“I’m honored that I get to play a part and be able to contribute to support such artistic voices and there are so many that need to be heard, and am dedicated to continue this legacy of inspiring people through art. I don’t believe in very many things but art is definitely one of them, on the top of that list … arts influence our culture in a way that many of us don’t understand or fully respect. Art doesn’t belong to the few but to the many.”

—MEGAN ELLISON ACADEMY AWARD-NOMINATED PRODUCER ZERO DARK THIRTY, HER, AMERICAN HUSTLE

Chapter 11

To I.P. or Not to I.P.? That Is the Question

The Value of Intellectual Property in the Scripted TV Ecosystem

QUESTION: What do each of these hit TV series and their showrunner/creators have in common?

ANSWER: They’re all based upon source material (a/k/a Intellectual Property), such as a movie, novel, comic book, graphic novel, nonfiction book, memoir or magazine article, or they were spun off, revived or rebooted from a former TV series by their showrunners/creators/adapters.

Intellectual Property Glossary

Before we analyze the pros and cons of creating content based on I.P., let’s briefly define our terms. (I’m not a lawyer—nor do I play one on TV—so please do your due diligence before adapting a series based on I.P.)

Intellectual Property (I.P.) is the result of creativity. By law, the owner of a “creation of the intellect,” such as a comic book, is assigned a monopoly. The owner is thereby granted rights to—in other words, the protection of—their intellectual property.

Copyright is the exclusive legal right granting the creator/originator of a “work,” for instance, a novel or memoir, to print, publish, perform, film or record it, often for a limited period. (Copyright does not cover ideas and information; it only protects the form or manner in which they are expressed.)

Option and Purchase of Rights: Securing the rights to develop a work—an “option” to develop it over a period of time into a series, or to purchase the rights and then sell and exploit the resulting TV show. Options often run for 18 months; longer can be negotiated, as well as exclusive extensions (though locking in the price of any extensions is best done in the initial agreement). So, why not purchase rights from the start, rather than an option, which is only temporary? Rights can be expensive, and the acquirers may wish to limit their costs at the early stages, when it’s uncertain if the show will even be made. Options are by nature cheaper than rights; sometimes they can be negotiated for a nominal sum, depending on the standing of the writer/owner and the acquirer. Every deal varies. The fee paid for an option can also be written into the agreement as redeemable against the purchase of the rights, if made at a later date. When an option expires and the rights aren’t purchased, they usually revert back to the creator/owner.

Copyright Infringement refers to the use of the “work”—e.g., an article—without permission from the copyright holder. It’s also known as piracy. The copyright holder may be the creator(s) themselves or perhaps their employer or another owner. The responsibility for enforcing copyright generally rests with them. There are limitations and exceptions. Certain limited uses of copyrighted works are allowed: “fair use,” for example, for educational purposes. (Remember those photocopies of books we used to receive in high school?) Fair use is also how shows such as Saturday Night Live can parody celebrities, movies, TV shows, politics, commercials and more.

Public Domain: Works that are in the “public domain” are not held under copyright, trademark or patent law. In terms of intellectual property, these are works whose exclusive I.P. rights have expired, were willingly given up (“dedicated” by the owner) or never applied as they were created before copyright law. Works may also be unknowingly given up if registering for copyright is required in a certain country. Copyright law varies by country. What’s in the public domain in one country may be under copyright in another. The works of William Shakespeare are all in the public domain, for example, as the creator/owner died more than 70 years ago and the copyright has expired (again, it all varies by country: For instance, 70 years is the British law but in the US, some works remain under copyright for 95 years). And if the creator/owner of a work retains residual rights, such as a songwriter, lyricist and music publisher owning the rights to a song, they do not have to sell the rights outright but rather a license to use the song with permission: “under license.” The user makes an agreement with the owners to use their song. Visit www.NewMediaRights.org for a handy chart of public domain terms, years and other applicable conditions.

