| [BACK]
You've registered your screenplay or treatment with the Writer's Guild and you copyrighted it too and even if you didn't officially copyright it you pretend you did by putting a copyright date on the title page of your script (or the last page, which I've seen some people do).
Now you feel secure that your screenplay, which has only been seen by your trusted network of friends (maybe 3 people, probably all screenwriters and your wife or husband and a sibling who wants you to make it big).
Fact is, registering and copyrighting your screenplay should give you a degree of comfort in that no one will probably make a blatant attempt to steal your material.
But here's the but: once your script is out there it's REALLY OUT THERE. Alone, like a babe in the woods. But if you send it out to lots of people (agents, producers, managers, actors, directors and underlings of all kinds) your script might get passed around. Or tossed around. Or left someplace.
Now that can be good. Or bad. If the right person stumbles onto your script at the right time and place: this is cool. But if the bottom feeder/lowlife/hanger on gets hold of your screenplay and likes certain parts or decides that the execution sucks, but the concept is great...well, this is where it can get scary.
I don't need to paint a picture.
Producers get their money by producing. Just as a screenwriter gets paid by writing a script that gets bought producers earn their bucks by getting a go ahead. Once they get a greenlight they get a salary. And this is fine and dandy and how it should be. But when a producer is in desperate need of a payday he may resort to desperate measures to make sure his movie happens. And he just might take liberties with your script to make his project look better.
How do you prevent this from happening?
I'll deal with that next week. |
