BIDDING WAR STORIES Shane Black sold The Last Boy Scout to Warner Bros. for $1.75M in 1990 ($4.2M today), a record for a spec until Joe Eszterhas sold one months later for $3M ($7.2M today) titled Basic Instinct, which would go on to star Sharon Stone. (Photo illustration by The Ankler. Black: Aaron Rapoport/Corbis/Getty Images; Stone: TriStar Pictures)