Highest fee for a speculative script

The highest fee for a spec script is $5 million (£2.76 million), paid by Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer for Deja Vu, written by Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio (both USA) in June 2004.

In Hollywood terminology, a "spec script" (or speculative script) is one that is written and then shopped around to production companies to see if anyone is interested in making it into a film. The term is used to differentiate it from scripts that are written to order for a specific project.

The script, which tells a complex story that has been described as a "time-travel thriller action romance", was written by veteran Hollywood screenwriter Terry Rossio – whose credits include Aladdin (USA, 1992), Shrek (USA, 2001), and the Pirates of the Caribbean series (USA, 2003–2017) – and his then-unknown friend Bill Marsilii. It was subject to a brief bidding war amongst various Hollywood production companies before being picked up by Bruckheimer, who had just finished working with Rossio on Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003).

Bruckheimer brought in action-movie specialist Tony Scott to direct and Denzel Washington to play the lead, with principal photography taking place in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, in late 2005 and early 2006. The production of the complicated script proved to be challenging, and rifts soon emerged between the writers and Scott. The final product met with middling reviews – many of which singled out the story for being confusing – and performed poorly at the box office, failing to recoup its production and marketing costs.