💸 How To Sell A Spec Script

If industry commentators are to be believed, we’re in the midst of a spec boom.

We’ll dig into what defines a spec boom in a moment. But the headline here is that it’s good news for screenwriters. A reason to rejoice…tinged with a healthy dash of anxiety, FOMO, schadenfreude, resentment, self-worth issues, and delusions of glory.

But let’s be honest, screenwriters bring that to any situation.

I’ve sold a few spec scripts across TV and film in my time, so I thought I’d lay down my thoughts on what’s going on and how you might be able to capitalise on it.

Before we dive in, I want to note that this isn’t a craft article. It’s a vague collection of ideas on landing a sale. Needless to stay, rule number one is, and always will be: write a great script. And that’s on you. Although I can give you a nudge in the right direction here and there.

Housekeeping out of the way, let’s crack on.

Essentially a spec script is any script written speculatively. As in, off your own back, on your on steam, on a wing and a prayer. Not under any kind of deal or employment contract. Not based on idea optioned by a company or studio. You just wrote the whole thing, lock stock and barrel, then presented it to the world.

Generally for the early years of your career, all you’re writing is spec scripts. Because no-one’s hiring you to write anything or paying your overheads so you can go off and have ideas. But it’s good practice to keep writing spec scripts whenever you can, regardless of where you’re at in your career.

In this context, a boom represents 24 script sales this year and counting (as of late August 2025). That number is up on last year, and WAY up on recent years.

The most infamous spec boom took place in the nineties. Back then screenwriters like Shane Black and Joe Eszterhaz became celebrities and multimillionaires seemingly overnight. And the lore goes anyone with a bit of heat could walk into a studio with 90 strong pages and walk out with a six-figure check.

Back then, 10-12 specs were sold per month - totalling somewhere between 120-150 per year. We will probably top out at half that. But given the bludgeoning effects of premium TV, streaming, cinema’s ever-weakening stranglehold on mainstream culture, the economic contraction of the industry and the overwhelming dominance of IP, that constitutes a boom.

What makes this particularly good news is that many felt that these times would never come again. IP became so dominant that people speculated loudly about whether the appetite for original stories would ever return.

Well, return it has - to some degree. Studios are finally seeing the sheer (moneymaking) power of original storytelling. And all it took was several catastrophically expensive critical and commercial failures.

Let’s start with a few pervasive misconceptions about what spec script sales are and how they work. Many of the below myths prevail because:

Most of the time, a writer who lands a spec sale has been at this writing gig a while and has some traction in the industry. This sale might be the biggest deal of their career (or not), but they already have a career.

Trust and reputation still play a part in these deals. Everyone loves a stunning out-of-nowhere breakthrough, but the building blocks of this industry are still the writers out there reliably doing the work year on year.

When I sold Gretel & Hansel, I hadn’t sold anything at that scale before. But I'd already landed a TV project in the US, had a couple of other things in development, and had been plugging away in the UK for years. I was by no means a first-timer.

In 2021, billion-dollar-grossing A-list writer-director-producer Simon Kinberg sold a spec script. He’s about as far from a newcomer as you can get.

Very rarely does a writer gain access to the hallowed halls of Universal or Netflix, having fired off their script to [email protected] or [email protected].

Generally speaking their spec is first set up (via their agents) with a production company, who develop the idea, perhaps attach talent, then take it out to “the market” in the hopes of setting it up.

This might be through an option, a shopping agreement, or some other small-fry deal that everyone agrees to in the hopes of an asymmetric upside.

For Gretel & Hansel, I partnered with prolific genre mavens Automatik. They took my script on and helped connect it with MGM/Orion.

This development process can go on for as long as it needs to. The hot spec scripts that sell in a matter of days - they’re only new in the eyes of the buyers. They may have undergone extensive rewrites under the purview of the production company.

I set up a spec script last year. I’m still re-writing it now with the help of the company who optioned it. We intend to take it out soon. Best case scenario, the project hits the market with a splash that instigates a scrum of buyers. But the script itself is getting on for two years old.

While headlines tend to favour the kinds of figures usually seen in lottery wins, specs can be sold at any scale, for any amount of money.

My Gretel & Hansel sale was a long way off seven figures. But it was enough to set me up while I wrote my next script. And ultimately that’s all a working writer can hope for.

Lay to rest the assumption that because a script sparks frenzied interest, that will carry over to a greenlight and production.

It does happen. My two major theatrical releases both started life as spec scripts. But that’s a rarity. I just got lucky twice.

It’s just as likely, if not more so, that they’ll languish. They may become an open writers’ assignment (or OWA) for some other professional to come in and refit completely. They may have an initial spurt of activity only for scheduling conflicts or budgeting issues or creative differences to scupper the whole thing. Spec sales are just as likely as any other early-stage film project to wither on the vine.

But that doesn’t mean they’re gone forever. They can always come roaring back. Take the Glen Powell-starring thriller Huntington, which placed on the black list way back in 2014 (then titled Rothchild) and only entered production this year, a full decade later.

After all, spec booms come and go. But a great script is great forever.

So that’s how it works. Now here’s how to do it.

To clear up any confusion, I don’t mean the paid feedback submission platform that so many emerging writers rely on. I mean the collected list of the industry’s “most liked” unproduced screenplays from any given year.

So far, over 400 of the scripts that have made it onto this Black List have gone on to become films. That means many many more will have sold to buyers.

