[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: How is the spec script market different today than it was in the 90s or early 2000s?
Mike Thompson, Screenwriter/Script Consultant: That sort of progression I was laying out before, there used to be large development budgets at the studios. They used to be populated by people who wanted to put movies together and develop movies so they would buy scripts by the dozens, each studio would buy dozens of scripts. Then they would develop them. They would say This would be a great filmmaker. We should go after this person. One of them would percolate to the top. It would get its director, get its stars and be ready and that’s the one they would make and the others that never made it, might make it later or might just never make it.
That was the nature of why there was that boom because there was the money available to these studios, these development budgets to take chances on things.
Then as we progressed into the packaging realm where the screenwriter suddenly had to become the studio executive and had to put together all the pieces and literally play the part of studio executive before they were even in a position to sell their script, that’s when things started to become part of this realignment and the advent of streaming and and how the spec sale became more difficult than ever.
Now we’re seeing a return again because of the technology, we’re seeing a return to hopefully the idea of just the original screenplay selling without being encumbered by elements, actors, directors because now the streamer is armed with their algorithm. They want to put their own fingerprints on it with an exactitude that they know they can apply almost like they think they’re going to have a math problem here to solve and that’s fine with me because it means…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
Mike Thompson is a veteran Hollywood writer/producer, perhaps best known for his feature films, Dragonfly, starring Academy Award-winner, Kevin Costner, and Love Happens, featuring Emmy-winner Jennifer Aniston. He also co-created and was a showrunner of the FOX television series, John Doe, starring Dominic Purcell, and co-wrote and produced the indie horror film, Choose, starring Academy Award-nominee, Bruce Dern. In the documentary realm, he executive produced the multi-award-winning feature, A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar, and appears as himself in the cult classic award-winner, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. In addition to his produced credits, he is uniquely distinguished for having written and sold dozens of high-profile spec scripts, pitches and teleplays to nearly every major Hollywood studio, including multiple seven-figure deals and at one point, the “highest-paying scripter deal ever” ~ Variety. He has collaborated on projects involving the likes of Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Johnny Depp, George Clooney, Will Smith, Edie Falco, Chris Pine, Michael Keaton, Richard Gere, Academy Award-winning director Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump), and presently, blockbuster producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Top Gun: Maverick). Upon graduation from film school at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Mike began his career at Paramount Pictures, where he worked as an assistant to Academy Award-winning producer, Scott Rudin (No Country for Old Men), and subsequently for legendary producer, Larry Gordon (Field of Dreams), who set up Mike’s very first spec script sale at Walt Disney Studios. Mike lives and works in the mountains outside of his hometown of Seattle, near the U.S. military’s decommissioned Nike “missile site” where, as a kid, he cut his teeth on his first camcorder short films, thus inspiring The Missile Site Blog.
CONNECT WITH MIKE THOMPSON
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