Post Strike Week Yields Few Development Deals

At the end of the first full post-strike week, development deals and script sales have been slower than many in the film world anticipated.

A significant number of writers, it turns out, were not working on specs during the strike. And agents and studio execs who were expecting a feverish return to work have found that, while meetings are back in gear, deals and scripts have been thin on the ground.

Still, there were reports that at least one high-profile writer, William Monahan, would be turning in a spec shortly. The scribe behind "The Departed" and "Kingdom of Heaven" has a number of projects in development or production, including the Ridley Scott-helmed terrorism thriller "Body of Lies."

It's also possible that in a number of cases writers did pen scripts but that agents are holding them back -- either because they don't want to create the perception that their clients worked during the strike, or they want to assess the financial health of the post-strike market for scripts without turning their clients into guinea pigs. "No one wants to be the first," said one agent. "It may all start to happen after the Oscars, when we've celebrated writers, to get this going again."

Still, the prevailing feeling among agents and studio execs this week was one of surprise.

"I've been shocked by how quiet it's been," said one high-profile agent, echoing the thought of many who were interviewed. "I knew we wouldn't see every A-list writer with a script, but I thought there'd be a lot more than this."

The timing of the strike might have a lot to do with the comparatively small output. Writers note that the early, stressful days of the strike segued into the holidays, meaning that it would have been January before full-time writing was possible for many.

The open-endedness of the strike also might have played a role; one studio exec who works closely with writers remarked dryly that "writers need deadlines."

If the spec market remains slow, it will be a contrast to the 1988 strike, which created a boom in spec scripts. That, in part, was what fueled the idea that it would happen again in 2008.