Wowee. Blown away by the numerous mid-six and seven figure sale prices. Hoping that trend comes back. ;) Here's a question I've had--I know about a writer's "quote," but does that apply to spec scripts? Can a first time writer and sell a spec for six, seven figures? In other words, are spec script prices independent of a writer's quote? And, at the risk of stating the obvious--Mikal and Evelyn, you rock. *tosses a box of virtual junior mints* :)

Yes, there were some big ticket spec sales in 1990, but you should note that Peter Guber took over Sony/Columbia Pictures in November 1989, and several of the $1M spec sales originated with that regime. They were flush with cash and wanted to send a message to agents and writers: Work with us! Also, too, if you talk to agents and managers nowadays, when they look back at the Big Spec Script Boom around this time, they typically refer to it as being heavily fueled by "stupid money," as compared to today when studios are much more careful with acquisition dollars. But this is one of the main reasons I was curious to take on this list: To get actual numbers tied to actual years to see what was actually transpiring back in the early 90s. Re "can a first time writer sell a spec for six, seven figures": Yes. Uh, like me. But it still happens. If you recall the sale of "Grim Night" last November, that was for high-six to seven figures, and those writers -- Brandon Bestenheider & Allen Bey -- were first-timers. Your "quote" is tied to your fee for writing assignments. If you sell a spec script, that can influence your quote, but pretty much only indirectly.

Understood. Thanks, Scott. Yet another GITS series that I'm going to follow closely. Do I get squatters rights if I'm here 24/7? ;)

Big thanks to Mikal and Evelyn! That was a lot of work. I read "The Ticking Man" description too fast and thought it was about "nuclear armed robot writers." I thought maybe a nuclear arm was what I needed to put me over the top. Then I re-read it.

Hey Scott, I have a head scratching concern. I read through the loglines that you cited above and my initial reaction to some of them were, "really, like really! And these movies got made?" I then asked myself this question, what's so unique about the loglines of Basic Instinct, or Radio Flyer? And my mind came up with a blank answer—nothing. Nothing in these two loglines make me want to read their scripts. I don't see any big obstacles or anything that you've written about this past week on what makes a good logline. So, my question to you is, would you be willing to read these two scripts based on their loglines alone if you were a busy executive of a respective studio? (And you have to answer as if you've never seen the movies before.) I'm just trying to get a feel for what constitutes as a good logline and for me these two loglines don't cut it.

Radio Flyer is totally not a high concept logline type of project, that was all about the quality of the writing when it sold. Basic Instinct slots right into the whole femme fatale / film noir lineage Hwood has long indulged in. To me, the idea that a cop gets involved in a steamy sexual relationship with a woman who could be a serial killer? Seems pretty high concept to me. A better one for my purposes would be Ticking Man: A humanoid robot that is an armed nuclear bomb. Twenty two years ago, I can see why that would have excited buyers. As to good loglines, I spotlighted some of these specs that have sold in 2011 and 2012: Stash House: A couple finds the perfect starter home, but upon moving in, a group of dangerous men arrive who will stop at nothing to get what’s locked inside the house. Brotherhood of Scavengers: After their adventurous father dies, three brothers who’ve been estranged discover that in order to collect their inheritance, they will have to go out on a scavenger hunt to find treasure he left behind. Sex Tape: A married couple who get a night off from their kids, get adventurous and decide to spice up their lives by making a sex tape. When they wake the following morning, the tape is missing, and they must find out who took it and how to get it back. Bastards: Fraternal twin brothers find out that their mother’s been lying to them for years about their allegedly deceased father. The twins set out to find their real dad. Virgin Territory: In a race to stop his 16 year-old daughter from losing her virginity? on spring break, an overprotective Dad is forced to team up with a ?high school geek who happens to be in love with her too. Expiration: An ex-CIA operative-turned-hitman is poisoned on his final job. With 20 hours to live, he is determined to find out who poisoned him, and settle the score before he dies. Grim Night: Once a year globally, people lock themselves at home and fend off the senseless and random attacks by Grims. Tonight’s that night. Cardiac: A father has six hours to find the criminals that have stolen a heart intended for his daughter’s transplant surgery. El Tigre: An action comedy about a family vacation gone wrong when the father is mistaken for Mexico’s most ruthless drug lord, El Tigre. Dear Satan: A 7-year-old girl accidentally misspells “Santa” and instead invites Satan to bring her a toy for Christmas — and he does. My Owner’s Wedding: A dog will go to any length to make sure its owner ends up making the right choice between two eligible young women. Any one of those would interest me. In a few minutes, another Story Idea post with some more thoughts on the subject.

I agree with Rahul -- the Basic Instinct logline jumped out at me as being particularly generic and even kinda lame. What Scott wrote ("...the idea that a cop gets involved in a steamy sexual relationship with a woman who could be a serial killer" is much more interesting than the listed logline, which doesn't mention that the woman could be a serial killer, just that she's being investigated for a brutal murder, or that they have a steamy sexual relationship, just that's she's seductive. I wonder, though, if these are the actual loglines that were attached to the scripts or just the kinds of summaries that other people write after-the-fact -- you know, the kind of writing that floats on on the web and movie guidebooks and Netflix envelopes... that sort of thing. To me, that's what a lot of them feel like -- not something crafted to sell a script but things written very quickly. Flatliners, for instance, is a much more interesting movie than this logline would lead you to believe. It's not just that the experiments go awry -- how generic is that? -- but that they bring something(s) back with them from the other side.

Annika, I pulled some of those loglines from IMDB which is notoriously uneven given much of the content is user generated. The logline attached to spec script sales is one of the abiding mysteries of life. When it appears in the press, whose is it? The writer's? I doubt it. Agents or managers? Perhaps. Buyers. Possibly. So even there you often find really crappy descriptions of stories.

Thank you Evelyn and Mikal for all your hard work in this!! And thanks Scott for posting this.

Scott, from specs that have sold in 2011 and 2012 you mentioned: Sex Tape and Dear Santa sound the most interesting. I wonder what the today's value for Goldman's Butch Cassidy script is. 400 thousands and it was 43 years ago.

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