Life Rights: The rights to a person’s life story. Generally, the acquirer of life rights secures a waiver from lawsuits related to defamation or the invasion of privacy. If the person in question is deceased, it’s still best practice (and simply kind) to inform the heirs/relatives/estate and seek their blessing before proceeding. Or else even big shot TV moguls such as Ryan Murphy (and the FX network) may face the wrath of say, legendary actress Olivia de Havilland, who (at 101 years old) felt she was negatively portrayed in the limited series Feud.

Again, I’m not an attorney and urge anyone looking to option or purchase rights to seek counsel from a reputable entertainment lawyer. Here’s the guidance of Professor Richard Walter, who’s been Head of the UCLA MFA Screenwriting Program for over 40 years:

As an instructor and a writer, it’s foolhardy to encourage or enable students to write scripts based on material whose copyright they do not own. The copyright to any original material automatically belongs to the person who creates it, as it is created. It does not even have to be registered with the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress nor, say, even registered with the WGA [Writers Guild of America].

Simply by writing a [wholly] original script, the right to sell it belongs exclusively to its author. A memoir is an interesting notion. Presumably it’s based on historical facts that belong to no one. If it’s a published memoir that is in any way seen as “the basis” or part of the basis for the script, it can get sticky.

Also murky is the fact that we don’t need anyone’s rights to write about him/her factually, but different people have different ideas regarding what constitutes “facts.” This has never been truer than today! Moreover, lacking a signed agreement regarding “life rights,” one can always be sued—successfully or not—for defamation, character assassination, libel and more.

Is the script about a public figure? In this case, the bar is much lower. It would be difficult for, say, Barack Obama to successfully sue someone for writing about him, even if it were lie after lie. There would need to be “reckless disregard” for the truth, demonstration of damages, clear intent to cause harm, etc.

I feel I would betray students in my class if I enabled or encouraged them to work on a script where there was any question regarding the writer’s rights to market the material. Writers can do what no director, actor, producer, editor, cinematographer, etc., can: create from nothing, something they own, that has value, that can be bartered, sold, produced. It is a mistake, therefore, to do anything else.1

It’s sound advice. Only if writers possess the rights to material, own an option to develop it or are hired to write by the option/rights owner is there a different scenario. In Hollywood, manuscripts and comic books are often bought before they’re even hot off the press. These sorts of literary transactions happen on a weekly basis. As content creators, if we’re looking to bring some secret I.P. to the attention of potential buyers, chances are they’ve not only already heard of it, they may have already brokered the deal between author and studio/network (who are then tasked with finding a screenwriter for hire to adapt/develop the I.P. into a TV series). I wouldn’t let that discourage anyone from continuing to scour newspapers, magazines and booksellers for hidden literary treasure. But once again, I highly encourage doing due diligence to determine who owns the underlying rights to the material, before investing months or years developing it. That can be a waste of time when buyers realize someone else actually owns the rights.

In rights acquisition, timing is everything.

Several decades ago, a friend was captivated by a profile buried in the back pages of a New York newspaper, about a feisty, middle-aged, New York family court judge. My friend sought out the judge’s life rights but decided to let them go when she found little traction from the scripted network TV executives. Years later, this same New York judge retired from the bench and became the star and executive producer of her own unscripted series. The judge is Judy Sheindlin. To date, the series—Judge Judy—has produced 5,882 episodes over 21 seasons, generating millions of dollars in revenue for Big Ticket Entertainment and Judy herself. The moral of the story when acquiring and holding any I.P. rights? Timing.

A viable alternative to securing life rights or literary licensing is to write an original script that’s inspired by another work but bears no literal resemblance to the original: new characters, new setting, new story out of whole new cloth. Any similarities would open up vulnerability to a potential copyright infringement lawsuit, so be mindful of changing everything except the initial inspiration for the series. But how can someone even prove theft from the original work? If anyone opens up the channels of communication by inquiring as to the rights holder, they create a paper trail that could leave them exposed—even if they’ve substantively changed the story for a TV adaptation. For this reason, even series that take the core idea from a book and then create a brand-new show still attribute the source material. If a producer or studio/network has deep pockets, it’s always better to be legit and transparent up front, than to get derailed later. And, trust me, the lawsuit generally rears its ugly head only when and if the series becomes profitable. Success breeds legal challenges. Where there’s money, there are lawyers.

