012? We're getting close to the time when companies traditionally stop buying... do you think this will be the case this year as well? Thanks for the analysis.

Here's a quick look at recent history, spec script sales in November and December: 2008: 7 (Nov) / 1 (Dec) 2009: 5 (Nov) / 6 (Dec) 2010: 5 (Nov) / 3 (Dec) So even in slack years like 2009 and 2010, there was still activity in the spec market. In my experience, Hollywood buyers tend to feed on the buying energy, so I would not be at all surprised to see a significant number of scripts selling during the last 2 months of the year. Hopefully 14 so sales top the 100 mark. Long-term, it's always hard to say. Obviously I don't sit in the conference rooms of movie studios while development execs discuss these type of things, it's just looking at their actions and trying to read the tea leaves. At the end of last year, I predicted sales would increase this year. I believe I plucked out of the air 68 scripts as the total. I was right in terms of the trend, but undersold the total. I'll do a prediction at the end of the year. Hell, I should open it up for everyone to guess. But I am tempted to say the market will remain strong for at least another year.

Could you explain the submission process a little better, or at least what it means in this context. Because that 302 number seems awfully low, and it implies that if you have a good script (i.e one good enough to be submitted), you basically have a 1 in 4 chance of being bought. Those odds seem too good to be true.

The spec script market is poor until I sell one.

Happy to do it. I try to strike a balance between craft and business. The latter is important, especially if someone wants to make a career out of screenwriting, not just sell a script.

There are submissions... and there are 'submissions.' Scripts go out all the time, especially from agencies it seems, to producers, even if they're not that good, but have a good concept in the hopes the producer will take on the writer and help them improve the script. And as I noted previously, scripts get 'slipped' to people on the acquisition side of things to get a quiet read. Are those submissions? Not really. But the scripts are in circulation. So in effect, there are some hurdles to overcome before a script gets officially submitted. Hence those lower numbers. It does an agent or manager no good to submit a crap script to a buyer. It's not only a waste of time, but also calls into question the rep's ability to spot a good story. So oftentimes it's the rep who is the biggest hurdle.

Ha! Joe, if you can write dialogue with wit like that, you should be selling your script in no time.

Scott, please bear with me... I assumed that almost all business in Hollywood was kind of informal up until the point the script is bought. This formal definition of an official submission vs an informal submission is confusing me. What defines an official submission? Does the agent do some kind of registration when he forwards a script? Is it a script for which a studio's readers write coverage?

So they tell me! Then again, my problem has always been weak story and structure, which I'm finally improving...I think.

Pliny, per your last comment, for some reason there is no reply button for it, so here is my response. There's no formal process for a submission, but there are formalities. When an agency or manager sends out a script, one distinguishing factor from slipping a script or an informal tendering of the material is it -- typically -- goes out wide: multiple producers to find one for each studio. Once a script goes into a studio, yes, the script will get covered. That's part of the formality. The bottom line is that a script must make its way past a certain set of 'obstacles' in order for it to be deemed ready for a wide submission. That's why that number -- 300 or so -- seems low to you. It's because thousands of other scripts did not make the cut.

Joe, then I hope you are tracking the discussions each week for the GITS Script Reading & Analysis series, specifically on Tuesdays for structure. Also Wednesdays for characters because you really can't separate the two.

Definitely. Even when I don't post, I love reading your GITS posts and user comments.

Hey, Scott. Thanks for the shout-out to TheWrap's article and ItsontheGrid.com. Funny thing -- as you may have seen from your inbox a few minutes ago, turns out we had undercounted our preliminary numbers on Monday by 2. The Scoggins Report's number for October is 20, and a total of 88 so far in 2011. We looked at year-over-year numbers as usual, too; this year's spec market is already up 21% over 2009, and a huge 42% over 2010. We're with you: It would be fantastic if we can get to 100 sales this year. We're hearing Endgame picked one up this week but we haven't confirmed it yet. If that's true, only 11 more to go...