MGM has pre-emptively picked up a fantasy comedy spec script that might be up for the longest title of the year award: Executive VP, David M. Murch’s Adventures In The Land Of Zametherea.
The story centers on a boy who has the ability to travel to a magical land, but after coming home and telling his parents about his fantastic adventures, they have him committed. Thirty years later, the boy has grown into a cold-hearted big-shot mergers-and-acquisitions executive when he gets the call to return to the magical land of his youth. The man must get help from his estranged son, the only person innocent enough to save the land of the man’s youth.
Peter Speakman and Michael M.B. Galvin’s script went out and sold by mid-afternoon. They received an $850,000 advance against a $1.35 million payout if the movie is made.

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New Line has made its first purchase since being downsized to a unit of its Warner Bros. corporate sibling, plunking down a $500,000 advance for Dan Mintner: Badass For Hire, a comedy spec script by Chad Kultgen.
Producer Beau Flynn described it as: “The baddest dude in the world in supertight jeans, chewing on a matchstick, stuck in the ‘80s but kicking ass in the present day.”
Flynn said the project will be an R-rated comedy in the spirit of Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle and Wedding Crashers, the kind of movie that “classic” New Line was good at making and that the new iteration will be making as well.
Kultgen wrote Burt Dickenson, The Most Powerful Magician On The Planet Earth, which is set up at New Line.

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20th Century Fox has pre-emptively picked up the rights to a sci-fi thriller video game concept from Union Entertainment.
Zero-G will be based on the game created by Daniel Jevons that’s still a work in progress. It revolves around a major U.S. city being attacked by a devastating, never-before-seen weapon. The studio is eyeing the project as a tentpole. The deal marks the first videogame-to-film project for Union, whose game credits include 2007’s The Darkness and the upcoming Sin City based on Frank Miller’s graphic novels.

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Columbia is happy to be Dumped, picking up the spec script by Scott Rothman.
The story revolves around two lifelong friends who experience a difficult breakup when one suddenly embraces adulthood while the other refuses to let go of his careless, bachelor lifestyle.