#movie adaptions of books
Many casual movie fans don’t really understand how movies get made from a business perspective. I’ve touched on the thinking of movie studios and executives in my last twoposts, but I want to look at a recent example of what makes the business side of making movies (and television series) so complex.
Have you ever read a book (or even a comic) and thought to yourself, “This would be a great movie!”? One of my personal favorites and the story I have been waiting to see on the screen was the legendary fantasy series known as The Wheel of Time written by Robert Jordan until his death in 2007. Fellow fantasy author Brandon Sanderson took Jordan’s story outline and sample chapters he had been working on and finished the final three books finishing the series in 2013 more than twenty years after the first book in the series (of fourteen books) was published. It’s an amazing and epic story with memorable characters and and a plot so thick with different storylines it makes Game of Thrones look like a children’s book. I started reading the books in high school and I have looked forward to some adventurous movie studio taking on the job of turning the books into films. And in the era where Game of Thrones is a huge success and other studios are looking for the next big thing to copy a successful show, The Wheel of Times is a great choice.
When a book (or a stage play/musical, life story, magazine article, etc.) is popular enough for movie and television companies to get interested in adapting them, they have to purchase the rights to the source material. This is typically referred to as buying the “option.” There is no guarantee that the studio will do anything with it, but they pay for the rights and no other studio can develop those stories into films or TV shows without their permission (and probably paying a premium price for the privilege). Most of these contracts come with an expiration date where the rights revert back to the original author on a given date if the studio doesn’t meet it’s obligations. That situation leads us to my reason for writing about this today.
WARNING: Do not watch the above clip if you value your time and/or sanity.
Fans of The Wheel of Time were surprised to wake up on the morning of February 9th to learn that a TV pilot of the series had aired overnight on the cable channel FXX with no fanfare, advertising, or advance notice of any kind. The pilot was shot, edited, and “special effects” were added in just three weeks. The result is, quite simply, a freaking disaster. The pilot was made by Red Eagle Entertainment without the knowledge or approval of Robert Jordan’s wife or estate. Red Eagle rushed the pilot into production to try to retain the rights to The Wheel of Time which were set to expire on February 11th.
Complicating things even further is the fact that Red Eagle didn’t have the rights to The Wheel of time itself. Universal holds those rights and Red Eagle’s agreement to develop the series was with Universal and not with Jordan’s estate. This is a desperate attempt to keep the rights to a potentially lucrative franchise by a company that is clearly in over its head. As Vox’s Todd VanDerWerff wrote the other day, it’s a sad and messy situation. It’s also an example of how complicated it can be to get these projects made.
Another example is the movie Selma which portrayed the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. but the filmmakers didn’t have the rights to any of his speeches because they had already been optioned to another studio. So the screenplay had to write dialog that was similar to the speeches Dr. King actually gave without using any of the actual lines that many remember.
As much as we may, as the consumer, wish to have our favorite books or plays turned into movies with relative speed and good quality, the process of making a film can often be much more complicated. Plus, the extra time or compromises required to get a film or TV show produced can suck the life out of it as evidenced by the Wheel of Time pilot. Sometimes projects sit on a shelf for years or the option is sold several times before a film is actually made, as is the case of Into The Woods where the film version took more than 25 years to finally make it to the big screen.
It’s helpful to be reminded that while movie and television studios exist to entertain us, many are also huge multi-national corporations where the primary concern is whether a film or television show will be good for business. What Red Eagle Entertainment tried to do with their awful Wheel of Time TV pilot was obviously a business decision and not a creative one. But the damage could already be done on that front.
It’s unclear if the rushed pilot even satisfies the terms of the contract and Robert Jordan’s widow seems very upset by the process. If the situation is resolved and the rights return to Jordan’s estate, I fear that this bonehead move will mean that fans of the series may end up waiting for much longer for the story of Rand al'Thor and his friends to begin production, if it ever happens. But as Bob Sugar put it, “It’s not ‘show friends’ it’s 'show business.’"
-Phil
