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Tensions Between Authors' Contracts for Book Publishing and Film Production Rights

By Michael I. Rudell and Neil J. Rosini

The agreements authors make with companies that publish their books ' and with the production companies that make films based on those books ' have changed significantly over the past several years. Due in part to the kind of films currently being produced and to available new technologies (particularly for books), these changes have introduced conflicting overlaps between the two types of contracts.

Before these developments, literary publishing agreements focused on the publication of books in print form and motion picture agreements focused on the exploitation of audiovisual works. Film agreements would tread lightly in the domain of print publication rights, such as by providing that the producer could use up to 7,500 words of text from the underlying work for advertising, promotion and publicity purposes. (This is not to say that producers did not request rights to publish screenplays and certain types of “making of” books, but the intensity of these demands was not particularly great.) Publishing agreements generally stayed out of the audiovisual domain.

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