But that’s compared to about fifteen hundred movies that are produced each year – which means at most, about 10% of movies originate from a book. To put that in perspective, we also get about 90 to 100 scripts a month, and produce about one movie, one documentary, and one TV series each year.Īnother way to look at it is this: across the industry, a total of about 150 books get made into movies per year. Q: About how many of the ideas you get come from books?īT: My studio receives about 25 books per month. As long as the book is published – whether traditionally or self-published – we can look at it because its publication is a time stamp showing it’s been released out into the public. We know their track record and their capabilities, so we’ll talk to them.Īnd we do get people coming to us with books. These are usually people we know and have worked with. Sometimes people come in without a script but with a concept. Since there are so many lawsuits, you have to be super careful in Hollywood to only take material from an attorney, a manager or an agent with all the legal bases in place. Q: In general, where do the ideas for the movies you decide to produce come from?īT: In most cases scripts come to us though attorneys or agents. A warm welcome to Brett Tomberlin of Imagination Design Works (IDW). I’m delighted that he’s agreed to do so “on the air” here at Writer Unboxed. production company associa ted with Showtime Networks, CBS Films and Netflix over a conversation about a book he was considering making into a movie, I asked if he’d talk me through the process of how, exactly, novels are discovered by the film industry. Which is why, when I recently met the co-founder and president of production and acquisitions at an L.A. In fact, how and why certain books get made into movies is a complete mystery to me - as it is to so many others. But that doesn’t mean I can slip someone a manuscript and open doors. Sure, I have some loose contacts in “The Industry.” A screenplay writer here, a director there, a financial VP. Barely a day goes by when an author does not ask me whether I have any Hollywood connections who could help them get a foot in the door. For completists interested in the birth of television, The Twilight Zone, Bewitched or one of the other shows Froug worked on, this book is a necessity to anyone else the book will appear as Froug's belated attempt at score settling.Seeing your book on the silver screen: it’s a universal dream, one that nearly every novelist I’ve worked with has confided that they harbor. Froug's writing is alternately cliched and shallow, one moment telling the reader, ""The deepening blue sky was crystal clear,"" and a few pages later brusquely describing the ""milk-skinned redhead with a voluptuous body"" who ditched her movie star boyfriend to hop in the sack with Froug As for his work in television, Froug portrays himself as the innocent victim of a devious studio system, so much so that it's hard to take what he says at face value. Despite the book's title, Froug quickly dispatches his work on Gilligan's Island as ""trivial and uninteresting"" choosing instead to share anecdotes about celebrities, including Elizabeth Montgomery, Lucille Ball and Aaron Spelling, but his mean-spirited stories have a sourness to them that keeps the gossip from being enjoyable. Writer and former television producer Froug follows his five books on screenwriting with a mean-spirited, overlong memoir of his life in the entertainment industry that will be of interest solely to television history buffs.
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