Want your book made into a movie? You may have a long wait reports Noel Griese, editor of The Southern Review of Books. He goes on to say:
At Anvil Brokers / Anvil Publishers, Inc., we’ve been associated with a number of book to movie deals. Most recently, we brokered the sale of VanderWyk & Burnham to Quick Publishing. One of the V&B titles sold is Brad Cohen’s Front of the Class. Cohen, when age 10, was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome. He went on, nonetheless, to become one of the most outstanding grade school teachers in Georgia. His story was optioned to Hallmark Hall of Fame, and broadcast nationally in a CBS-TV movie aired on December 7, 2008, to an audience of 11.8 million tuned-in households.
So, what are the odds that your book will get optioned for a movie, and then made into a film? Astronomically high against it, according to available numbers.
Take the case of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road. According to a story by David Mehegan in the December 27 Boston Globe, it took from 1961, when the novel was published, for it to become a movie in 2008. The movie, which stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, drew Hollywood interest almost as soon as it was published, but Yates died on 1992, long before the book became a movie. Had it not been for the personal passion of Winslet and her director husband, Sam Mendes, the book might never have reached the screen.
Now showing are movie adaptations of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire-teen tale Twilight, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short fantasy story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Bernhard Schlink’s 1997 novel The Reader and Kate DiCamillo’s children’s story The Tale of Despereaux.
Of the 500 to 600 movies, counting art-house films, that are made annually, only a fraction are based on novels. With more than 50,000 works of fiction published each year, according to W.W. Bowker, publisher of Books in Print, the odds of any given novel becoming a movie — even if the book is optioned — become far less than one in 100.
Says Boston literary agent John Taylor Williams: “An author shouldn’t be surprised if, after a movie option is sold, the movie is never made.”
The Southern Review of Books is a monthly e-newsletter full of stories on the state of publishing, breaking news, and current statistics. Southern Review is edited by Noel Griese. The author of 17 books and numerous articles on various subjects, he has been a newspaper reporter and editor and has taught English and journalism at the Universities of Wisconsin and Georgia.
Check out the archives here. To add your e-mail name to the subscriber list, send an e-mail to custserv@anvilpub.com.
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