I have to have all rights at these scripts, you will have your credits.

If you are selling the scripts, then yes. You wave bye-bye to them on your way to the bank, knowing he might well butcher them beyond recognition.

However, if he's asking you to donate them for credits, giving him all rights, I'd wonder what was up with that. My best guess is that he was perhaps assigned to write his own and could not.

Maryn, not all that great a guesser

NightTimeScripts said:

Hi Folks,

A student wants 3 ten minute scripts and has approached me with "I have to have all rights at these scripts, you will have your credits."

He wants to prepare a contract between us for this project.

Is this common?

Thx,

John.

Click to expand...

It is standard for the producer, whoever that is, to own all the rights to the underlying screenplay. It's not like a stage play where the rights to the underlying material are retained by the writer while this producer or that producer stage different productions at different times.

It doesn't work that way with screenplays.

Of course, generally, a producer will buy the screenplay with something along the lines of real money, rather than simply credit.

On the other hand, most producers expect to make money off of the movies that they make, so the money they pay writers as well as everybody else is an investment that they expect to recoup from the sale of the movie.

That's not the case when you make a short film.

When the film in question is never going to show any profit, it's not particularly unreasonable to ask the people involved to volunteer their time and creative efforts. Presumably (and I am presuming it, of course) -- nobody involved in the making of these short films is going to get paid anything and the movie is never going to make anything.

In the end, he may own the rights, since he's engendered the project as producer/director but he's still not making any money off of it.

Presumably.

But that, it seems to me, is a critical point.

It makes sense to say -- if the movie makes no money, you don't have to pay me.

But on the off chance that the movie makes money -- *then* you have to pay me.

That's because it's reasonable to say -- if nobody, including the director makes any money, then it's reasonable that I, the writer, make no money.

But it's *not* reasonable that nobody makes any money -- and then the director owns all the rights and then he posts it on some paysite and it gets a million hits -- and *he* makes money.

So I think that it makes sense for the contract to say that either the movie has to be used strictly non-profit or if it's going to be used for profit, then you (and everybody else) should get some of that money and the contract should reflect that.

But again, these are probably very low budget movies that aren't going to make anybody anything, so this may be complicating things far more than you need to.

NMS

If it's a student asking for those scripts he's unlikely to make any from them and in that case it's not uncommon to ask for a script in return for credit. I've written one myself because I know the person I was sending it to was on a tight budget. I just believed in his work. If you are worried about this, you could ask for a contract clause that gives you a share of the money of a profit is made. If no money is involved, they should have no problem including that clause.

For no money and credit I'd be inclined to give him all rights to that scripts but retain the rights to any type of sequels and all the rights to future use of the characters. Normally, with a normal situation where the producer is paying money this is not the case, but such is not your case. You donate the script, in a sense, but why depart from any future possible use that your scripts or characters might generate for nothing?