There have been numerous films and TV movies (a/k/a biopics) based upon the lifestyles of the rich and infamous, from Marilyn Monroe to Bernie Madoff. But streaming on-demand viewership has transformed the biopic into the ongoing TV series. Scandal premiered in 2012 and at press time has begun its seventh and final season. Shonda Rhimes partially based protagonist Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) on the press aide to the George H.W. Bush administration, Judy Smith. Smith consults on the series and is credited as Co-Executive Producer. But Scandal is a wholly fictional political soap opera, replete with that affair, whiplash-inducing plot twists and steep cliffhangers. The Fox procedural crime-dramedy series Bones, created by Hart Hanson, ran from 2005–2017 and was loosely based on the life and writings of novelist and forensic anthropologist, Kathy Reichs (also a consulting producer on the show). Lead character Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) is named after the heroine of Reichs’ crime novel series. In a meta turn, Dr. Brennan also writes successful mystery novels featuring a fictional forensic anthropologist named Kathy Reichs. Got that? With its procedural case-of-the week structure, along with co-star David Boreanaz’s fan base, it’s no wonder that Bones was the longest-running one-hour drama series produced by 20th Century Fox Television.

Before the Digital Television Revolution and on-demand/binge-viewership, TV networks tended to want their crime dramas to offer up “closed-ended,” new cases each week: crime investigation, with justice meted out in the resolution of the same episode. But now audiences and many broadcasters crave a slow(er) burn; a serialized approach. I explore the slow-burn, season-long procedural in Chapter 2, but while we’re discussing Life Rights, I’d like to honor one of the best crime-drama serials of 2015–2017: Narcos.

Narcos was created by Chris Brancato, Carlo Bernard and Doug Miro. Season 1 aired during the summer of 2015, as a “Netflix Original.” Set and shot in and around Medellín, Colombia, it tells the story of notorious, sadistic drug kingpin and family man, Pablo Escobar (Wagner Moura), who made billions in the cocaine trade, from the late 1970s through his death in 1992 (in a blaze of glory, Scarface style). Tonally, the series makes two bold choices from the get-go: It seamlessly intercuts archival footage of the real Escobar’s operation with newly imagined and/or recreated scenes. The compulsively watchable series gains momentum from its mix of fact and fiction, narrative drive (courtesy of dramatic license) and stranger-than-fiction twists and turns. Most of us know from the start that Escobar is doomed. Nevertheless, we remain invested in his self-destruction by diving deep into both his personal life and the inner workings of his drug empire. Martin Scorsese used the same approach in his masterpieces, Goodfellas and Casino.

It might have been merely an excellent Colombian version of The Sopranos, but Narcos exceeds our expectations through its second bold move: point of view. While Narcos is “All About Escobar,” it offers a two-pronged approach: one from the POV of Pablo and his crew, the other from real-life-based DEA agents Steve Murphy (Boyd Holbrook) and Javier Peña (Pedro Pascal). The series has been so popular that Netflix has already renewed Narcos through 2019. It’s natural to wonder how a series ostensibly about Escobar can continue after his death. With its DEA perspective, Seasons 3 and 4 will focus on Escobar’s Colombian rivals (at least, the ones still standing) and later, or perhaps simultaneously, the cartels in Mexico. Like Ryan Murphy’s limited anthology series (American Horror Story, American Crime Story, Feud ), each new season of Narcos will adhere to the common theme of busting open the drug trade. The reality that the drug war is unwinnable (see: Traffic) makes this series all the more sustainable.

