When Charles Webb, who died earlier this year, sold the movie rights to his 1963 novel The Graduate for $20,000, it earned him a place in one newspaper’s list of “the world’s biggest mugs”. (Mike Nichols’ 1967 film version grossed more than $100m.) Where does that leave Joanne Harris, who admitted this week that she let Chocolat go for £5,000? Presumably, she would be excused “mug” status by virtue of having also negotiated a £100,000 cut of the film’s box office. Even so, flogging Chocolat so cheaply surely qualifies it as the Milk Tray, rather than the Amedei Porcelana, of movie-rights deals.
The promise of wealth from film and television is the pot of gold at the end of the publishing rainbow. There is the $5m that EL James pocketed for selling the screen rights to the Fifty Shades trilogy and the $1.3m that JK Rowling got for the first four Harry Potter books alone. Dan Brown received $6m for allowing The Da Vinci Code to be adapted, while John Grisham landed a $3.75m Hollywood deal in 1993 for The Chamber when it was still at outline stage – the most ever paid at that time for anything scribbled on the back of an envelope.
Stephen King requests only a token amount from anyone optioning one of his novels; the “option” reserves a book for a limited time, usually a year, with the big bucks coming if and when that option is exercised. “I want a dollar,” King said in 2016, “and I want approvals over the screenwriter, the director and the principal cast.” That’s a snip until you realise that the back end is where he makes his real movie money: he got an eight-figure cheque from the recent adaptation of It.
More common are those tales of writers whose work takes an interminable time to reach the screen – Caren Lissner, for instance, whose book Carrie Pilby was optioned on several occasions between publication in 2003 and the film’s production in 2016 – or those that never get greenlit at all.
How realistic is it for writers to get rich from selling adaptation rights? “It’s just not,” says Joanna Nadin, whose YA novel Joe All Alone was adapted into a Bafta-winning 2018 television series. “It’s unrealistic to think any aspect of writing can make you rich.” Nadin confesses that she gets dollar signs in her eyes when she learns that a book of hers has been optioned. “For about 10 minutes, I revamp my Oscar acceptance speech, choose my mansion and dine out on imaginary caviar. Then I try not to think about it, knowing that, if anything happens, it won’t be for many years.”
Joe All Alone was optioned in 2013, before publication. “It wasn’t big money,” she says. “Less than £5,000. Even though it won a Bafta and got nominated for an Emmy, there was still no life-changing moment. I got some extra payments for each episode so my mortgage was covered for a few months. And I did buy a new dress for the Baftas, then promptly fell over and couldn’t walk, and so missed the whole thing.”
Another novelist, CJ Skuse, is about to have her thriller Sweetpea, which she describes as “Bridget Jones meets Dexter”, adapted by Kirstie Swain (who wrote the mental health comedy Pure) as a series for Sky Atlantic. “I thought my first book would get sold to film or TV,” says Skuse, who also works as a lecturer. “But it was my sixth that did the trick. The option on Sweetpea has been renewed a couple of times, which has allowed me to get a loan on a new house – I couldn’t have done that without it and wouldn’t have risked it had the TV option not been in place.”
She says that money played no part in the elation she felt once she realised Sweetpea would be made. “It was the recognition I fell in love with. Someone had finally said to me the words I’d wanted to hear for a really long time: ‘You’ve written something incredible, and we want to make your dream come true and put it on TV.’” Not that the cash isn’t welcome. “I am treating myself to a bit of garden design because my back garden makes the Somme look inviting.”
Charles Webb would have scoffed. “When you run out of money, it’s a purifying experience,” said the man who gave away every cent he earned from The Graduate, preferring to live on the breadline. After moving to Brighton and selling the film rights to his 2001 novel New Cardiff (filmed as Hope Springs), he used that £10,000 to establish the Creative Minority award. It was won by the artist Dan Shelton, who spent the prize money on mailing himself to Tate Britain in a box. The cheque, in a very real sense, was in the post.
