WHAT PART OF "NO" DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?

Shopping Options, or, How to Get Something for Nothing

Apr 07, 2025

IN MY DREAMS, a well-heeled producer falls in love with a book I represent, options movie/television rights for a healthy sum, spends the next year or two developing a brilliant screenplay, attaching an A-List director and star cast and landing a distribution deal with a studio. Whereupon the producer exercises the option and pays a handsome six-figure price to complete the purchase of movie or television rights.

That’s in my dreams.

In reality the scenario is more like this: an impoverished producer falls in love with a book I represent and talks me into granting a twelve month option for no money down. At the end of a year, the producer confesses they’ve failed to interest anyone in financing, distributing, directing or acting in their production. Whereupon they release the rights back to me.

What I have just described is commonly known in the book and film world as a shopping option. It literally entitles the producer to “shop” your book free of charge to the movie and television industry. If they are smart or lucky or clever they will manage to round up the various elements and persuade them to commit to the project.

In my experience the chances of succeeding are slightly poorer than buying a winning ticket in a billion dollar lottery. For which reason I have resolutely turned down every such offer. I explain to producers that for the privilege of renting my client’s property for a year or eighteen months, some expression of commitment in the form of dollars - even a token - is mandatory. When this request elicits a “Sorry No Can Do” I terminate the discussion with the suggestion they go to YouTube and watch Harlan Ellison’s immortal rant “Pay The Writer”.

Shopping options often differ from the conventional kind. In the latter, the producer options the property with a view to acquiring and producing it. In a shopping option you give the producer (or screen writer) permission to solicit studios in the hope that a studio will attach them as producers or show runners to a production. Once the producer secures that commitment, the studio must negotiate the acquisition deal with the you or your agent. In a traditional option you make a deal with the producers and they make a deal with the studio. In a shopping option you make a deal with the studio and they make a deal with the producers.

In some cases, when I demand compensation, the producer asks what kind of money I am thinking of. Because many of the properties they are interested in are old – even decades old - the price I propose will certainly be reasonable and flexible. Yet it is almost invariably too much. How much is too much? Any amount is too much.

Movie people are very charming and persuasive but I am obdurate to their blandishments. If a producer can’t or won’t come up with even a modest sum – what we call skin in the game – I don’t believe they will make a dedicated effort to sell the project. The money paid acts as a psychological goad - “I gotta recover that investment!”

I confess to having made a single exception to this rule. A client, the author of a detective series, contacted me to say that a team of producers had approached him directly and quite persuasively about optioning his books for television. I checked them out: they had respectable credentials. I spoke with them and their enthusiasm was a mile high. I raised the question of a down-payment. They argued that they needed every dollar to prepare a treatment. Nice try. Channeling Harlan Ellison (“I don’t take a piss unless they pay me”) I turned them down.

An hour later my author called. The producers had called him directly - a flagrant breach of etiquette - to reason with him. They had convinced him they were the real deal. He pleaded with me to let the team have it - for nothing. Reluctantly I agreed.

A year later the producers called to say they had succeeded in obtaining the backing of a big studio. I thereupon made a deal with the studio for a handsome five figure option against an even handsomer six figure purchase price. I had drawn the winning number in a billion dollar lottery. (Sorry, I’m not yet at liberty to name the players as the project is still in development.)