Blogger: Rachelle Gardner
If you’ve written a novel or memoir, chances are you’ve dreamed of it becoming a movie. It’s so visual, you think. So dramatic! It’s even better than [insert name of box office hit].
Hey, I agree with you! Plenty of books could make great movies, if only someone were interested in making a movie out of them.
So today I’ll shed a little light on film rights. Keep in mind that agents have different ways of handling things, and there is no clear path to Hollywood, but these are some basics.
Hollywood Film Agent On Board
Literary agents don’t typically sell directly to Hollywood — we sell to publishers. So the best way to get our movie rights optioned or sold is to partner with a film agent. Large literary agencies have film departments whose full-time job is creating and maintaining relationships with Hollywood agencies, and trying to get film agents interested in their authors’ books. But most writers aren’t repped by these larger agencies; that means your agent, in addition to all the work of selling books to publishers, may be simultaneously pitching books to film agents.
If you don’t have a film agent to get your book considered in Hollywood, another path to the movies is to have a personal connection with a producer, actor, or director who has the power to get a movie made and is also interested in your book.
How does it work?
Your literary agent shops your manuscript to film agents exactly the same way we shop it to publishers. If our pitch catches their attention, they may enter into a dialogue about it. If not, they’ll just quickly say “no” or they won’t respond.
If we DO get a film agent on board, it’s a great first step but still doesn’t mean much. Now the film agent has to shop your manuscript amongst film producers, directors, and actors, trying to get someone interested. Maybe somebody will want to option the rights, maybe not.
What are the odds?
I’m not sure of percentages, but obviously, thousands of books are published by the major houses each year, and only a tiny fraction are ever optioned for film. (Less than 1%, I’d guess.) Of properties whose film rights are optioned, still less than 1% of those go on to be made into films. Of those that DO end up as movies, it typically takes a long time. Five to ten years would be considered normal.
What’s an option?
An option gives a production company the exclusive right to begin developing your manuscript into a film. They may have a writer start working on the screenplay; they may begin trying to attach other elements like directors and actors. Or they may sit on it and do nothing.
An option is always for a limited time, usually 12 to 18 months. Normally nothing happens in that short period of time, so options are usually renewed, or else the production company loses interest and drops the option. Sometimes your best bet of making some extra money on your book is to get it optioned with repeated renewals; you may never see it made into a movie but you’ll at least get a check each time the option is renewed. How much? The numbers vary widely, usually from about $1000 and up, for a one-year option.
Will my agent shop MY book to Hollywood agents?
Here’s the hard part. Because the odds are against us selling the film rights in most cases, we have to make careful choices about how to spend our time. We have to see something compelling that makes us believe there’s a good chance your book will translate well to film or TV. Some things that make it worthwhile for us to be more aggressive in shopping your book to film agents:
→ Your book was sold to a major publishing house at auction for a lot of money
→ Your book is a NYT bestseller
→ Your book is garnering extremely positive (starred) reviews from major outlets
→ Your book has some special unique element that makes us think it might have a chance of getting Hollywood’s attention
Keep in mind your literary agent already believes in you and your book. They think your book is great—that’s why they took it on. They’ve sold it to a publisher. So don’t take it personally if they aren’t spending a lot of time aggressively trying to get your movie rights optioned. It doesn’t mean they don’t believe in your book, it simply means that the odds are high against getting a movie option, and so your agent’s time is better spent elsewhere.
If your book was sold to a smaller publisher, including most Christian publishers, and it’s a modest success (fewer than, say, 50,000 copies sold), then optioning the film rights is highly unlikely and it doesn’t make sense for your agent to actively work for a film deal.
Sure, there are movies that get made from smaller books, but those usually happen because of a personal connection. A producer or a film scout happened to find the book somehow, and they spent years championing it.
My agent says a couple of production companies have inquired about film rights—how excited should I be?
