Un-Swine at 2009-09-22 22:13:46:

Hello, I'm form the future and this is what you need to know. First off, the spec market is now over, and it's over for good. It started dying in 06' and it's as good as buried now. The good news is, you all thought this was bad news.

To believe that the spec market is ever going to "recover" is to believe the industry is going "devolve." And, at the risk of sounding like a D, it's to be naive to the changes that are happening both in hollywood and the world.

In a nutshell, it's only a matter of years before the major studios will be completely divorced of production, fully vested in distribution. This wont be surprising to many, and in fact, it might be the self-fulfillment of the prophesying that is already happening. And trust me, the reckless development spending seen in the shane back spec era has never and will never exist in these new days.

But, and this may come as a surprise to many, what will exist is a re-modeling of the studio system within the independent production community.

30 years ago directors saw scriptwriting as a way into the industry, a way into directing. Today, screenwriters need to see producing as a way into screenwriting. It's that simple. No, I'm not talking about low budget filmmaking. I'm talking about actually making your blockbuster. Naysayers fuck off.

Okay, back to the future folks. See you there.

Jeff at 2009-09-23 05:48:48:

Good stuff Un-Swine. I agree with everything you say... the business model is changing and I think for the better. It just won't look like anything we've ever known before...

Since you're from the future, do my Brewers ever win a world series???

malibu3674 at 2009-09-23 09:26:25:

I think these Spec Reports are misleading. The only way to judge the report as a barometer of the market's health is to assume that every spec is of equal quality. If that were true, then one could posit that the spec market is poor this month is going into an overall decline. However, this is just not true. 99% of the specs on the market are more so a collection of gimmicks than fully thought-out, imaginative stories. From personal experience, even the agents and managers don't have much confidence behind most of them. As a development executive, I would bet my career on claiming that if one writes an above-average, intelligent, imaginative, commercial screenplay that is competently structured and has readable dialogue - that writer has a very high chance of selling his or her script. In essence, don't look to the market, look to the product.