Hollywood expected that when the WGA strike ended there'd be a flood of scripts hitting the market, as scribes surreptitiously turned four months of downtime and donuts on the picket lines into spec material.

Trouble is, the writers didn't get the memo.

"The writers came in and said, 'Glad to be back, where's my assignment?'�" recalls a top lit agent of the typical post-strike dialogue around town. To which he and other agents replied, "Glad to have you back. Where's my spec?"

Agents say the strike taught them an important lesson about many screenwriters: They'll use any excuse not to write, and a union telling them to put their pencils down was the perfect reason.

Now, studios, producers and agents are scrambling to find fresh material -- pronto!

Given the town's current appetite for specs, scribes who didn't generate any fresh pages during the work stoppage or immediately thereafter may regret adhering to guild rules and sitting idle.

Roland Emmerich hit the post-strike market with "2012," a disaster epic spec script written with "10,000 B.C." co-writer Harald Kloser; a bidding war ended with Sony Pictures committing to a $200 million film and a summer 2009 release date. Sony needed a big summer film, and sources say the studio paid close to Emmerich's ask for $20 million against 25%, which fit right under Sony's gross ceiling, since the writer-director will be the only gross participant.

Ice Cube also made potentially the richest deal of his career when he brought his spec script, "Janky Promoters" to Bob Weinstein at Dimension. Bob and brother Harvey Weinstein began as music promoters, and they sparked to Cube's caper comedy of two promoters who get in over their heads while setting up a show by a top rapper. In exchange for a big upfront salary, Cube will share with Dimension in the film's revenue once the under-$10 million budget is recouped.

And late last week DreamWorks paid seven figures for "Hereafter," a spec script that Peter Morgan wrote some time ago and recently revived.

Studio execs suspect there might be other surprise specs by top talent who held back for fear of inflaming the Writers Guild by shopping scripts immediately post-strike. Though the deals weren't on the scale of Emmerich or Cube's, as many as eight specs sold just last week.

Newcomers, too, are benefiting from the demand.

Brad Ingelsby was working for his father's insurance business when Relativity Media paid $650,000 against $1.1 million to buy "The Low Dweller," a spec that Ridley Scott will direct, with Leonardo DiCaprio starring. The 27-year-old Ingelsby learned of his spec windfall when WMA reps phoned him where he lives -- at his parents' house in Philadelphia.

ENDS