Hailey's Novel Diary – 2/3/18

I have optioned my soon to be published international bestseller. That might be a little optimistic.

I have optioned my soon to be published reasonably well received novel. That also assumes too much.

I have optioned my soon to be published book. That is accurate. It is a book and it will be available soon.

The option part refers to the production company, Vast Entertainment. They have the option to put everything together to make a movie or not. The details are staggering, and require agents, lawyers and people with business degrees to hold meetings and conference calls before any legal documents are typed up and signed. From my end, it all seems far more complicated than it needs to be, but I'm sure it evolved from a century of lawsuits, misunderstandings, accusations, broken partnerships and a lot of hurt feelings.

The production company now has the option to buy the film rights. For the next six months, they can find a studio, producers, other production companies, power players with clout in the industry and/or miscellaneous financial backers to make a movie. Or they can turn around and sell the option to someone else. Or they can sit on it and do absolutely nothing. When their time is up, they can buy the rights, renew the option, renegotiate a completely different contract with me, or what happens most of the time, they can wash their hands of the whole thing. They would only renegotiate or renew if they were close to getting somewhere. Actually buying the film rights is a final step that would only happen if everything else falls into place. Buying the option simply lets them get all the right people together without worrying that someone else will buy the rights.

Somewhere along the line, they will decide what kind of movie this story should be, if they have not already done so. If they are looking at a feature, they will pitch it to studios, larger production companies and name producers. If they think it should be somewhere on TV, they will go to the networks and television producers/production companies.

A far more likely option, not to be confused with the book option, is that they will simply sell the option to someone else. This happens all the time. When you see a movie with three or more production companies in the opening credits, one of them probably bought the option from the original author and sold it to one of the other companies, who in turn might have sold it to another company or studio. Generally speaking, everyone in the actual filming of the movie/TV show only works for one production company or studio/network. Most movies today have multiple production companies attached because they need multiple financial backers, the producers/actors involved have vanity labels, and someone owns the book option that started everything.

In exchange for all that, I got a check. It was not an especially large check, but if any future movie ever enters principal photography, I get a much larger check. If a movie is released and makes a healthy profit, I get more checks based on a tiny percentage of net earnings.

People who know nothing about the motion picture industry have told me that this will make me rich. It will not. The only way this makes me a millionaire is if it gets developed and packaged and filmed and released and becomes one of the biggest box office hits of all time. That is unlikely. Most movies do not become the biggest box office hits of all time. In fact, almost all of them do not. This is not a story with planets exploding and computer animation creatures. It is about people without any power or influence trying to make their dreams come true. If it somehow became a hit, I would probably make more money from increased book sales than I ever would from the movie. My tiny piece of the pie is based on net earnings, which is nothing like the gross earnings that studios always brag about.

Before anyone can count all their piles of money, a movie actually has to be made first. That is pretty far down the road, if it even happens at all. Most options never get developed. Anyone who writes books to get rich is a fool anyway. And writing books hoping that they will become hit movies would be insane. That is like digging through garbage dumpsters to find a winning lottery ticket.

My motivation is to see what happens. The money is irrelevant. It's essentially free money. It is not entirely free since I can't sell the option to anyone else until it expires, but owning the rights is meaningless if you never sell the option. If everything progresses as everyone wants it to, I get more free money, but I mostly get to witness the process. I have seen how movies are made in front of the camera. I would love to see what goes on before the cameras roll.