Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday. So I have some important news
about the movie adaptation of my book, Turtles All the Way Down. But first,
for context, I thought I would explain to you the practical parts of how a
book becomes a movie and the financial implications for an author.
So, first, there is a book. And in the case of Turtles, the day after
the book came out, a movie studio made an offer to option that book
into a movie, which means they have the option to develop it into a film for,
I don't know, say, 24 months. And most books that get optioned do not
become movies. Like my book An Abundance of Catherines was
optioned and never became a movie. Paper Towns was optioned
three times before it became a movie. But from an author's perspective,
it's still nice because you get a little bit of money and you don't have to
do any extra work for it, which is kind of the American Dream.
So right now, the studio has the right to develop your work into a movie.
And they hire screenwriters who write a screenplay, and generally that's
where things break down. The script isn't good enough, or they can't attract
the right director, or they hired the author to write the script and it turns
out the author is a terrible screenwriter or whatever. But then
sometimes they get a good director, and then it falls apart because they
can't settle on a cast or a budget or whatever. And occasionally everything
comes together. They hire a director, they settle on a cast, they start
hiring crew. They're twelve days away from shooting when a movie executive
decides, I think I'm going to pull this movie because I don't want to make it,
because I feel like one of the cast members just looks kind of weird,
like kind of unsettling. That's literally what he told me. And if any of that
happens, the only money the author gets is the option money. Like, if
The Fault in Our Stars had not turned into a movie, I think I would have
gotten paid $60,000, which is a lot of money, to be clear. But it's not
like Hollywood fantasy money. So that's how the vast majority of
these deals work. You try to make a movie, you work really hard.
It just, for whatever reason, doesn't happen. But then occasionally,
of course, it does happen. You get the right script and the
right director, and the right cast and crew, and awesome movie executives, who
do exist by the way, and they make a movie. And that moment when they
commence principal photography - that is the phrase they use - is the
moment when authors get paid. The option is “exercised”, and you
get paid generally several times the amount of that option. And that, for
authors financially, is usually it. Like unless you're wildly famous, you don't
get a cut of the box office. So your last paycheck from the movie comes
with the commencement of principal photography. In that sense, from an
author's perspective, it doesn't really matter if the movie comes out
because you get paid the same. Except of course, it does matter.
It matters a great deal. When I started the movie journey with
Turtles All the Way Down, I had no idea how much I would love
the script, which was written by the lovely people who wrote
Love, Simon. I had no idea how much I would care about the cast and
the crew and our awesome director Hannah Marks. How much work they
would put into it and we would put into it together. I had no idea
how much I would end up loving, loving the movie, which I just think is
truly, truly brilliant. It's about socioeconomic class and friendship
and free will and of course it's also about mental illness, and it manages
to be raw and honest without ever feeling sensationalized.
Now, I don't think it would be accurate to say I have no financial incentive
in the movie's success because a successful movie sells a lot of books
and I do make money from book sales. Right? That does vary a lot based on
how people respond to the movie and also whether they know it's an
adaptation of a book. Like, you know, the movie Die Hard, that's an
adaptation of a book. And it hasn't become an American classic
or anything. It's not like people read that book every Christmas, and I've
been on both sides of that equation. Like the Looking for Alaska show was
brilliant, but it didn't sell a lot of books. The Fault in Our Stars Movie sold
a ton of books. But anyway, even after you've cleared all the other
hurdles and the movie is made, there is still one more hurdle.
Increasingly, movie studios just don't release movies, even movies
that they've already made and paid for. This is a tax strategy, as I
understand it. If they believe the movie will lose more money than
just not releasing it and calling it a total loss, then they'll take that
tax write off instead of releasing the movie. Now, I'm biased, obviously,
but I think Turtles All the Way Down is a great movie. It's scored really
well with test audiences, all that stuff. But I am conscious of the fact that it
doesn't have like superheroes and it isn't like the seventh sequel in a
popular franchise. I mean, it's a movie about free will and mental illness
called Turtles All the Way Down, so, you know, I worried about that.
Until recently that is, when I got a call saying that the
Turtles All the Way Down movie is coming out later this year on Max.
You'll get to see it, and I'm so excited for you to see it, not for financial
reasons, but because it is a beautiful, beautiful movie. I know some of
y'all wanted, like, a big theatrical release, but in 2024, for this kind of
movie, this is a massive win, and it's the right way to share the movie.
One thing I don't know about yet is international distribution, but it will
be in lots of places around the world, and I'm just so happy and relieved
and excited for this to actually happen. And also, since Hollywood isn't exactly
beating down the door for the rights to the Anthropocene Reviewed or
my forthcoming book about tuberculosis, this may be the last time I get to
experience hundreds of people coming together, navigating all those
obstacles and finding a way to make something wonderful together and
then get to share it with an audience. So, yeah, later this year, streaming
on Max. What a joy. What a relief. Hank, I'll see you on Friday.