The Spinoff

There are two main types:

  1. When a TV series achieves high ratings and buzz, networks have astutely capitalized on its popularity by taking beloved (usually secondary) characters and building a whole new series around them. Some examples include: The Jeffersons and Maude, which spun off from All in the Family and also aired on CBS; Rhoda and Phyllis both spun off as sitcoms from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, as did Lou Grant (a rare case of a one-hour drama being spun off from its original sitcom). All three were produced by MTM Enterprises and also aired on CBS. Buffy the Vampire Slayer gave us Angel on The WB/UPN; The Vampire Diaries brought us The Originals (both on The CW); Frasier spun off from Cheers, both on NBC; Melrose Place spun off from the original Beverly Hills 90210, both on Fox; Major Crimes was a spinoff from The Closer (both on TNT).
  2. A new series can also be spun off the basic premise of the original show, but in a new location, such as Fear the Walking Dead, which moved to post-apocalyptic Los Angeles from Atlanta, Georgia). The CSI franchise spun off to Miami, New York, and the world of the Internet. The Good Fight (on CBS All Access, featuring Christine Baranski in her reprised role as attorney Diane Lockhart) is a spinoff from The Good Wife. Both shows are located in Chicago, in different firms.

Reboot: A classic TV series that’s updated—mostly recast, repackaged and relaunched as a new series. Examples: Hawaii Five-0 (CBS), 90210 (The CW) and Melrose Place (Fox), Dynasty (The CW), Star Trek: Discovery (CBS All Access), Battlestar Galactica (Syfy).

At the age of 93, Norman Lear rebooted his classic 1975–1984 CBS sitcom, One Day at a Time, which now airs on Netflix and centers around three generations of a Cuban-American family, who live under the same roof. The setting has been transported from the original Indianapolis to Los Angeles. The 2017 reboot features the same multi-camera style and laughing studio audience, with the same catchy theme song, “This Is It,” now reinvigorated with a salsa beat by Gloria Estefan. Justina Machado (Six Feet Under) plays Penelope, a recently divorced military mother with a teen daughter and a tween son. Her mother is fabulously played by EGOT2 Rita Moreno.

Talking about the issues that matter in today’s world was a must for liberal political activist Lear. So, instead of divorce and single motherhood being the hot button issues, the reboot deals with immigration and elements of PTSD. Says Lear: “This is an entirely different and original show. As a matter of fact, we didn’t even revisit the old scripts.”3 Lear’s current producing partner, Brent Miller, had the idea to revive One Day at a Time, and “Lear, who was a pioneer in championing racial diversity on television, was enthusiastic about focusing on a Latino family.”4 While Lear played an active role in developing and promoting the reboot, he brought in seasoned showrunners Gloria Calderón Kellett (How I Met Your Mother) and Mike Royce (Everyone Loves Raymond) to create a wholly new series. And Lear is pleased with the results:

What Mike and Gloria [who coincidentally have the same first names as Archie Bunker’s son-in-law and daughter] have rendered here is a gloriously warm family, and there is no family of any other stripe, or color, or religion, or anything that can’t relate to it because of our common humanity.5

Remake: Generally refers to a series that was originally produced and aired in another country. This could be a series from the UK being remade (recast, reset) in the US: The Office, Shameless, Queer as Folk, Getting On; or from another, non-native English speaking country: The Bridge (Sweden/Denmark), Homeland (Israel), The Killing (Denmark), Ugly Betty (Colombia), Jane the Virgin (Venezuela); In Treatment (Israel). Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin’s classic All in the Family was very loosely inspired by the British series, Till Death Us Do Part.

Incidentally, Fauda (Israel) was remade just with a new opening and English-dubbing option. Netflix is pushing the boundaries in terms of streaming shows in their original language, un-remade and almost untouched, such as Nobel (from Norway; with only the new “Netflix Original” opening added, no English-dubbing option). This builds on their longstanding policy of showing original British series: Happy Valley, Broadchurch, The Fall, Chewing Gum, Luther, Last Tango in Halifax. Amazon has followed suit with its half-hour comedies Catastrophe and Fleabag. Some of these shows originally aired in the US on BBC America (which also broadcasts the Canadian hit, Orphan Black).

