Posted December 12, 2002

They’ve licensed “most” world English rights, and Spanish-language rights for North America and Latin America, beginning with Shrek 2. Press release Put Down Your Keyboards Calling “the war on terrorism is the strangest the nation has ever fought,” Jonathan Yardley is also ready to conclude that “It will produce reams of prose, most of it journalism and some of it of a very high order, but it will produce little, perhaps nothing, of literary distinction.

Posted December 11, 2002

Scout Pout We’re familiar with Variety’s regular reports on the surprising boom/bust in film scouting and licensing of book properties, and now the New York Observer has decided that Joe Veltre’s retreat after a one-year stint as combined editor/development person for Miramax is the harbinger of the moment. Which leads to lots of amusing advice and complaining from Hollywood folks about how books have become too literary and publishers should really be focusing more on

Posted December 6, 2002

All the Latest Nickelodeon takes film rights to a new kids book series, a biography of recently slain rapper Jam Master Jay, Tatar’s newest collection of annotated tales, booking CSI:Miami, more debut fiction, and still more with, as usual, new reports live during the day and thousands of prior transactions ready for easy searching. Lots of your colleagues are already seeing the latest deal news as it happens at our site and through our optional daily e-mail.

Posted December 2, 2002

Join Marketplace now and enjoy our latest feature Members can go straight to the reviews page Authors in Charge of Their Films The AP says that Michael Ondaatje “and other leading writers have found success in movies both by carefully choosing those who would adapt their books and by participating in the filmmaking process themselves.” The article also focuses on efforts by Russell Banks (now producing four book-based projects) and John Irving.

Posted November 20, 2002

browse the rights and proposals listings (a leading teacher shows students how to have winning English, overcoming the Impostor Syndrome, and lots more, plus film rights, foreign rights and much more). Bookmark it to check regularly. It’s always great to hear from members who have used PublishersMarketplace successfully.

Posted November 18, 2002

So that’s how it was conceived.” A DARK WIND was produced as a feature film in 1991, (directed by Errol Morris and starring Lou Diamond Phillips), by “It was miscast. It was ill-conceived and I didn’t think it was the right beginning for the series. It wasn’t distributed.” LA Times on Redford and Hillerman Unlikely NBA Nominee Almost Didn’t Take the Organization’s Call The LA Times visits with NBA poetry finalist Harryette Mullen, “who almost didn’t return the call

Posted November 14, 2002

quick renewal of reprint rights to Herbert Asbury’s THE GANGS OF NEW YORK (first published in 1928) from Knopf, after he heard about Miramax’s plans for the film version. Ortenberg started Thunder’s Mouth as a non-profit with support from the NEA and his father and stepmother, Liz Claiborne. The Avalon group is reported to have sales close to $20 million annually.

Posted November 1, 2002

Deals and Data The deal reports are a bit quieter so far today, but we’ve got the latest from a bestselling thriller author, an epic film adaptation in the works, a big business book deal, and more. If you’d like you can get all the new deals e-mailed to you every work day (hundreds of people do now), or view the latest deals live whenever you want by joining us as a member at PublishersMarketplace.com.

Posted October 25, 2002

an established writer’s novel about a movie director who “jettisons his thriving young career and flees Hollywood, setting off on an epic journey to make a film based on the simplest yet most profound script ever conceived: the story of one man’s life from birth to death”; STRAIGHT TALK FOR TOUGH TIMES, with advice on self-defense in troubled times from a published author and former US Army officer, with an introduction from former Secretary of Defense William Cohen; and

Posted October 22, 2002

(Olson controls the foreign rights; film rights are handled by Bert Fields.) As the New Yorker reports, “Outlines are due November 4th; the winner will be picked by Random House and the Puzo estate.” Karp’s e-mail is said to indicate he’s looking for, “Someone who is in roughly the same place in life Mario Puzo was when he wrote ‘The Godfather’-at mid-career, with two acclaimed literary novels to his credit, who writes in a commanding and darkly comic omniscient voice.

