Selling Your SciFi Novel to Hollywood: Is It Just About the Money?
Last week's column about why the movie of your favorite science fiction book probably stinks generated a nice set of comments and e-mail (thanks!). One message asked a question that I think is worth examining:
If science fiction writers know their books are going to be mangled by Hollywood, why do they keep selling them to Hollywood in the first place? Is it just about the money?
The short answer is: Yeah, it's pretty much about the money. If a book gets made into a movie (and that's a really big "if"), that writer is going to get a pretty nice payday. Science fiction writers have mortgages too, and might even want to send their kids to college. But the long answer, aside from being longer, is more subtle.
Money Without Movies
First, know this: Overall, very few films are made from science fiction novels, and it frequently takes decades for a science fiction novel to make it into theaters. Starship Troopers was published in 1959 and made into a movie in 1997 -- nearly 40 years later. I, Robot was published in 1950 and a movie with its same title, tangentially related to the book, hit screens 54 years later. Dune, published in 1965, merely had to wait two decades before its first film iteration. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, has been in limbo since 1985, when the novel was published.
But the good news for science fiction writers is that there's a lovely way for them to make money from filmmakers, even if their books never reach the silver screen. They're called options, and they work like this: A film producer pays a novelist a bit of money for the right to try to make one of their novels into a film. This option is for a set period of time (generally a year or two), after which the filmmaker either renews the option for additional money, or drops it. If the option is dropped, the writer can sell the option to another filmmaker for another bit of money. If the novel is perennially popular, a writer can keep selling the option for years. Individual options are generally not huge sums of money, but add it up over time and you have a nice pot o' cash -- all without a single frame being shot.
Ironically, one of the greatest risks for a writer is not that one of his books will never be made into a film, but that one will -- and if it stinks, then the option well runs dry. As long as you don't have a film made, you have no track record of failure, and Hollywood is far less afraid of the unknown than it is of failure.
Sales and Stature
Besides the direct economic
benefit, either in options or the check cut once the book is made into
a film, there are two other advantages for science fiction writers,
even if their novels are eviscerated while being adapted. The
first is that when the movie hits theaters, the sales of the
book can get a huge shot in the arm (especially if the publisher has
been smart enough to release a version of the book tied into the film
release). Earlier this year, Steven Gould's novel Jumper jumped onto the New York Times bestseller lists nearly two decades after it was originally published, thanks to the release of the Doug Liman-directed film. Jumper did
good-but-not-chart-busting box office ($80 million North America, $220
million worldwide), but all the marketing and attention in the run-up to the movie's release gave the book a significant boost.
The second benefit for a science fiction writer is more nebulous: It's status, not so much in the science fiction field, but in the common culture. The prime example of this is Philip K. Dick. In life, he was celebrated in the science fiction field (he won the 1964 Best Novel Hugo for his book, The Man in the High Castle), but fame in the science fiction field doesn't necessarily (or usually) equate to fortune or recognition outside; Dick was frequently at loose ends financially. Blade Runner (based on his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), which debuted shortly after his death, helped raise his profile in Hollywood and outside of it, and a string of financially successful and/or artistically interesting films based on his work (Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, etc.) have given serious literature critics the cultural cover they need both to examine and to celebrate his work.
There is some trenchant irony in film being a catalyst for a writer's work being taken seriously as literature, but this is science fiction we're talking about, a form which most readers of serious literature write off as hackwork without actually bothering to read any (because they're snobs, you see). Now, to be sure, not every scifi writer deserves critical reappraisal like Dick did, but having another medium vouch for your storytelling skills does work to the benefit of the writer.
At the very least, other writers (who don't have movies made from their work, ha ha ha) won't give you as much crap, or if they do, everyone knows they're just jealous. And really: That's better than money.
Winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, John Scalzi is the author of The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies as well as the novels Old Man's War and the upcoming Zoe's Tale. His column appears every Thursday.
If that's not a perfect synopsis of how Hollywood works, I don't know what is: You sell the rights to a book, which is made into a movie. That movie can end having a "title" alone, in common with the work purchased (I Robot, etc.). But if it tanks . . . the writer ends up taking it in the shorts . . .
Movie making reminds me of making a car: Given all that could go wrong, it's amazing things actually go right . . .
Jealousy. Now THAT'S motivation I can get behind.