It’s a great first step! And you can be proud that your book has gotten some attention. But in most cases, the inquiry doesn’t go any further. No counting chickens or looking at mansions on Yahoo Real Estate.
If the film rights are eventually sold and the movie is made, how much money can I make?
A typical payment for the author would be something like 2% of the movie’s overall budget. If your book is being made into (for example) an ABC Family Christmas movie with a $2 million budget, your paycheck would be $40,000. This is strictly hypothetical—every situation is different.
How do the agent commissions work?
Typically the two agents (literary and film) share in commissions but the numbers vary. Sometimes both agents get 10% of any film options or deals, meaning the author is paying a 20% commission. Sometimes the author pays a 30% commission if there are three agents involved, or if both agents take 15%.
Any more questions? I’ll either answer in the comments or an additional post.
Tweetables
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Not a direction I even think about. Aside from odds that make Las Vegas look like buying a Treasury bond, the transition from book to film isn’t often successful (at least to me).
I’m delighted that Susan Howatch’s “Starbridge” series has never been filmed (at least I don’t think so), because it would become just another stuffy English costume-and-snarkiness drama to put the final leaden foot on a rainy Sunday night in November. Ugh.
I do have two questions –
First, does the author ever have any real say in any aspect of the production?
Second, how badly does a really bad adaptation harm an author’s career (clearly, a good one’s a significant boost)?
Wes Studi, at his Magua-i-est, could play you. Until he saw a puppy, then yeah, forget it.
Okay, you just totally made my day!
Thank you for that. Truly.
I really would be scared to have my work done on film, simply because it’s Native American focused, and the chances of Hollywood messing up the story are too high.
Have there been any really ‘good’ movies focused on Native Americans, that don’t go to either the “super noble” or opposite extreme?
I can’t think of any, except perhaps Windtalkers.
Well, LOTM, but that’s a special case.
The mini-series Into The West was very good. But as for films, that’s hard to say. Dances With Wolves was good, and yet many Native Americans have problems with it. I’ll ask ‘Magua’ and get back to you.
Wow, that could easily come across as pretentious.
Jennifer
What about Jay Tavare? Besides being an actor, isn’t he a producer and director?
Right! Weird I forgot about him, eh Lori? And he does strive for authenticity. He learned his lines for The Missing from one of the last of the fluent Chiricahua Apache speakers, so that he’d do the language justice. I do know he’s very passionate about presenting whatever culture he portrays as accurately as possible, as was Ron Howard, the director of that movie.
I agree with Jennifer and Andrew that good books often aren’t done justice in the movie version. 🙂 But thanks for sharing this info, Rachelle! Very enlightening…I learned something today.
I can’t say that Hollywood has ever been a goal of mine for my stories, but I enjoy finding film actors and actresses that suit my characters. Since I write historical fiction, I’ve “cast” some of my characters with silent-screen stars and posted them on Pinterest. Helps fix their appearance in my mind as I write.
Not quite the same thing, but Arthur C. Clarke wrote a book, “The Lost Worlds of 2001”, about his experience of writing the novel “2001 – A Space Odyssey”in parallel with the production of the movie.
What’s particularly interesting is the way his original conceptualizations were utterly non-filmable, and that the storyline and the fates of the characters were bound to what could effectively be told during that 2-1/2 hours that the film would run.
He also has a lot of anecdotes about the differences between film and literary people, and what it was like to work with a ‘name’ director, Stanley Kubrick.
There is a shortage of books and films targeting the ever growing Mexican American population. Salma Hayek and her film company Ventanarosa might be interested in my commercial contemporary romantic Mexican novel, but reaching her company is out of my reach.
Thank you, Rachelle, for addressing this. As agents we are not only called to be encouragers but we are called to be truth tellers. I find the complexity of Hollywood is the least understood part of the media industry. We talk together so often about the frustrations– much of what we deal with on the way to a film deal is hyperbole and bluff. People desperately trying to connect money and talent to a project.
