Reader Question: If someone wants to option your written material?
marccalderwood has had a situation arise where someone wants to option a short he wrote — here is the background. The main point is this:
He wants the short for a television series in the Twilight Zone vein and is offering $1.00 for two years and $1,000 to buy full rights if it gets made.
Bottom line advice: If a writer wants to be completely safe, they should find a good entertainment lawyer. However, there are some cases, like Marc’s, where using a lawyer is basically cost prohibitive; plus, as long as the parties involved are trustworthy, they can normally hammer out something simple using common sense.
It is not unusual for someone to option material for a dollar. That is essentially a symbolic gesture signifying their commitment to the writer and the material. In fact, when Frank Darabont was an unknown in Hollywood, he optioned a short story from author Stephen King for a dollar.
So the $1 doesn’t bother me; the “$1,000 to buy full rights” does. Is he actually suggesting obtaining full authorship rights, literally buying the short script from you? I would strongly advise against that. While it’s true that the current system in the United States with the studios and screenwriters is a purchase arrangement, where the studios end up owning the copyright, the reason writers have historically come to that approach is that the studios pay a lot of money to obtain the underlying script or story material.
Consider your goals: You’d like to see the short get produced. Someone is interested in trying to do just that. So it’s in your interest to work out some arrangement with them. However, if for some reason, the short turns into “Something Big,” you also want to see a financial and career benefit from that — and if you sell the actual underlying rights to the material, you won’t.
My suggestion: come up with a very simple two paragraph agreement whereby you give him exclusive rights to produce the material for x amount of time (up to 2 years seems fair ) in exchange for $1. At the end of the option period, he can re-up the option at a price TBD and if he chooses not to, the material reverts to you. The second paragraph can be about potential future revenues and here I would suggest something general like this: “Should [x project] get produced and be in a situation where it will generate revenues, the parties agree to negotiate terms that are fair and equitable to both sides.” At that point, if the potential revenue is significant enough, Marc, that’s when you should get an entertainment lawyer involved.
What you’re trying to do with this simple agreement is acknowledge his rights to produce the material for x amount of time, allowing him to move forward, while maintaining your ownership over the material, and not get bogged down in details about potential revenue which may not even arise — I’ve seen too many deals get scotched about that type of thing before they roll one second of tape.
UPDATE: I’ve got a sample option agreement, but it’s too long to post. So you can go here to see one. This is for a more typical screenplay / producer arrangement, not necessary for an option to produce a short feature.
UPDATE #2: Here’s an article about options courtesy of the The Writers Store.