I like this "options" business. My kind of stuff, getting paid so someone can "think about" doing something with my work.
After I already got paid to produce the work.
Damn, it's a lazy man's DREAM!
There's one more use to options: Defensive optioning.
I know there's been a few cases where a book has been optioned to avoid later lawsuits -- if you've got the rights to the book, you can make a movie based on parts of it without being accused of stealing it. The most obvious case is "The Towering Inferno" based on both "The Tower" by Richard Martin Stern and "The Glass Inferno" by Thomas Scortia and Frank Robinson.
There have also been cases where a studio will hoard, say, all the Charlemagne book options to avoid a competing movie from being made at the same time. A little sad if yours doesn't get the marquee, but still pocket change.
If I were an author, I don't think I would sell my novel to Hollywood unless I either wrote the screenplay myself or REALLY needed the money. Of course, I suppose that is one bridge you don't cross until you come to it... and I'm not there yet!
Joelfinkle,
Your first example is a little off the mark. What the option does is prevent the author from selling the work to any other Producer. The producer may want the option, just so no one else can make the movie (very common) or to give them time to try to put the film together. The option will also specify what additional money the author is to be paid in the event a movie is made. So, the producer can't just make a movie involving elements of the story and expect to avoid a lawsuit unless the additional money was paid.
I once saw writer Fred Saberhagen at a convention, and he credited options with allowing him a great of financial comfort. You may know that he had written a series of novels with Dracula as a main character, meeting Sherlock Holmes and other historical figures up to the present day. Saberhagen said the Dracula series was in almost constant option renewal, simply to tie up the property from competing with other films (like the 1992 Dracula, Dracula 2000 and so forth). IIRC, he mentioned something like $100,000 a year. Chump change to the movie's budget, but a handsome advance for a writer.
I look forward to this column every Thursday. It's the first thing I do when I get home from work.
I don't think selling your book can hurt you too much. If you've written a really good sci fi novel your gonna have Sci fi readers who will still buy your next novel even if the movie version of said novel wasn't good. Their probably will be a lot of "nerdgassing" but that will be directed at the Movie makers more than the novelist.
I look forward to this column every Thursday. It's the first thing I do when I get home from work.
I don't think selling your book can hurt you too much. If you've written a really good sci fi novel your gonna have Sci fi readers who will still buy your next novel even if the movie version of said novel wasn't good. Their probably will be a lot of "nerdgassing" but that will be directed at the Movie makers more than the novelist.
I wonder if it complicates the story if just before the release of a movie about one of your books, you die -- but are brought back 20 years later as an android and attend Comic Con where you talk about your work and then mysteriously disappear. (PK Dick in 2005 or 06.)
It doesn't complicate story. But it does make it AWESOME.
Thinking more about the whole options thing, I've read articles about authors whose books get made into movies, but due to the magic of Hollywood accounting, they don't get diddly for royalties and so end up all poor and dumpster diving for their breakfast and stuff.
Doesn't this sad state of affairs just make it that much better to go for the perpetual options ummm...option, and not actually want your book made into a movie?
Yeah, generally speaking writers don't get points at all (or if they do they're net points rather than gross points, which is just fancy talk for "you get nothing"). That said, with major motion pictures, source material authors are generally reasonably well paid if the film actually gets all the way into production, so if the authors are dumpster diving after that, there's usually some contributing factor.
Is there an average for how much SF writers get for an option? IRC, Richard Morgan was able to pretty much quit working and write full time after Altered Carbon got optioned, but I don't know if that's normal.
If the Wikipedia entry is to believed (which is another one of those big "if"s), Morgan got $1 million for his option. This is vastly more than what most folks get for their options.
I have an excellent book by Harlan Ellison about a Star Trek episode that he wrote called "The City on the Edge of Forever". For the fans of the original series, this was the episode with Joan Collins back in time. Harlan describes how Hollywood and the Industry totally screws with a writers work, but you keep going back like some masochistic chump for more. Another piece he wrote was about a series called "The Starlost". Don't want to ruin it for anyone, but if you have the time and the interest, check them out. A must read.
Dave
There's a tale about the writer who was asked how he felt about Hollywood ruining his books. His answer was to point to the bookshelf and note that the books were sitting right there and hadn't actually been ruined at all. I've seen this attributed to King and James Cain, among others, but perhaps it's apocryphal.