Film Rights, your views?

[erastes]

as much as I enjoyed the film "How to Train Your Dragon" (it literally was my favourite film of the last year) I've now read the book and I have to wonder what the blithering blink were the acquisition team thinking when they bought the rights to the film. I'm sure that the author is laughing little haversacks all the way to the bank,but from what I can see – all they've done is take the Title of her book, the name of her lead character and the dragon—AND CHANGED EVERYTHING ELSE.

It's a bit like me selling the rights to Standish, with no creative control—which I'm assuming Ms Cowell must have done—and probably caring little as she counted her moolah, chuckling—and then the film gets to be set in Australia with a dark haired young man called Ambrose Standish going to a sheep station in 1990 to be a sheep shearer on a sheep station and falling in love with the girl next door. I've wondered this before, but what if one day I WAS offered a huge amount (and Hollywood, if you are listening, when you are on £60 a week, "a huge amount" doesn't necessarily mean seven figures…I may not be free, but I'm reasonably priced!) for the irrevocable sale of the film rights. I wonder what I'd do? Would I sell my first born into slavery for Hollywood to change as they liked? Or would I say "Fie, Mr Mogul, you shall not have me without me making bloody sure you don't muck about with the plot (too much.)"?

It would be a nice dilemma to have!! But I really don't know what I'd do. I try not to act the diva in public but I would like some semblance of the book to be represented on screen. Not going to happen, but I wonders, yes I wonders, all the same. My precious.

What would you do?  I'm listening!

Comments

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

You wouldn't get any control unless you were a BIG name -- and even then... Writer Tony Hillerman was asked what he thought of the film made from one of his Navajo mysteries, and he said it was like seeing an auto wreck involving people you knew.. the only good news was that no one was actually killed.

If the people who did the Hornblower series wanted to buy Ransom, I'd sell it. If the nitwits who turned Americans into Frenchmen and threw the entire Aubrey-Maturin series into a blender wanted it, I'd hold out for as much as I could POSSIBLY get.

I'm not as attached to Tangled Web, though; if someone offered a fat sum for that one, I'd take it. (That bit of the contract was negotiable--I still have those rights.)

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

You wouldn't get any control unless you were a BIG name

Agreed. For all of the bitching that fans do about changes to the story, the original author rarely has any control over that. Giving the original author creative control isn't considered a good idea, because movies are a very different medium from books and what will work on the page won't necessarily work on the screen. So frequently, characters have to be changed or combined, and plotlines altered to bring them into line with what the laws of physics and the FX team can actually accomplish--or into line with the available budget.

Even in the most faithful adaptation, there are changes. A Game of Thrones is very faithful--the director and writers are following the books religiously. But they still have to include scenes that aren't in the books for characterization, for exposition and to make the plot more convincing.

I wouldn't adapt Standish, though. I'd go for Transgressions. You've got a war, you've got separated lovers, you've got sex, you've got witch trials, you've got S & M, you've got psychological horror--I mean, come ON. This is far more cinematic than Standish. Though I can see Standish showing up on Masterpiece Theatre.