In our SVOD (Streaming Video on Demand) TV landscape, the TV business has become a global enterprise, and happily, subscribers now have the opportunity to watch a series in its original, unadulterated form. When Netflix Chief of Content Ted Sarandos was approached by his team several years ago about the prospect of remaking the British series Broadchurch for the US, Sarandos’ response to his team was: “You know it’s in English, right?” He was right; the remake, Gracepoint, was canceled after just one season.6

Revival or Sequel: This is when a classic TV series decides to bring back the original cast for a reunion series, usually set in present day. Examples include: Will & Grace and Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. Fuller House is a hybrid reboot/revival, with both a new cast and several of its original cast members recurring in their roles. Showtime’s revival of Twin Peaks is a hybrid reboot/revival, with Kyle MacLachlan reprising his role as FBI agent Dale Cooper—the Lynchpin (pun intended) of the whole enterprise.

A controversial, cultural phenomenon when it first aired on ABC in 1990, Twin Peaks was ahead of its time. The show was a surreal game-changer, influencing a number of other TV series, from The X-Files to Lost, from Mr. Robot to Riverdale. It became an instant cult classic, but this was back in the days when “niche” was considered pejorative. As a result, the trailblazing, tough-to-categorize series was canceled after just 30 episodes (that was poor performance at a time when all network series were at least 22 episodes). In today’s streaming, on-demand TV landscape, Twin Peaks, with its 18-part first season order (David Lynch prefers the term “parts” to episodes) has found a better fit, albeit with Agent Cooper in a more peripheral role.

Jumping networks is not uncommon in the series revival business. While Gilmore Girls originally aired on The CW, and Full House had aired on ABC, Netflix brought us their revivals. Such sequels are usually written and produced by the original creator/showrunners. Twin Peaks’ creator/director/iconoclast David Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost own the underlying creative rights, but when it was time to shop the project, they approached not original broadcaster ABC (Disney), but the parent company of Showtime—CBS—which holds the series’ distribution rights. Fortuitously, Showtime’s President of Programming, Gary Levine, had developed Twin Peaks with Lynch and Frost when he was a development exec at ABC. For Showtime CEO David Nevins, the revival package was irresistible. Auteur Lynch has said that cable is the new art house cinema.

At the same time, Showtime has tended to be a little less reliant on acquiring I.P. for their “originals” than its main competitors, Netflix and HBO. HBO’s programming is heavily I.P.-based: The Wire, Sex and the City, Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, True Blood, Big Little Lies, Olive Kitteridge. Over at Showtime, Homeland is based on the Israeli TV series Prisoners of War (original Hebrew title Hatufim, translation: “Abductees”), created by Gideon Raff and adapted for American TV by Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon; Masters of Sex was adapted by Michelle Ashford from the 2009 book Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love by Thomas Maier; the first season of Dexter was derived from the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter by author Jeff Lindsey (adapted for TV by screenwriter James Manos, Jr., who wrote the pilot). And yet, when we think of Showtime’s distinctive brand of “No limits,” its edgy, entirely original (non-I.P. based) series are what tend to come to mind: Weeds, Nurse Jackie, Californication, Ray Donovan, The Affair, Penny Dreadful and Billions.

Prequel: This seems to be the latest trend and can take many forms. As discussed in “The Wild Card” chapter, Better Call Saul, the prequel to Breaking Bad, takes us back to Albuquerque and introduces us to Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) back when he was still Jimmy McGill. Bates Motel, the prequel to the cult classic Hitchcock film Psycho, transports us to the opening of the Bates Motel in present-day Oregon, with Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) as a nerdy, creepy high school student living with his possessive single mother, Norma (Vera Farmiga); yes, she’s still very much alive. The Big Bang Theory prequel, Young Sheldon, features adorable tyke Iain Armitage (Ziggy from HBO’s limited series, Big Little Lies) as nine-year-old Sheldon Cooper, who as a grown-up is played by Jim Parsons in the CBS megahit. Parsons provides the voiceover commentary from his older perspective, The Wonder Years style. The prequel, created by Chuck Lorre and Steve Molaro, airs on CBS. As discussed in Chapter 1, the one big change from the multi-camera The Big Bang Theory is its single-camera format.

