Your Novel as a MOVIE? Not as Far-Fetched as One Might Imagine

Last week when I was in Los Angeles I had the great pleasure of meeting with a long-time friend and supporter of mine, Hollywood producer  and he taught a fantastic class at the Writers’ Digest Conference about how to get your book made into film, whether on TV or the big screen. I begged him to teach that same class to you guys and since he is kind and generous and an all-round amazing human being, he agreed.

So why is it that I stalked a Hollywood producer to teach this class? Because we are in exciting times to be a writer.

I like making industry predictions and thus far I have been pretty spot on and I hope that’s the case here, too. Technology has completely altered our world. We have not seen such drastic change in human civilization since the invention of the Gutenberg Press. Technology has plowed over the old and ushered in something entirely new.

We’ve seen the fall of traditional media and the rise of on-line media. Instead of people reading the newspaper in the morning, they scroll their news feeds on social media outlets. They go to their favorite blogs.

Instead of a handful of fashion elites being able to pick and cultivate the next Super Model, fashion is becoming far more democratic. Instagram is producing our cover models, not modeling agencies. Women are flocking to blogs and Instagram and Pinterest for beauty and fashion instead of the glossy magazines they once subscribed to.

We’ve seen the Big Six dwindle to the less impressive Big Five. Borders is dead and Barnes & Noble isn’t far behind. Even if B & N doesn’t go under, they certainly aren’t crouching on every corner like they used to. This means physical point of sales locations are fewer than ever before (though I wouldn’t fret because I think the bookstore will come back in a big way, just reinvented).

A large part of why NY has suffered is they forgot they were in the story and information business, not the paper business. They needed to cater to readers (consumers) not distributors. Amazon understood that and it’s why they’ve become a juggernaut. Strangely? The same phenomenon is happening on the opposite coast…

Hollywood is Next

I actually saw the beginnings of this about two years ago when Amazon produced the original series Bosch (based off Michael Connelly’s series about Detective Harry Bosch).

Realize, this isn’t thirty years ago where equipment and technology was so cost-prohibitive only a handful of mega-funded-few could be in the game. Technology has evened the production playing field (which is precisely what happened in publishing). Additionally, a handful of conglomerates no longer hold the monopoly on distribution (again, what happened in publishing).

But beyond this…

Hollywood has been doing a lot of what NY has been doing and for much the same reason. They have overhead. They have a lot of people on the payroll who won’t work for compliments and glitter. They have to make a profit and the best way to make a profit is to figure out what sells. How do they figure out what will sell? They look at what has already SOLD and then try to make an educated guess.

It isn’t personal. It’s a business.

The Michael Bay Effect

Hollywood makes most of its money off the first week a movie is released and off audiences then BUYING that movie and merchandising, etc. The problem is, that the audiences that watch the most movies, who are most likely to go to a movie over and over and over and then download that movie are young males.

This is how we have Transformers IX and Smurfs V.

This is what happens when Michael Bay gets a hold of stories and yes I am going to hell and you are too because you laughed