How a Book Becomes a Movie
Hello, creatives!
In the last blog post, we discussed the process of making a film. Piggybacking off that, today we’ll talk about how a book becomes a movie or TV show because that’s the dream right? All right, let’s dig in.
There are 3 things that have to happen before a book becomes a movie or TV show in production.
Books have to be pitched to a Hollywood agent
A studio or producer has to buy the option to be adapted into a script
The book has to be adapted into a script & greenlit by the studio for production
Pitching Your Book to a Hollywood Agent
The Role of a Hollywood Agent
A Hollywood agent is much like a literary agent, but for scouting potential scripts and negotiating contracts between the writers and the producers and studios. They know the ins and outs of the the genre they specialize in, what’s in the works in Hollywood and what type of projects would be successful. An author’s literary agent (if they have one) will more likely than not have a contact in Hollywood who can partner with them. But sometimes, this isn’t the case and an author needs to be ready to fight for their book.
What Goes into the Pitch to a Hollywood Agent?
So this means having a solid pitch proposal. There are three key things that go into a pitch.
Selling the story
Showing the story is viable as a movie
Persistence & Patience
Selling the story means making the book sound exciting. This part is similar to a query letter, but it’s different from a query letter because you have to show, with stats and trends, that your story could easily adapt to a script and has the potential to be profitable as a TV show or film. Pursuing Hollywood means playing the long game, because as I talked about in the process of filmmaking, it’s a long road out of development hell. So persistence and patience are key to maintaining your sanity.
As a bonus, consider hiring a screenwriter or learning the trade yourself if you have the time and energy to pursue those options. Selling a script is easier than selling a book in Hollywood if you aren’t a celebrity author.
Expectations for the Pitch to a Hollywood Agent
This process can be grueling and rejection shouldn’t be taken personally. Sometimes, a book may simply not be marketable to Hollywood’s risk-averse tastes. You have to understand that, a studio could spend millions and hundreds of millions of dollars producing a film only to never earn a profit from it.
So, they have to be picky. But if your book has mass-market appeal, then you may land a contract with an agent who will then fight for your book to be seen by producers who may be interested in the project’s genre.
When a Studio Decides to Purchase an Option
When a producer or director decide they love a book’s concept, they will purchase an option to hire a scriptwriter to adapt it to be suitable for a film or TV show. To be clear, options are like a rental agreement on the film rights. The Hollywood agent will negotiate either a 12-18 month rental of the film/TV rights, called an option, and during this time, the director, producer and studio quite literally have the option to test the waters on what a script would look like.
If, at the end of the 12-18 months, the project isn’t a good fit for the producer, director or studio, then the film and TV rights revert back to the author and someone else can purchase an option. It’s important to note that only one entity can have the rights to an option at a time.
So, this is where knowing the director/producer/studio is important because it isn’t unheard of for the options for a work to be strategically bought for the sake of sabotaging another studio’s ability to turn it into a film or TV show that would directly compete with what is in development and production at the moment. It’s also possible that an extension is bought, which gives the studio more time to work out what they need to make a final decision on the script. Sometimes scripts are rewritten dozens of time, hence if you opt to write your own you need to have a lot of time and energy to devote to this process.
An author is paid for the option, which can range drastically depending on genre, how saturated the market is for that particular work and how well known the author is. Typically, a few hundred to a few thousand dollars can be expected. The Hollywood agent will take a cut, somewhere between 10-15%.
What happens after the script is finished
Let’s say that the studio comes back and loves the script that was written and they want to move forward with development. This is called being “greenlit”. The author will receive further compensation for this, because at this point the TV and film rights are being sold by the author to the studio.
It’s important to note: do not accept any contract language that suggests the director/producer/studio has the film rights or merchandising rights or any other rights for the author’s next book or future unrelated material. This is a shady attempt at swindling away the author’s intellectual property rights and thus, future revenue.
Once it moves into a new stage of development, the same pitfalls we discussed in the last post about the process of filmmaking apply here. Anything can happen. Nothing is certain. The project could be stuck in development hell for years or abandoned entirely. Make sure the contract has contingencies in place for if a movie gets stuck in development hell for too long (5-7 years is typical) the rights revert back to you as an author.
One last note: authors get paid when a project is greenlit. There’s a few different ways that the check could get cut. The most common is the author gets a percentage of the film budget, but that’s typically reserved for big name authors. But for example, say the budget is $100 million and you are supposed to get 1% of that budget. That’s $1 million in payment.
Other payment options that sometimes happen include a cut of the box office revenues or profits –the difference being do you get paid before or after all the other studio expenses?. For example, say a movie ticket costs $10 and you are supposed to get 1% of the revenue. Well, then you get 10 cents for every ticket sold. If a million tickets are sold that means you get $100,000. Meanwhile, say you are supposed to get 1% of the profits from the box office. Let’s say to cover the expenses, the studio only sees $5 of every $10 movie ticket, which means you get 5 cents for very ticket sold. That $100,000 in payment is now only $50,000. See the difference? For TV shows, instead of tickets it can be related to other revenue streams for the show or ratings.
Having a solid agent, plus having a solid platform for yourself and a viable story that can be turned into a film or movie is vital to being paid well for your work.
After these 3 steps happen, the rest proceeds much like any other movie or TV series. The beginning just requires a little bit more work to ensure you retain as many rights to your work as possible. Hopefully, this was helpful. If you’d like more reading on this subject, check out Jane Friedman’s blog and The Creative Penn, they are both highly reputable women in the industry and know their stuff.
All right, that’d all I have fore today. In the next blog post, we’ll talk about Guerrilla Marketing.
Until Next Time,
Rochele
P.S. Looking to jump start your creative business? Feel free to fill out this form and I’ll be in touch to book a discovery call for a brand coaching session or my strategic planning consulting service.