Adaptation Rights Quotes

'XIII' is a spy show. I think the comic book is a little too similar to 'The Bourne Identity.' I tried to take it away from that. I believe there was, many years ago, before the Bourne movies, a lawsuit that made it so they couldn't be published in English.

With literary fiction, generally a film maker falls in love with a book. In commercial fiction, it's a producer or studio falling in love with a book they can make into a movie with worldwide appeal.

The things I have sold to film, I've sold because I was happy to rent out the right to adapt those works. Some things, I haven't sold to film, because I was less interested in having no control over the adaptation.

As long as a film stays unmade, the book is entirely yours, it belongs to the writer. As soon as you make it into a film, suddenly more people see it than have ever read the book.

All I can say is that I am not one of those writers who want 100% of their book in the film. I recognize that film is a different medium and the filmmaker must have the right to bring some new elements to the table, provided the soul of the book is preserved.

I thought I had the rights to The Lord of the Rings. I don't know how Jackson ended up with the rights.

Agatha Christie holds special personal memories for me because my mum, a television producer called Pat Sandys, had been the first person to persaude the Agatha Christie estate to put one of her stories on T.V.

I felt, selfishly, that if there was going to be a TV show about 'Hannibal Lecter' whether I was going to be involved or not, I'd rather be involved. I wanted to make sure it was something I wanted to watch.

Selling one's book to Hollywood is rather like selling someone your house. After it's sold, it isn't yours anymore. They can paint it a different color, tear it down and build something new, or do anything they want.

I turned down all the requests for the rights to the books, for years, mostly because they wanted the rights to the characters, and to turn it into a TV series. This would have allowed them to do anything they wanted with the characters, and that just wasn't an option for me.

Writers who want to interfere with adaptations of their work are basically undemocratic. The book still stands as an entity on its own.

No one forces me, or any other writer, to sell a film option on the books. If you don't want to run the risk that the filmmakers may adapt your work in a way you don't like, then you don't sell the option. You know when you sell it that they will have to make some changes, just because film and TV are different media than books.

If you have written something that the film people want, like a book, it does give you a way in.

I'm totally open to it being a movie or a television series or whatever, but truthfully, if no one wants to do it right, I'm also happy for 'Ex Machina' to only ever exist as a comic book.

I can't stand it when writers moan about what film-makers might do or have done to their books. There's a very simple answer: don't take the money.

I have always wondered why the movie industry was so firmly persuaded that the original author could be of no possible help in the case of a remake or any other change in a work.

I'm not in the business of adapting things that are popular for the sake of just getting it on the screen. I think there has to be a vital reason.

I've been a screenwriter for twenty-five years. Every one of my books have been optioned for movies and I have written a few of those screenplays.

A longstanding dream of mine is to adapt 'Dune,' but it's a long process to get the rights, and I don't think I will succeed.

If people have bought something of mine, they know by now that I will decline writing it for the movies.

. . . I wrote a letter to Thomas Pynchon asking, Can I have your permission to try to make an [adaptation] of your book? And I had no idea that he would answer me, because he's pretty elusive. But he did send a letter back that said, Yes, you can do that - as long as the only instrument in the opera is a banjo. I thought, That's an interesting way of saying No.

I fell in love with the book [ Brief Interviews with Hideous Men] and always wanted to do something with and fought to get the rights, which was pretty fun and an incredible experience in itself.

When answering questions over the years about film and TV adaptations of my books, I have always maintained that no movie or TV series could ever change or damage my work.

There have been lots of attempts to make a movie of 'Les Miserables' over the years.

Over the years, I have been approached about making Ramona into a cartoon or movie, but I was afraid that no one could really capture the spunky character of Ramona.