Breaking (Through the Noise) and Entering (the Zeitgeist)

In each of the above examples, the motivation from the networks is to launch a new series with built-in brand recognition. At this writing, as mentioned earlier, there are over 450 scripted series across multiple platforms. For the foreseeable future, the biggest challenge facing all content creators and providers is: How do we break through all the noise and get noticed?

Having a known property can provide a boost to marketing any new series, especially if the source material was a high-grossing movie (Taken, The Fugitive, Parenthood, Friday Night Lights, M*A*S*H, Fargo, Animal Kingdom, Hanna, Westworld); bestselling book (Game of Thrones, 11.22.63, The Handmaid’s Tale, Pretty Little Liars, Gossip Girl, the Sherlock Holmes mysteries); a popular TV series (as discussed above); a bestselling comic book or graphic novel (The Walking Dead, Arrow, The Flash, Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Legion, etc.); a popular cartoon series (Riverdale on The CW is based on the Archie Comics); or even a hit song. Dolly Parton has licensed some of her catalog to NBC, including her songs “Coat of Many Colors” and “Jolene.”

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With sequels and franchises dominating the movie marketplace, it’s only natural that the TV networks (vertically integrated into entertainment conglomerates) would want to exploit the momentum and name recognition of their successes. At Comcast NBCUniversal, this is known as the “symphony” approach, as the corporate behemoth uses all its subsidiaries to generate buzz. With control of roughly one-fourth of the media universe, this level of synergy can create unprecedented awareness levels in the increasingly fragmented TV landscape. But because many millennials no longer own traditional TVs, these vertically integrated companies are faced with the ever-increasing conundrum of marketing TV series to an audience that doesn’t watch television (or when they do, it’s on demand, often binge-viewed while multitasking on smart phones and laptops.)

I.P.-based series can grab an audience’s attention but also cause backlash. Given the short-lived TV adaptations of such blockbuster movies asLimitless and Training Day, the audience clearly preferred the original cast and packaging and rejected the remake. No doubt movie studios and TV networks will continue to try (especially when both properties are owned by the same parent company), but it’s rare to capture lightning in a bottle twice. Or is it? Sometimes, the TV adaptation can equal or transcend its cinematic predecessor, e.g., M*A*S*H (CBS’ multi-award winning series, as discussed in Chapter 1); Marvel’s Daredevil (on Netflix), which bested the Ben Affleck box office dud; and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (written by Joss Whedon), which barely made a ripple as a 1992 feature film but achieved cult status on TV.

There’s also the example of HBO’s Westworld, which emerged from the 1973 movie, written and directed by the iconic sci-fi author/screenwriter, Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain). HBO aired the five-episode dud, Beyond Westworld, back in 1980, based upon both the 1973 movie and its sequel, Futureworld (1976). Now, the current HBO series, adapted by co-creators/showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, ingeniously shifts the main POV, with the emphasis not on the humans, but on the robots. In this new iteration of Westworld, it’s not so black and white.

What started out as an interactive, branded theme park has evolved and devolved into anarchy and chaos. (Just add dinosaurs and we’ve got Jurassic Park.) Westworld is an example of I.P. colliding with A.I.

While it’s obvious that films spawn TV series, the reverse is of course also true, such as the classic and/or cult TV series which are regularly turned into feature films, some stronger than others: Mission: Impossible 1/2/3/4/5, Charlie’s Angels, Twilight Zone, Baywatch, 21 Jump Street, Starsky and Hutch, The Addams Family, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Brady Bunch, CHiPs, The A-Team, myriad SNL sketches and more.

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The Literary Approach

In other cases, the source material may not have high, name brand recognition but provides us with a window into a compelling new world—which is a mandate for network and studio execs. As discussed in earlier chapters, Mozart in the Jungle (on Amazon) and Orange Is the New Black (Netflix) are strong examples of taking a first-person account via a published memoir, then populating a TV series around a central setting and conceit. Mozart in the Jungle, which takes us behind the scenes of a fictitious version of the New York Philharmonic, is based on Blair Tindall’s memoir, Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music. Orange Is the New Black, set in a Connecticut minimum-security women’s prison, was adapted by series creator/showrunner Jenji Kohan, with Season 1 based on the memoir Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison by Piper Kerman.

