So often people decide they want to write a book because what they actually want to do is make a film. Who wouldn’t prefer to have their story up in lights over Leicester Square rather than sitting on a table in Waterstones with a hundred other stories? Think of the premieres, the hanging out with film stars and the courting by the Hollywood executives.
It is a wonderful dream and anyone who investigates it will soon be told that it would be better to start with a book and then sell the rights, since every man, woman and both their dogs is trying to flog scripts to Hollywood, Bollywood and the BBC, and other outlets far too numerous to mention. That is when they start looking around for a ghostwriter to get them started.
‘Someone in Hollywood wants to buy an option,’ is indeed a heart-warming message to get from an agent or publisher. It leads to a heady rush of euphoria, and sometimes a reasonable, but never life-changing, payment. The option is usually for six months or a year and is merely an agreement that you will not allow any other film or television company to buy the rights during that period. The producer then does their best to raise the money to make the film. One year is almost never long enough and they then have to decide if they want to renew the option.
Raising the money to make a film is a lot harder than raising the money to publish a book (which is now even cheaper thanks to digital publishing). A film crew and cast always cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, often millions, so the chances of any producer pulling it off in a year are always gossamer thin.
Despite the odds stacked against them, however, people continue to dream of becoming film producers, just as they dream of becoming authors. We all continue to hope that our latest project will be the one that will take off and become the next James Bond or Harry Potter, and in the meantime we keep on selling the film options year after year and enjoying ludicrously optimistic meetings in the sunshine of Los Angeles or the buzzing back streets of Soho, where famous names are bandied about as potential directors and stars before the money has even been raised or the script written.
I have literally lost count of the number of different producers and film companies who have bought options for Sold over the last 20 years. They have been based in London, Tel Aviv, Los Angeles and virtually every city in between and all of them share the same glowing optimism when they first take up the option, certain that they will be the ones who manage to bring it to fruition. Sometimes they give up after six months, sometimes they hang on in for a few years, renewing every few months, always certain that they are just about to pull the whole deal together and start shooting if they could just be given a little more time. Everything from getting a book published to getting a movie made always takes longer than anyone ever expects. We all need to be given a little more time.
Having said that, of course, all the world’s most successful projects also started with the same mixture of hope and delusion. No one is ever going to win the lottery if they don’t buy a ticket.