Alec Sokolow and Joel Cohen have sold their original screenplay "Q," inspired by "Don Quixote," to Starz Media Animation.

The project centers on marionettes in Central Park who escape from their theater and embark on a fanstastical adventure.

In a rare deal for screenwriters, the "Cheaper by the Dozen" and "Toy Story" scribes also will partake in back-end profits as well as merchandising and ancillary revenue.

Sokolow and Cohen will produce and oversee all elements of production, while Starz Animation head David J. Steinberg will oversee for the company.

"For us, 'Q' really is a chance to put our feet to the fire," Sokolow said. "A bias against screenwriters is that they are never really in the firing line of production and movie-making. But I think it's really more a case that the system prefers screenwriters to be disposable as a movie is produced and marketed, the end result most times being bitterness or flippancy."

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Richard Potter and Matthew Stravitz have sold their original screenplay "Signals" to Media Rights Capital.

The plot is under wraps, but the thriller is said to be in the vein of "Three Days of the Condor," Sydney Pollack's milestone of the 1970s paranoid-thriller era.

Potter and Stravitz played in the same genre sandbox when they scripted the in-development remake of the 1978 thriller "The Boys From Brazil" for director Brett Ratner at New Line.