Adapting Autobiographical Material

UnREAL: Co-created by showrunner Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, UnREAL (on Lifetime) is based upon her short film, Sequin Raze (2013), which was about Shapiro’s time served as a segment producer on The Bachelor. The “time served” analogy is fitting, as Shapiro was only let out of her iron-clad (in perpetuity) contract with The Bachelor after she suffered a nervous breakdown. UnREAL Season 1, which premiered in 2015, was honored with a Peabody award for its dark, edgy, satirical depiction of what goes on behind the scenes of a so-called unscripted “reality” series.

The Lifetime hit show, developed by Shapiro with Marti Noxon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce), follows the behind-the-scenes events of a reality series, Everlasting, where hyper-ambitious producer Quinn King (Constance Zimmer) will stop at nothing to remain at the top of her game. Quinn’s exploits ensnare her protégée, Rachel Goldberg (a superb Shiri Appleby, as Shapiro’s alter ego), who is first seen in the pilot wearing a sweaty T-shirt emblazoned with the words: “This is what a feminist looks like.” It’s a case of life imitating art imitating life. Rachel slowly unravels into madness. Now, Sarah Gertrude Shapiro counts each day a blessing as she’s relatively sane, running her own show and staving off potential lawsuits from ABC (which continues to air new episodes of The Bachelor). In 2017, the ABC series featured its first African-American bachelorette. Was this “first” inspired by Quinn’s trenchant line of dialogue in Season 1, when she orders her staff to nix a black contestant—“It is not my fault that America’s racist”?

Peaky Blinders: Steven Knight, the prolific screenwriter and creator/showrunner/director, set his terrific historical series in late 19th- and early 20th-century Birmingham, England. Peaky Blinders was originally produced for the BBC and first aired in the UK before coming across the pond, as a Netflix “Original.” When I interviewed Steven Knight for my last book, TV Outside the Box and asked him how he came up with this unique premise, he told me that it is based upon the family stories he’d been told as a young lad, passed down from his elders.

Knight bolsters his memories with imagination and swagger. Peaky Blinders’ tone mixes a Steampunk sensibility with elements of a classic western, and a catchy, discordant (in a good way) contemporary soundtrack by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. It sounds like it shouldn’t work. But it does. Magnificently. Don’t be dissuaded by the thick English accents. Watch it with the subtitles on if needed. But tune in. Part personal family history, part childhood mythology, blended with history, Knight has created an indelible series retold with the ethos of a great legend. His personal I.P. and history resulted in a compelling, original drama script.

Peaky Blinders demonstrates what all of today’s buzziest series share:

The most valuable I.P. of all is the original spec script.

Whether we search ahead for what’s next (usually too late), search backward for hidden gems and undiscovered masterpieces in public domain or invent from scratch, whatever path we choose, I encourage everyone not to follow trends or endeavor to predict the future marketplace. Audiences and trends tend to be fickle.

Instead, write from personal passion. Whether based upon I.P. or not, find a niche and place within each potential new project—a personal sensibility. Write something you would love to watch. Don’t replicate or emulate a genre: Transcend it. Whether your creative process is from the outside in or the inside out, it has to be your own.

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A deeper dive into putting a new spin on various forms of I.P., from comics to musicals, is at www.routledge.com/cw/landau.

Notes

1Conversation with Professor Richard Walter, UCLA.
2EGOT = Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award-winner.
3Christine Champagne, “How ‘One Day at a Time’ Managed to Successfully Revere and Reboot the Original Series,” FastCompany.com, January 9, 2017, www.fastcompany.com/3066999/how-one-day-at-a-time-managed-to-successfully-revere-and-reboot-the-origina.
4Ibid.
5Ibid.
6I interviewed Sarandos for my last book, TV Outside the Box: Trailblazing in the Digital Television Revolution.