Getting onto the list is a dark art. But if you do land a place, you’ve exponentially increased your chances of that elusive spec sale.

One Night Only by Travis Braun, which topped the Black List in 2024, is now in production. Directed by Will Gluck and starring Calum Turner & Monica Barbaro, an due for release next year.

I’ve attached the script below so you can give it a read yourself. It’s an absolute breeze to get through. Short, punchy sentences, lots of white space, a neat 95 pages. No wonder it topped the Black List - it was probably the script that was read till the end by the most producers that year.

This is a pattern I see recurring often. The easy reads go the furthest.

I turned a fairy tale into a horror story for my first major script sale. It could be pitched in a single line.

This is something else you see over and over again with specs that land big deals. If you can create a compellingly fresh and eyebrow-raising concept that conjures a whole three-act structure off the strength of one sentence, you stand a much better chance of striking that hallowed deal.

Let’s look at some of the sales that have constituted this spec boom. Here’s how they’re being described:

RENEGOTIATE: A time-travel action thriller

TYRANT: A high-stakes thriller

THIS COULD BE OUR NIGHT: A broad comedy (in the tried-and-true one crazy night subgenre - right alongside One Night Only)

INCIDENTS: A psychological thriller

THE PIRATE: Action thriller

FIXATION: Psychological thriller

THE SURVIVAL LIST: Rom-com

BALD EAGLES: R-rated workplace comedy

WITH THE 8TH PICK: Sports movie

Genre sells. Always has, always will. Think hard about which genre your script fits snugly into.

Let’s take another look at how those films are described in the trades:

RENEGOTIATE: Source Code meets Phone Booth

TYRANT: In the vein of Whiplash

THIS COULD BE OUR NIGHT: In the vein of Booksmart and Superbad

THE PIRATE: The Raid set on a pirate ship

THE SURVIVAL LIST: In the vein of The Lost City

WITH THE 8TH PICK: Social Network meets Air meets Moneyball

When you’re trying to capture the attention of overworked executives in the space of a three-line email, hoping they’ll read your script over the hundreds on their TBR pile, this kind of shorthand is crucial.

Execs and producers are always aiming to recreate the magic of earlier films - be they major box office successes or just personal favourites. In fact you often hear studios looking for “their The Joker”, or “their Get Out.”

Hollywood is iterative. No one’s looking for pure head-spinning, paradigm-altering originality. Just fresh spins on the things everyone loved before.

Figure out your reference films. Bonus points if they were box office hits in the last five years.

It helps to keep one eye on what’s happening in the industry. Both the macroeconomics and the week-by-week deals that add up to create a trend. A daily scan of the trades in recent weeks would’ve told you:

That’s not to say you should chase these trends. But it could help guide where you place your focus if you’re developing several projects simultaneously.

If you have an R-rated comedy that you could drive over the line and get out there in a few weeks, this kind of market awareness would help you make that crucial decision.

Over half the scripts that are purchased are secured with talent in mind. In fact a good portion of script are bought by talent themselves.

It’s only really ever actors or major directors who can move the needle towards a green light. And seen as though every script is bought with at least the dim and distant hope that it will one day become a movie, many scripts are bought purely based on the strength of the lead characters.

If your script offers the promise of a huge name falling in love with (the prospect of playing) your protagonist, your chances of selling that script enter the stratosphere.

By which I mean Intellectual Property - any source material that could be adapted into a movie. IP will always make up the majority of projects that go into production. But there are ways a savvy screenwriter can harness it without the massive resources of a studio.

I was informed sometime after Gretel & Hansel sold that the fact it had “pre-awareness” really helped. I’d stumbled into “soft-IP” - a story that was in the public domain, but had the same impact as IP in getting audience attention.

But it’s a double edged sword. My latest spec that didn’t find a home was based on another piece of “soft-IP”, a 120 year old novel. I wrote it because, like with Gretel & Hansel, I’d discovered a fresh, current take on an old tale.

Little did I know that over the years every producer with a pulse had at some point tried to adapt that same book. The title was considered tainted because there were so many attempted adaptations floating around, and the script didn’t land with buyers.

Finding an obscure or public domain title to build a spec around could be a canny move - just make sure you do your due diligence first.

A great script might get attention, but it takes a great company to set up a major project.

That’s a team who can polish the script to an industry ready finish, position it perfectly, find compelling talent to attach, engage their strong relationships with buyers, and drive the deal home. It’s not easy. It just looks easy in the right hands.

I got very lucky finding a home at Automatik. Fred and Brian are absolute masters at building projects properly. I’ve worked with them since and I’m working with them again right now.

Look for producers who humble you with their insights, and make you feel grateful that they’ve chosen to elevate you. They’re not easy to find, but they are out there.

A big spec sale is the shiny bauble dangling in the centre every writer’s mind’s eye. But real careers are built on landing consistent assignments and forging long-lasting professional relationships.

As I mentioned earlier, most writers who sell specs are already seasoned creators with some credits under their belt. It takes time to place yourself in front of the right people with the right project.

Put your energies towards achieving greatness in every aspect of your writing, and connecting with people who achieve greatness in their own disciplines. Everything else - mega-deals and all - will take care of itself.

I wrote about this recently, and the trend shows no signs of slowing down.

Alright. Now you know what to do when you have a great script, all you have to do is write the damn thing. Go get after it.

Till next week, thanks for reading.

Rob