Who decides to make a book into a movie? Is the author involved?
I just finished watching K-PAX and it is completely different than the movie. Also Stephen King does this all the time, he writes a book then whoosh its a movie. Some movies follow the book almost verbatem, others like Hearts in Atlantis completely butcher the book… What the Heck…ANYONE HAVE THE STRAIGHT DOPE ON THIS?
ModsShould this be in the CAFE?
Huh?
OK not completely different, but certain details. The book was obviously more descriptive. PROT’s mom for instance was left out…
This’ll probably end up in Cafe Society.
A 300 page book contains a lot of detail that won’t realistically fit into a 100 minute movie. Lots of stuff needs to be left out, ignored, or modified to fit the time constraints and format differences.
Once the movie rights are sold, many people can have an affect on the final product. The producers, directors, screen writers, actors, and cinematographers all have a hand in shaping the final product. If the original writer is hired to adapt his or her novel for the screen, they will have more say, but writing a novel and adapting a novel for the screen are two seperate skills.
IMO, it’s best to consider movies as a seperate piece of art than the book. The mediums are so different, and the original authors vision may have nothing to do with the directors vision, that you’ll almost always be disappointed if you are looking for a word-for-word translation from page to screen.
First, since I forgot to say it, welcome to the SDMB.
Second, I should have been more clear. You just finished watching K-PAX and it was different from the movie?
I’ll guess you meant to say you read K-PAX and say that lots of times things have to be left out of a movie when it’s adapted from a book. That’s because books have all the time in the world to develop subplots, additional characters, themes, etc. Movies have two hours, three tops. Authors usually agree to this because they get relatively large sums of money for the rights, plus their book sales usually go up, too.
Hope this helps.
I’m not in the business, but I assume it goes like this:
Usually, if a book sells well and has a good story, Hollywood will sooner or later contact the author for the film rights (if the author is an absolute star and everybody expects his next work to be a bestseller, he might also have sold the film rights even before the book is published). the decision is made by the film companies, and they’ll buy the rights if they think the stuff might end up a successful movie as well.
How much influence does the author have on the realization of the film? Depends on the contract they’ve negotiated. Especially the ones who are truly big in the business often reserve the right to participate in the screenplay, the casting decisions and the like.
I’m not in the business either. But from reading and watching things like “Book TV” on CSPAN this seems to be the process.
Someone, usually someone who knows how to get financing for theatrical projects, buys the rights. Then arranges financing, hires a director, casting director etc., etc. and goes into production. Sometimes years elapse before this takes place.
Many of the authors who have sold the rights to their books, when interviewed, say they have nothing to do with the movie production and don’t want to. Making a movie is so different from writing a book that they say they can’t contribute much. Besides, it pains them to see what must be done to their book to turn it into a movie.
It happens when someone who ain’t gonna watch it sells the idea to someone who ain’t gonna read it.
This is more a Cafe Society question than a General Question.
I’ll move it to Cafe Society for you.
DrMatrix - General Questions Moderator
Frequently, a book never makes it out of Galley Proofs before it is sent from a publishing house Reader to an agent who will broker it’s sale to the film industry.
Such was the case with “Jaws”, to cite an older example. The book will be bought, and then the new owner hopes like heck that it does well at the bookstores, kinda guaranteeing at least a built-in audience.
In the case of “Jaws”, by the time the deal was done, the word of mouth on the book and the overall sales were so immense, that Zanuck/Brown Productions knew they’d purchased a terrific piece of property.
Lucky for all of us, they made a pretty nifty movie out of it as well.
Cartooniverse
Sorry, I used a phrase uncommon to many people. Galley Proofs are explained here to some degree.
Occasionally, you mean. It happens from time-to-time, but is rare.
Usually it happens just as indicated previously. Someone in Hollywood reads the book (well occasionally – more likely they heard it was a good book and something about the description makes them think it’ll be a good movie), decides it’ll make a good movie, and buys the rights.
Very well put.