My Million Dollar Idea . . . For Free

By Steven McLain

The Hunger Games.  Twilight.  Harry Potter.  The Avengers.  Batman, Superman, Spiderman.  Lord of the Rings.  What do all these things have in common?  Other than the fact that they are all highly successful films, what's more relevant is that they're highly successful adaptations of works of written fiction.  Fourteen of the top fifty movies of all time have been based on pieces of fiction.  These film adaptations owe their success to the success of books.  Their fanbases are easily transferable, and better still, fans are willing to shell out billions of dollars on merchandise based on the movies. 

Bella and Katniss are brands all their own.  Team Jacob, or Team Peeta?  We invest ourselves in the fiction, and the fiction rewards us with an alternate reality in which we can immerse ourselves.  That the immersion doesn't end when the movie does means that producers of these highly successful movies often find themselves the beneficiaries of the success of authors who probably never even dreamed of this level of success.

But there is a weak link in this chain of money-making.  That's the books themselves.  Waiting for the next YA success means that movie studios have to idly bide their time waiting for the next Suzanne Collins or J.K. Rowling to put the final touches on their masterpieces and sell them to a New York publisher.  While they're waiting, movie producers are losing money on movies that are less than sure things.  The solution seems obvious to me.  Movie houses need to become publishers.  

And the books themselves don't need to be successes.  In fact, most of the proposed replacements for Twilight are going to fail.  While this is devastating in the publishing industry, where profit is negligible and risk high, considering the tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, involved in the creation of modern blockbusters, a few tens of thousand or hundreds of thousands necessary to create the next fiction sensation are literally drops in the bucket.  Especially if a few of the bigger houses (Warner Bros., Fox, Paramount) were to join forces with the big five in New York to gain access to their distribution networks and print infrastructure, risk is exponentially reduced.

So there you go: The Next Big Thing.  To be successful, movie producers need to create their niches; they need to invest to create a fanbase into which they can insert their next blockbuster.  Meanwhile, it's good business sense in New York, as well.  An infusion of fresh capital and new blood could re-invigorate a flagging industry.  So take a look around your local bookstore.  The big names you see there are the big names you're going to see on the screen.  It's just a matter of time before people figure this out and start creating their own market.