The market for novel, podcast, and other source-material adaptation rights has undergone substantial reorganisation that has not been adequately addressed in the conventional industry coverage

By the ScreenPlay.biz desk. With editorial credits to Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.

The market for adaptation rights to novels, podcasts, articles, and other source material has, across approximately the past three years, undergone substantial structural reorganisation that the conventional industry coverage has not adequately addressed. The reorganisation has involved fundamental changes in who buys adaptation rights, what kinds of source material are most actively acquired, what financial arrangements characterise contemporary adaptation deals, and what one literary agent I have spoken with described as the broader operational reality of how adaptation rights are actually marketed and sold in the current environment.

What The Buyer Landscape Has Become

The buyer landscape has, across the three-year period, substantially expanded from the historical concentration in major studios and major networks to include a substantially broader set of buyers across multiple production categories. The new buyer set includes streaming originals, mid-budget independent production companies, podcast production companies acquiring rights to develop podcast properties into screen properties, and what several literary agents have described as the broader category of newer buyer entities whose specific characteristics differ from the historical buyer profile, with corresponding implications for how source material holders should approach the market.

For ongoing coverage, see Variety.

How The Source Material Categories Have Shifted

The most actively acquired source material categories have shifted substantially across the period. Novel adaptation rights have, across the period, been acquired at substantially elevated rates across multiple novel categories, with particular concentration in literary fiction, contemporary thriller, and what one acquisitions executive described as the broader category of character-driven novels that map well to limited-series formats. Podcast adaptation rights have grown into a substantially significant market segment in their own right.

What This Has Done To Pricing

What this has done to pricing is produce substantially more variability across the market than was historically present. The high-profile acquisitions have, across the period, sustained or increased the upper end of the pricing range. The mid-tier acquisitions have, across the period, produced substantially compressed pricing relative to historical norms. The lower-tier acquisitions have, in many cases, produced pricing that is, in operational terms, substantially below what comparable acquisitions would have commanded as recently as five years ago.

The recent coverage at The Hollywood Reporter has been broadly consistent.

How The Pricing Variability Operates

The pricing variability operates across multiple dimensions including specific source material category, specific buyer entity, specific timing within the production calendar, and what one industry attorney described as the broader category of specific deal-structure variables whose particular values can substantially affect aggregate compensation. The variability is, in operational practice, sufficient to warrant substantial attention to deal-structure specifics rather than to headline numbers when source material holders evaluate specific acquisition offers.

What Source Material Holders Should Know

What source material holders should know, on the available evidence, is that the changed market substantially complicates the standard advice about how to approach adaptation rights sales. The standard advice was, in nearly every case, calibrated for the historical buyer landscape. The advice is, on careful examination, substantially out of date. Source material holders considering adaptation rights sales should, on the available evidence, expect substantially different operational realities than the standard advice describes.

An ongoing analysis at Deadline has examined comparable patterns.

What Comes Next

What comes next, on the available trajectories, is continued maturation of the expanded buyer landscape and the new pricing dynamics. The maturation will, on present trajectories, take approximately the next several years to produce a substantially stabilised market structure. The structure will, by every honest reading, be substantially different from the structure the historical market supported, with corresponding implications for working writers, source material holders, and the broader industry institutions that organise adaptation rights commerce.

The Broader Industry Context

The broader industry context for the patterns described above includes, on careful examination, several factors that the conventional industry coverage has tended to under-emphasise. The first is the substantial reorganisation of the broader entertainment industry across the streaming era, with corresponding effects on the specific operational arrangements that organise screenwriting work across multiple production categories. The second is the substantial maturation of streaming-platform commercial models, with corresponding effects on what production economics actually look like for the underlying content production. The third is what one industry observer I have spoken with described as the broader structural reality that the contemporary entertainment industry operates with substantially different commercial pressures than the pre-streaming industry operated with, with corresponding implications for nearly every operational arrangement that organises the actual production work.

The implications include, on the available evidence, sustained pressure on the institutional infrastructure that organises screenwriting work across the broader industry. The infrastructure includes guilds, agencies, management firms, entertainment law practices, and what one institutional observer characterised as the broader category of professional service organisations whose specific operational arrangements were calibrated for the pre-streaming industry environment. The infrastructure is, in operational practice, gradually adjusting to the changed environment. The adjustment is incomplete. The adjustment will, on present trajectories, take approximately the next several years to substantially complete, with corresponding effects on how the institutional support structures actually function for working writers across the contemporary production environment. The complete adjustment will, by every honest reading, require substantial revision of multiple specific arrangements that the historical industry developed across approximately the past four decades.

Related at The Daily Mash.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/adaptation-rights-market-restructure/