Quote:
Originally Posted by crossi
I recognize that money talks and it's hard to say no when someone is waving some big bucks at you, esp if you don't have much, but I still think his agent could have bargained better on his behalf. I don't want laws about this, I just want a lot more competion to the big six so an author can shop around more for better deals. I'd like to see a big 20 or 30 instead of 6.
|
I think that this would be a better point if the author in question weren't Mario Puzo. "The Godfather" was sold for the most money every paid for a paperback at that time ($400,000+ in 1968). The book was on the bestseller list for a year and a half. Puzo wasn't a starving artist when the movie was made, and the movies made him millions of dollars.
I don't know that much about movie studios, but I think that if they are investing $50-$100 million dollars in making a movie, they'll want to insist on pretty tight control over the rights unless the movie is guaranteed to make huge amounts of money.
Turning to the actual topic, while the legal answer is going to depend on the wording of the contract, morally I tend to favor Paramount. At least the first two "Godfather" movies are classic works of American cinema. And it's not like Puzo's son is writing new works in the "Godfather" universe using his father's notes (like Christopher Tolkien); the family has just hired some random author to write additional books in the Godfather universe to make some extra money. (I think there have been some other sequels since Puzo's death, but I don't know the details).