Hi all, I was just wondering if there is some way for an author to retain film rights to their novel once they have an agent and a willing publisher? I am asking because I just finished a manuscript and I might have an agent pretty soon. However, I would really like to see my work on the big screen (my everlasting dream, sigh*). I think the story has potential and I am willing to do whatever it takes to get it where I want it.
ALSO,
I have been reading some posts here and I have a question: I want to write a screenplay and I want to know if it is even remotely possible for an agent to
accept work from a first time writer without recommendations? And let's just say the script would be a bit costly to produce, but it's an original idea. Would it simply be dismissed because the writer has no credits?
Please forgive my ignorant questions. I'm just trying to understand the industry. Thanks for the help!
If you have an agent -- always a good idea before you sign any deal with a publisher -- what you should be negotiating with the publisher, ideally, is "first North American Publishing rights." They would, of course, love to get much more. They would love to get everything. The right to republish indefinitely. Publish on-line for free. Publish internationally. Movie Rights. The right to translate your work into Albanian and put it on billboards and keep the money?
Why not, if you're willing to give it to them. That's why you need an agent, to protect your rights and know what you can reasonably keep and what you probably are not going to be able to keep.
Whatever you do, don't believe what they tell you is "standard" -- because when they tell you that something is "standard" what they mean is, "it's standard practice for us to try to steal this from people who don't know any better."
I've been to seminars where a publisher has literally said that there's no real reason for a writer to bother with getting an agent -- that agents really only interfere with things and slow things down. And said this with a straight face.
It is quite common, and no reason in the world why you should not retain movie rights.
But please understand that simply because you have them doesn't mean that they're worth much of anything. They only have value if somebody else -- say a producer -- wants to make your book into a movie. It isn't enough for you to want to do it. Someone who actually makes movies has to want to do it.
If that happens, they'll then negotiate an option (which is generally ten percent of the full purchase price for the rights). The option can run anything from a year to a few years with renewals and during that time they have the opportunity to try to get the movie set up. If the movie is "set up" -- that is, at the point it actually goes into production, then they "exercise the option" -- they pay you the full amount for the rights, minus the cost of the option.
Regarding you writing the screenplay -- a lot of novelists want to do this and write it into their deals that they get a shot at doing it. From the producer's standpoint -- they pretty much never want the writer of the book to write the screenplay. That's because, while you may be a talented novelist, the skills associated with writing a screenplay are very different.
It isn't simply a matter of taking the scenes from your novel and transposing them to the screen. It is a different medium with fundamentally different strengths and weaknesses and to make the transition from one to the other means that you really have to take your story back to the beginning.
You started out with a story to tell and, essentially said -- how do I tell this story as a novel.
Well, now you have to ask yourself -- how do I tell this story as a movie.
The result can be close or it can very, very different.
The cold, cruel fact is, in the majority of cases, when a writer insists on writing the screenplay, most producers accept this caveat as part of the price of acquiring the underlying material. So they say yes. You write the draft -- and unless the draft really surprises everybody with its wonderfulness, it's going to go into a drawer. They will have fulfilled their contractual requirement by letting you write a draft, and then they'll proceed to do what they intended to do all along, which is go out and hire a professional screenwriter to write the movie.
This may sound cruel, but that's the way it tends to work.
NMS
