As promised, below is the introduction to the full 2009 OWA Scorecard I sent out this week along with the overview grids. If you want a copy of the PDF document, sign up using the form at the top right column of this page.
*****
2009 Open
Writing Assignment Scorecard
by Jason Scoggins
February 10, 2010
So here it is, the full 2009 Open Writing Assignment Scorecard. Like the 2009 Spec Market Scorecard,
compiling this document over the past month was as useful to me as I hope it is
for you. Previously, I’d had a
general sense of the number of projects in active development around town, but
seeing how that activity broke down at each company throughout the year was
eye-opening.
In case you didn’t follow the series of seven blog posts that constitutes the
bulk of this report, here’s what you need to know to understand the below.
·
I took copies of one big talent agency’s OWA grid
from six points throughout 2009 and compared them side-by-side. I summarized each document, listing every
project at every studio that was added or dropped off the list from grid to
grid, and then totaled up the numbers for each grid and summarized the entire
dataset.
·
To keep the grids concise and consistent, I didn’t
differentiate between projects that fell off the grid because the assignment
was filled or for some other reason (e.g., the project became inactive, moved
to another studio, etc.), which is why I labeled those projects “Closed” rather
than “Filled.”
I kept the studio names and alphabetical order of the individual companies’ breakdowns below consistent with the blog posts (which stuck to the order of the agency’s grid), but I made adjustments to both for the purposes of the below overview grids. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept of OWAs and OWA Grids in the first place, I talked about what they are and why they’re important in the first blog post in the series, which is available here.
Details on each of the projects listed in the below breakdowns are available to subscribers of www.itsonthegrid.com. As always, the site provides a three day free trial period, so if you’re not already a subscriber, sign up now, risk-free.
OVERVIEW
As you review the below numbers, keep in mind they are based solely on that one big agency’s OWA grids. Obviously, there are a number of projects that did not appear on those grids for one reason or another, and therefore the actual number of projects in active development last year is some percentage higher. What’s most interesting here (to me, at least) is the scale of the numbers and the comparison between the companies, as opposed to the raw numbers themselves.
| On in |
|
| On in |
| On all |
Columbia | 36 | 29 | 41 | 24 | 65 | 9 |
Disney | 15 | 14 | 14 | 15 | 29 | 6 |
Fox | 14 | 24 | 21 | 17 | 37* | 2 |
Paramount | 38 | 47 | 47 | 38 | 85 | 7 |
Universal | 55 | 60 | 52 | 63 | 115 | 23 |
Warner Bros. | 71 | 79 | 59 | 91 | 150 | 31 |
TOTALS | 229 | 253 | 234 | 248 | 481 | 78 |
The big reason to separate the above six companies from their subsidiaries and the mini-majors is to make it easier to rank the majors by last year’s OWA activity, as well as to see just how big the differences were between them. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about the efficacy of having 85 or more (much more, in the case of Warner Bros. and Universal) projects in active development at a time. Interestingly, the above rankings generally followed the rankings from the 2009 Spec Market Scorecard: Universal and Warner Bros. bought the most specs last year (6 each), followed by Columbia and Paramount (5 each), with Disney and Fox bringing up the rear (2 and 3, respectively).
MINI-MAJORS & STUDIOS’ LABELS | On in |
|
| On in |
| On all |
CBS Films | 3 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 10 | 1 |
Dimension | 8 | 4 | 5 | 7 | 12 | 4 |
DreamWorks | 4 | 12 | 11 | 5 | 16 | 0 |
DreamWorks Animation | 5 | 9 | 9 | 5 | 14 | 0 |
Focus Features | 4 | 8 | 2 | 10 | 12 | 3 |
Fox 2000 | 8 | 8 | 11 | 5 | 16 | 1 |
Fox Animation | 2 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 6* | 0 |
Fox Searchlight | 6 | 5 | 3 | 8 | 11 | 2 |
Lionsgate | 6 | 11 | 11 | 6 | 14* | 0 |
Mandate Pictures | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 1 |
MGM | 2 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 6 | 1 |
Miramax | 4 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 1 |
New Line | 10 | 8 | 12 | 6 | 18 | 0 |
New Regency | 7 | 13 | 10 | 10 | 20 | 0 |
Screen Gems | 3 | 6 | 7 | 2 | 9 | 0 |
Sony Pictures – Stage 6 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 0 |
Sony Pictures Animation | 1 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 0 |
Summit | 5 | 5 | 7 | 3 | 10 | 0 |
The Weinstein Co. | 12 | 1 | 6 | 7 | 13 | 6 |
TOTALS | 93 | 116 | 112 | 97 | 205 | 20 |
With a couple of notable exceptions, the hallmark of the above group is their efficiency in terms of filling their open writing assignments. If you remove those 3 outliers, just 10% of these companies’ OWAs were on the grid for the entire year (7 out of 69 projects).
| On in |
|
| On in |
| On all |
Cartoon Network Movies | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 0 |
Film Dept. | 1 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 1 |
Gold Circle Films | 6 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 7 | 2 |
Illumination Entertainment | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 0 |
Overture | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 0 |
Participant | 1 | 8 | 3 | 6 | 9 | 0 |
Relativity | 0 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 0 |
Spitfire | 2 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 1 |
Spyglass | 1 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 1 |
Walden Media | 3 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 9 | 0 |
TOTALS | 20 | 36 | 26 | 30 | 56 | 5 |
| On in |
|
| On in |
| On all |
Major Studios | 229 | 253 | 234 | 248 | 481 | 78 |
Mini-Majors and Studios’ Labels | 93 | 116 | 112 | 97 | 205 | 20 |
Other Buyers | 20 | 36 | 26 | 30 | 56 | 5 |
TOTALS | 342 | 405 | 372 | 375 | 742 | 104 |
While it’s tempting to think in “glass half empty” terms (a pretty small group of professional writers got writing assignments in Hollywood last year compared to, say, the active WGA membership as a whole), the above numbers are pretty encouraging when you consider how few films these companies have been producing annually for the past several years. In my spec market reports last year, I took a number of potshots at the studios for not buying more original material. I still believe bringing original material and new voices into the system is vitally important to the health of the business as a whole, but now that I’ve seen the above numbers, the subdued pace of 2009’s spec purchases makes more sense.
Perhaps the thing to focus on going forward is the percentage of projects at each company that were on the grid throughout 2009. Here’s the breakdown, the alphabetical order: Columbia – 25%; Disney – 40%; Fox – 14%; Paramount – 18%; Universal – 42%; Warner Bros. – 44%.
Food for thought.
About The Scoggins Reports:
The Scoggins Reports (Jason Scoggins’ Spec Market Roundup, Spec Market Scorecard and now this OWA Scorecard) are terribly unscientific analyses of the feature film development business based on information culled from a variety of public and non-public sources. These are by no means official statistics, merely a fairly complete summary. Past editions can be found in the archives of The Business of Show Institute (http://bit.ly/2HRZ67) as well as on Scoggins’ website: http://www.lifeonthebubble.com. Past editions of the OWA Scorecards can be found at http://blog.itsonthegrid.com.
Details on each person, project and company in the Reports can also be found at http://www.itsonthegrid.com, a subscription-supported, web-based database of feature film development information recently launched by Scoggins and several other literary managers. For daily posts of new and updated spec script, OWA and ODA information, check out the IOTG blog here: http://blog.itsonthegrid.com.
About Scoggins:
Jason Scoggins is a partner at Protocol, a literary management and production company. He manages writers, directors and producers of film and TV alongside Protocol’s founding partners Brian Inerfeld and John Ufland. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
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