You’ve written a best-selling novel, and movie company wants to buy the movie rights to make a film adaptation. They are the only ones offering to buy the movie rights; no one else is.
They offer you a choice: You can fully surrender *all *control over the movie-making process to the producers - who you know will greatly change and misrepresent your novel and message in a way you will intensely hate - and get $2 million for the movie rights…or you can have full say and control over how the movie is made - casting, scenes, trailer, marketing, editing, story, everything - to ensure that it remains faithful to the novel or to how you want the movie to turn out - but then you will only get $1 million for the movie rights.
For me, it’s a no-brainer. If I absolutely knew for certain that my work was going to be bastardized by the movie-makers, then no amount of money would make me want to sell it. (Especially if I already have a best-seller. By that point, I’m past starving artist territory even if might not exactly be rich.)
I would still love to get some money and to see it turned into a movie. Frankly, I would intend to exercise minimal control over the movie, but just enough to make sure they don’t completely ruin anything important. Exercising any fine level of control is really more involvement in the movie-making process than I’d want as a novelist.
Frankly all I want control over is the script, I’ll let the producers handle almost literally everything else.
Maybe I’ll have a say in casting simply because I’d have a better handle on the look/sound of my people, but as for directing and editing and stuff? Nah I’ll pass.
Yeah, trying to micro-manage a Hollywood production is a loser’s game. Plus then if the movie turns out a dud you’ve got no one to blame but yourself.
The only two realistic options are sell the rights and be done with it, or don’t sell it at all. To me, it would depend on how emotionally invested I was in the novel. If it were my baby and I couldn’t bear to see it fiddled with, then no sale. If I felt otherwise, $2 million would be pretty tempting.
Second option for me also. $1 million is plenty (especially since I have a best seller), and I’ll make it up in book sales of that book and the sequels.
However I know enough about production to not want full control over stuff like casting and editing. Film making and script writing are very different from novel writing.
the loss of a further $1M is not such a big deal after already getting $1M AND getting my book turned into a movie. I am getting paid to have my book turned into a movie, and it comes out just the way I like it? Who cares if it makes money, it gets to be my vision!
Speaking of which, how *do *such deals work in real life? I’m sure movie producers wouldn’t want to let the novel author have much say or control - everyone wants control - so surely both sides have to wrangle out some concessions - but what and how?
The hypothetical doesn’t really work for me. One million is still a shit-ton of money, so I’ll go for that option. Make it $2 million versus not very much at all, and then you have a dilemma.
In which case I would prostitute myself shamelessly. Give me your cash.
I decided a long time ago that if I were ever fortunate enough to be in these circumstances, I would just let it go and not worry about it. Endlessly wrangling with the studio over how to make my vision come to life exactly as I see it would just be too much work. Even with complete authority, you’re not going to be able to control all sorts of factors, like availability of actors, union rules, the weather, permission to film in certain locations, etc. I’ve read a number of books about the hassles of movie production (Final Cut being the masterpiece of this genre), and it’s not something with which I would ever want to be involved.
I’ve had my writing changed on a less grand scale many times, and I’ve had to learn to just let it go. My creative vision is the book, the movie can be someone else’s vision.
C: None of the above. If I’ve already written a bestselling novel, then realistically, I probably already have all the money I need (yes, I know writing isn’t all that lucrative, but then, I don’t need much), so I can afford to reject A. And I also reject B because there’s no way that any studio or producer would ever actually offer that deal, so if it looks like they are, that must mean that there’s one whopper of a loophole hidden in the fine print that’s going to burn me badly.
Option #1. Take the money, then spend all my public time condemning the movie and what the producers are doing with it. Unless I was smart enough to secure all the sequel rights, along with all the other subsidiary rights like toys, books, spin-offs, songs, etc. then I just might cry all the way to the bank.
I’d take the 1 mill with creative control. If I didn’t think the message of my work was getting through, I’d not want to be bothered - money or no money.
I’m used to having my writing edited. It does make me grumpy, but not suicidal. lol I wouldn’t freak too much if they changed plot elements, timelines, etc. around to ease the movie-making process, just as long as my message stayed intact.
Hopefully I’d get a rep as fairly easy to work with and they’d ante up for another one of my stories.
First of all, I misread the poll as a choice between $25 million and $1 million, and I still took the $1 million. So for the real choice it is a no-brainer.
Unless your book is a cultural event, like Harry Potter of 50 Shades of Trash, I think the novelist has little or no power. Hell, the screenwriter usually doesn’t have that much control - see the old joke about the starlet who was so dumb that she slept with the screenwriter.
I don’t know how accurate “Saving Mr. Banks” is, but it is a good demonstration of how someone who theoretically had a lot of control still found that the movie was made the way Disney wanted. And was okay with it in the context of the story.
I’ll take the two. I’ve already exercised full creative control once if someone is curious how I would have made the movie work they can buy my book after that I just want every penny I can get.
I choose take the $2 million. Look, it’s a best seller, right? So if the producers and director screw the pooch with the film, everyone will know who blew it, because it’s a best seller already, right? All people have to do is read the book.