Posted October 18, 2002

* Though Channel 4 closed their FilmFour unit in July, the company has clarified that they will be keeping film rights to Alice Sebold’s THE LOVELY BONES (optioned two years ago) and will develop it through the new in-house film division, Variety reports. * And finally, Newsweek has a short item on controversy over the newly released BABAR’S YOGA FOR ELEPHANTS, expressing concerns from the American Yoga Association president, “who believes yoga shouldn’t be practiced by

Posted October 8, 2002

* Rugged Land had such a good response to their first “book trailer” for Henry’s List of Wrongs last spring (the short got an award at the most recent Cannes Film Festival) that they’ve launched a second trailer for Richard Dickinson’s new thriller THE SILENT MEN. Called Engrossed, the film features a reader “literally sucked into the novel as it grows to enormous proportion in his living room.

Posted September 26, 2002

production company Created By, run with Hollywood-based Vince Gerardis and now in a first look deal with DreamWorks, turning sci-fi/fantasy books into films. “They restrategized how to sell sci-fi, picking out the most adaptable properties, then finding sci-fi-friendly screenwriters with the clout to get high level studio execs to pay attention.

Posted September 19, 2002

property rights”, and ordered that “Stouffer is permanently enjoined from making false representations to third parties indicating that she owns all rights in the ‘Muggle’ and ‘Muggles’ trademarks and copyrights, or indicating that plaintiffs have violated her intellectual property rights.” Furthermore, according to Scholastic’s release, the court declared that Stouffer “perpetrated a fraud on the Court through her submission of fraudulent documents which were willfully

Posted September 18, 2002

with the studio at the time to claim their money as quickly as possible, they now suffer from “from a nagging sense that they could’ve gotten a better film deal” and are grumbling that the studio has rights to their characters as well as the novel. St. Martin’s apparently isn’t tony enough for them, and “the women now consider themselves literary writers,” the article notes.

Posted September 12, 2002

Latest Deals A new home for Mary McGarry Morris (and another novelist moves to Putnam from FSG), a bestselling novelist’s daughter takes to the mass market, film rights to Robert Bingham’s novel, why corporations are “legally organized to behave like psychopathic personalities,” and much more — with new deals reported live all the time, for members who sign up at PublishersMarketplace.

Posted August 20, 2002

It seems nice and clean that way.” Gotler expects to announce exclusive deals to represent film rights for a number of literary agencies soon. Variety article How Low Publishers Rank in the Minds of Consumers We know that the publisher is in most cases meaningless to consumers, but recent research from Penguin UK’s marketing and publicity director Joanna Prior drives the point home: “Punters think that publishers are ‘money men’ as opposed to ‘providers of creativity’

Posted August 19, 2002

Disney is eager to start filming once Barker finished the second volume, and the company is already thinking of theme-park ride ideas. The books began with a series of paintings: “The paintings vary from a vast impressionistic, yet peopled, triptych of 25 islands to intimate sketches of grotesques that leer out at the audience and challenge it not to empathise with their distortions and predicaments.

Posted August 13, 2002

County sheriff and formerly a NYPD officer assigned to the DEA task force investigating Columbia’s Cali drug cartel in the 90s, has made a deal for book and film rights to his exploits. WITHOUT A BADGE is the title for both, though the AP neglects to indicate the publisher. David Permut is producing for Warner Bros., with Antoine Fuqua of Training Day directing.

Posted August 5, 2002

35 million for a combination of TV movie rights (for an ABC movie) and book rights, with Hyperion publishing. Pittsburgh attorney Thomas Crawford of Crawford & Weiss negotiated the deal. Variety says that the company is also making a deal with one of the rescuers. NYT report Children’s 76 Book Sense has posted the Fall Children’s 76. The top 10: 1. THE THIEF LORD by Cornelia Funke 2.