The Problem
One of the most common questions I get it might bethe most common is "Who would the author cast as Lucas in amovie?" [1] Or sometimes it's the same question about VirgilFlowers. More rarely, people ask about the secondary characters: Weather, RoseMarie, Del, and so on.
Now, the author has his own ideas about it, as do I. [2]A typical answer for the Lucas question is that the author's mental image ofLucas looks a lot like Pat Riley, current coach of the Miami Heat basketballteam, as he was twenty years or so ago. He had the face, the build, and importantly the suits. But Riley isn't an actor, and he's aged twentyyears since his prime "Looks like Lucas" days, so it's not going tohappen.
This type of intellectual exercise is fine. Sure, it might not be possibleto cast a young Clint Eastwood [3] anymore the youngClint Eastwood grew into the modern-day Clint Eastwood but the castinggame can be fun, and is usually harmless. [4]
But then there are people who write in making demands. They'll say thatsome actor must be cast as Virgil, [5] and the authorneeds to do that ASAP. Or they'll complain that Mark Harmon shouldnever have been cast as Lucas, [6] and the authorshould be ashamed. At this point it's not fun. And so I have to explain howmovie rights work with respect to authors. [7]
No Control
There have been, to date, two Prey movies, both forTV: Mind Prey, with Eriq LaSalle as Lucas, and Certain Prey with Mark Harmon as Lucas. [8] Neither one was cast by the author, or featured actorsrecommended by the author, or had scripts approved by the author, or anything.He was not asked for consent, because it was not required. The author did nothave the rights.
And that is the simple truth of it: when an author sells the movie rightsfor a book, he or she loses any and all control they might have. [9] They don't have any say over the screenwriting. They don'thave any say over the casting. They don't have any say over who will direct, orwhere it will be shot, or how faithful the adaptation will be to the book, orhow much money will be spent. Once the author signs the contract, the rights aregone. [10]
And sometimes it's more complicated, and involves what I call the JamesBond clause. [11] The character of James Bond is owned by oneparticular company, so nobody else can make a James Bond movie. [12] Oh, sure, other companies could make a James Bond-like movie that happens every so often but they can'tuse the character, because the rights to the character are already owned.
For the Prey series, the author did not individually sell the rights to Mind Prey and then later CertainPrey. No. He sold the rights for Rules of Prey just that one, since there were no others yet way back in 1990,but those rights included a James Bond clause. The rights included exclusivelicense for the Lucas Davenport character in all books as yet written, andall yet to be written.
And every original character that appears in that book.
And every original character that appears in any book Lucas is in.[13]
And every book that those original characters appear in.
And it keeps chaining out like that, potentially forever. So for thePrey series, he sold the rights back in 1990 for one book, but that wasenough to include... everything.
Lucas is in every Prey book, so the rights to every
Kidd appears in Eyes of Prey, and so the rightsto the Kidd novels are included.
Virgil Flowers is introduced in the seventeenth Prey novel, and soall of his books are included in the contract as well.
And while people may say that it's not fair to the authors, or that theauthors shouldn't sell out like this, the truth is that this is how it's doneall the time. [14] This is how Hollywood works. Ifyou're an author, you do not get to pick and choose anything about a potentialproduction. You sell the rights to a company you probably don't know anythingabout and hope that they get it right. [15] Sometimes they do.[16] Sometimes they don't. [17] But youwon't know until long after you've sold those rights.
If you're an author, there really is no such thing as waiting for the rightcompany to come along. You're always in the dark about how they'llhandle it. You either never sell the rights to anyone, ever, or you sell themblindly and hope for the best. [18] And that's the end ofit.
Oh, And By The Way...
If anyone wants to buy the rights to the Prey series,they're currently held by Jaffe / Braunstein Films. I don't know if they'reavailable for purchase, but I don't know that they're not. And if they are, Ihave no idea what the asking price is. So... yeah.
Footnotes
- It's also one of the most popular topics on variousmessage boards. Not just for John Sandford, but for any author. And, ashappens in internet message boards, it's a topic that incites very strongemotions. Answering, "Well, the author really has no say" just doesn't play tothat very well.
- Although, honestly, I probably think about it more than hedoes. Both in the sense of "How could this be faithfully adapted?" [20] and "Is it even possible?" [21] Irarely think about individual casting ideas because the current crop of actorschanges so frequently. [22]
- Young Clint Eastwood is a fairly common choice when peoplesuggest an actor to play Lucas. I don't know if anyone has contact informationfor Young Clint Eastwood anymore. At least, not that anyone can use. [23]
- Although I got a few death threats after the Mind Prey TV movie. [24]
- The current favorite fan suggestion for Virgil is MatthewMcConaughey. The author and I agree that Owen Wilson would probably be a betterfit. [25]
- Mark Harmon is, physically, quite close to Lucas inheight, build, style, and a bunch of other things. If you thought that he wasphysically way, way off, then I honestly don't know what you expect. This isn'ta Tom Cruise / Jack Reacher situation.
- Which is honestly the point of all of this. Rather thananswering all the questions individually while simultaneously increasing thedosage on my blood pressure medication, I can just direct people to thisrant.