And our clients hear things like “Hollywood is looking for faith films” and they can’t see why their books would not be a perfect fit. But to generate that money and talent the book needs to have been a gigantic success that already garnered attention in the publishing world.
Good tutorial, Rachelle.
Someone along the lines of Debbie Macomber, perhaps?
Ah, how well I remember going to the theater alight with expectation to see “The Lightning Thief”. And then I saw it. How they could mess up such a great book I don’t know, but Rick Riordan did gain something from me watching the film, because I went right out and bought the book to clear my palet. Different forms of media. It seems hard to make a good book into a good movie. Although, “How to Train Your Dragon” was fabulous although it was hardly like the book at all. It worked that way, worked well. And I bought the books because of the movie in that case as well.
Thanks for this super informative post, Rachelle. Getting a book turned into a movie sounds like a lot of work. I’ve always wondered about how the process works, and yes, in my fantasy world my book would get turned into a movie, haha. I think every author does dream and wonder about that, if only because they’d love to see their work come to life, the way they’ve seen it in their head for so long.
I know many others get their books optioned for film or TV, but that doesn’t mean the show or movie actually gets made. For example, Warner Brothers did a pilot for Kiera Cass’ “The Selection”, but it never went beyond that. Same with Lauren Oliver’s “Delirium”. It’s exciting to think about, but seems like it happens less often than we think.
Thanks for sharing on this subject. Your posts are always so interesting 🙂
. . . oh drats. Today I was going to reserve my advanced screening tickets for the animated movie Pixar will be making out of my novel when it’s published.
Oh well – guess I’ll go to Albertson’s instead and buy two pints of my favorite Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream. (Cherry Garcia) I hear it’s on sale for $3.99.
Thanks Rachelle, either way, I come out on top.
Christian novelists who are interested in seeing their stories made into movies might consider connecting with independent filmmakers outside of Hollywood, like the company down in Georgia that made “Facing the Giants” and “Fireproof.” There must be other Christian filmmakers out there who are hungry for good stories. The San Antonio Independent Film Festival is no more, but maybe there’s something similar rising up from the ashes. If so, it would be a good time to get in on the ground floor. Just a thought.
I’m going to speculate a bit…it might be worth looking at the book-to-film projects of Janette Oke.
I think that her books made a successful transition because she filled a desire that was already there – a generation that had grown up with “Little House on the Prairie”, and followed that with “Dr. Quinn” wanted more in that vein, because it gave them a world that was both attractive and contained.
It wasn’t a case of getting her readers to watch the films; it was presenting her stories to viewers who longed for more in that genre.
I can’t think of anything more challenging than to try to predict what genre will still have legs a few years down the road, but I’ll bet that “Longbourne” will find its way into some sort of film/video adaptation.
This way of looking at it could be completely wrong, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
What I’m trying to say – in a lot fewer words – is that a film seems to really need a well-defined and verifiable audience before the expense can be justified.
And even then, it’s a gamble. Look at the late Robin Williams’ career; a number of his movies only drew his hard-core fan base, which was a lot smaller than those who liked him, but would stay away if the reviews were bad.
This is so good, and helpful. I was really ticked at my agent when she happily announced that she had gotten a couple of Hollywood inquiries on my last book…but never followed up or told me who they were. So much of our business involves winning the lottery: the finish-the-book lottery, the find-an-agent lottery, the publisher lottery. This one appears to be the most elusive of all.
Thank you for this clear explanation of a complicated process. I’m wondering if it’s realistic for an author to have any creative control over the movie content. How might that happen? Or is it like a child growing up and leaving home, and you just have to hope for the best? I can imagine wanting to send little notes to the director.
I have a true story about a wrongful conviction that went conpletletly bad in california the movie script of 27 pages has been written. Now i carry the tapes of foul play the misconduct that shows whats been happieng a dirty da office and faulty prosecutor and my disbard attorney email me i can send over the samples. This is big now im writting the book.. true story