how much do I have to change a book to make a screen play?

J

Jon Neely

Well-known member
Hello all, well I have a great book that I would like to make into short/feature into and my question is how much do I have to change the story for it to not be an infringement of copyright of the book, or in better terms, how hard is it usually for a student to get the publication office or writer to let you use there story? Its an old book, and it has already been turned into a television show in the 70's. but now I would like to make a narrative out of it. I would give the title, but I feel that is irreverent right now, this is more of just a broad question than a specific one. any help or advice would be grand.



Jon
 
Zak Forsman said:
step one. delete this thread.
Click to expand...

:grin:

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In order to avoid copyright infrindgement you would have to change the WHOLE story. Make a new, original story. Anything based off of a pre existing work has to have first been cleared with the copyright holder. How old is the book? If it is in the public domain, you're fine, but if not, there is no way to do it without writing your own story or getting the rights to that one. You could write a similar story but it has to be different enough so that it is not obvious.

For example, if I really liked the movie "The Bucket List" (which I did) and I wanted to make my own movie based off it (for the sake of this example, say the movie was made in the 1960s) I can't just have two war veterans who come back with strange diseases with a short time to live go out and do everything they always wanted to before the they died. Savvy? Hope you can make sense of that.
 
thanks but no thanks Zak, jeez man, CP, thank you for your more informative post, it was clearly just a question, so I will see where and who holds the copyright and I will go from there, the book was written and copyrighted in 1951.


Jon
 
take it easy, jon. it was a joke implying that if you're going to adapt this book without optioning it from the author.. step one is covering your tracks. :)

just. a. joke.
 
sorry Zak, its late, and it is hard as hell to translate text when it comes to what emotion is coming off of it, except for when it is written like this,

In a joking fashion"step one. delete this thread."

Jon responds in a insulted manner "thanks but no thanks Zak, jeez man"

Man things would be so much easier to read.... no worries Zak. I do want this to be able to go to film fests and I don want to be worried about the copyright commission coming after me!


Jon
 
ok, I sent the email (DoubledayFilmRights@randomhouse.com) hopefully the right one... so now I guess it is just time to wait. I have 3 other projects in the mean time, but I would love for this one to come through.


Jon
 
ConspiracyPenguin said:
For example, if I really liked the movie "The Bucket List" (which I did) and I wanted to make my own movie based off it (for the sake of this example, say the movie was made in the 1960s) I can't just have two war veterans who come back with strange diseases with a short time to live go out and do everything they always wanted to before the they died. Savvy? Hope you can make sense of that.
Click to expand...

Hey, Penguin, can you point to any legal documentation of this? Frankly, I think it's a lot easier to rip off ideas from existing sources legally; certainly it's done all the time. The example in front of me now: "A guy accidentally mails his girlfriend a compromising package, then gathers his friend together to stop it from being delivered to her." I can think of four or five versions ofd that. I mean, ANY time a movie has success, there tends to be a few close rip-offs. Proper names unique to the work, sure, have to be avoided. But it's very hard to protect a plot, or a "story". "Bucket List" itself is a short step away from COUNTLESS "things to do begore I die" movies...

I'm not trying to be argumentative... I would really like to see how anyone in the legal (or production?) field would even attempt to address this...

Also, there's another common way to do this... find a public domain wortk similar to the one you want to rip off, then claim to be ripping that off. This concept would seem to explain the vast majority of recent high school movies (claiming to conjure Shakespeare)....
 
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Copyright only protects the actual words as they are written. Keep the plot of the story (which can't be copyrighted), but write the dialogue from scratch (including character names). As mentioned previously, it's done all the time. Some of our favourite films are such "rip offs".
 
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