- Both were by the same production company, albeit fordifferent networks, and both were shot in Toronto. [26]
- This is a blanket generality and is not 100% true.Sometimes authors do get a modicum of control over an adaptation oftheir work. When that happens, they usually take a huge cut in pay. When the Rules of Prey movie rights contract was signed in 1990,the author didn't know it would even be a series, let alone along-running one. So there didn't seem to be much risk with signing the rightsaway. [27]
- There's usually a Sunset Clause in the contract: if theproduction company doesn't make a movie within a certain time limit, the rightsrevert back to the original creator. The Rules of Preymovie contract does not have a Sunset Clause. He's never getting therights back. Ever. [28]
- At least, that's what I call it. There's probablya technical name for it, but I have no idea what it is.
- There was one exception, and it went to court. While oneproduction company had the copyright for all of the movies, one of them Thunderball had a co-copyright, or co-ownership, or somethinglike that. In the 1980s the co-copyright owner remade it as Never Say NeverAgain starring Sean Connery as James Bond. It's considered the illegitimatechild of the Bond franchise, as it wasn't made by the official Bond rightsholders. A strange situation. And, as I said, it went to court. Click here to readmore.
- Well, any John Sandford book that Lucas appears in. Lucasappears in a few Chuck Logan books (although he's not named) as well as works bya few other authors. Those don't count.
- This is one way to look at it. Another way is that this isthe only way they do it. Since it's the only way to do it, it happensall the time. And it happens all the time because it's the only way to do it.QED.
- In the age of the internet you can usually do research alot faster. The company that bought the movie rights to Rules of Prey was called Film & Television, Ltd. But backin 1990, there was no quick or convenient way to research them. We know that itwas sort of linked to ICM, the agency that represents John Sandford, but thatwas it. We later found out that it was Dino DeLaurentiis' company. But by thenit was too late. [29]
- Chuck Palahniuk said that the adaptation of FightClub was much closer to what he wanted his novel to be than what the novelactually was.
- For people upset that Eriq LaSalle got cast as Lucas,remember that Leonard Block's Burglar series of novels was turned intoa comic movie starring Whoopi Goldberg. Now, whatever your opinion of Whoopi,you've got to admit she doesn't look much like a middle-aged white bookdealer.
- The general advice is to take as much money as you canget, and never ever view the finished product. Anything less will just lead toheartbreak.
- For some strange reason, people don't like "We just don'tknow" as an answer. Why is this? [30]
- I feel that the Prey series could be done, but not as amovie. Do it as a cable TV series, on HBO or some similar channel, with threebooks per year. Thirteen episodes in a season, three episodes per book, withstand-alone single episodes between the books to fill in gaps. Sometime in thethird season there'd be an episode covering Del and the Pinking Shears Incident.[31]
- This is a trickier question. Oh, there's no doubt that youcould adapt it... but could you do it in a way that captured the depthof the characters? In the early books, Lucas is heavily involved in gaming. [32] In the first movie, that part of his personality is hintedat when you see him working on a computer game at home. In the second movie...there's not even that small hint. You could do it over time in a regular series,but for a one-off movie the main character is going to be another genericthriller hero with one or two token quirks to make him or her stand out.
- And now that I've disclaimed myself to perdition and back,I think John Barrowman would be a striking Lucas.
- Imagine that you build a time machine, and you use it togo back in time and procure Young Clint Eastwood for a movie. Can you imaginewhat the legalese on that contract would look like? I mean, forget thetemporal paradoxes that could destroy the integrity of the space-time continuum.When you bring in Hollywood lawyers, you're really playing withfire.
- This was in the Bad Old Days of the early internet. Therewere a lot of complaints about the TV movie via snail mail, but the novelty ofinstant-and-anonymous electronic-mail enabled quick and easy death threats. Iimagine the senders all subscribe to Internet Tough Guy quarterly. [33]
- I sold him on Owen Wilson. The only downside is thatthey'd probably get Ben Stiller to play Del, and that would be terrible. [34]
- The second one at least had footage of the Twin Cities. Asfor the first one... I think they mentioned Minneapolis a couple of times, butthat's about it.
- Whoops.
- Whoops.
- At the time, Dino DeLaurentiis was known for makingterrible low-budget movies (and occasional terrible high-budget ones). Sure,there were a few decent movies in there, but you'd expect that from randomchance.
- We just don't know. [35]
- And of course you would never ever actually seethe critical event. You'd see Del talking to a woman holding pinking shears, andthen jump-cut to Lucas on the phone, saying, "Wait, she did what?" Andyou'd never ever find out more.
- Another common misconception is that Lucas worked on videogames. He didn't. He worked on old-school tabletop role-playing games, likeDungeons & Dragons or GURPS. The one he's working on in Shadow Prey sounds like a dystopian cyberpunk settingsimilar to Shadowrun. The author himself doesn't know much about thegaming scene that's my thing or he'd know there's no money to bemade there. [36]
- ITGQuarterly.
- Or possibly awesome.
- "What are birds?"
- At least, not by individuals. By studios, sure.
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12 January 2021
The Prey series, the Virgil Flowers series, the Kidd series,
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