How the hell did Joe Ezterhaus sell that many high priced specs? lol.

His combined script sales are almost more than his total lifetime box office. lol.

I'd like to see something like this against an all time top pay rate for screenwriters. Didn't Akiva Goldsman get 4 mil for DA VINCI CODE?

And I'd imagine, Ted Eliot and Terry Rossio probably have the single biggest payout, with the backend on PIRATES of THE CARIBEAN included.

Great post, Scott. Would LOVE to see my name up there someday...

- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA

"Unproduced". Now that has to hurt. I wonder if the big ch-ching eased their pain.

And as for 'Sacred Cows' - somebody find us a copy of that script. LOL.

I have a copy of Sacred Cows if you want to read it

akiva didn't write da vinci on spec, hence his exclusion from the list.

Hey there, moviequill. If it's emailable ... boinggg@hotmail.com If it's just hardcopy then never mind and thanks for the offer.

Cheers.

KiwiChick, I popped off an email to you with the script attached. Again, thanks to Todd.

Thanks!

It's hilarious. Only Ben Stiller could nail that gig. Perhaps when he's ready for a swift end to his career ...

How does an agent start a bidding war? Are all of the studions contacted by the agent? Or is it generated by word-of-mouth? Is it set up by an entertainment atttorney? What exactly happens?

My reaction isn't about how many are unproduced, but how many turned out terribly. It actually seems like good management for a studio to not produce a script, no matter how much they spent on it, if they ultimately don't think they can make a winner out of it. A couple million bucks down the toilet is peanuts compared to what it would cost to make, market, and distribute one of these things.

I don't get why "Deja Vu" is listed at the $3M range when it sold for $5M. This article attached below says it was the highest of all time and notes that Rossio/Marsilli have also broken the bank on "Lightspeed" (low 7 figures against $3.5M) which I don't see listed above. http://www.thewrap.com/movies/column-post/disney-bruckheimer-take-lead-lightspeed-17744

nevermind - this post is from 2008. I followed GITS's tweeted link, thought it was new. Why tweet a 2 year old post?

I tagged it GITS vaults. It's something I do on Twitter to go through the 7500 posts I've written since 2008.

[...] Biggest spec script sales of all time. [...]