Streaming: Netflix, Amazon, Apple hunting for content to bring to the screen

The streaming meteorite

Every day Netflix subscribers find new content, films, TV series, documentaries and so on. Almost the same happens with Amazon Prime, in a more frugal way. Now Apple has also started. And Apple is going big, as it usually does, mainly because it has to convince the world that its core business is no longer the iPhone.

There are already HBO, Sky, Lulu who are not joking. The first has Game of Thrones and a scary string of hits. The second, Sky, came out with a miniseries, Chernobyl, which was judged to be the best ever produced. Lulu earned recognition and an outstanding commercial and critical success with a period piece, The Handmaid's Tale. The series is based on a dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood and took home 9 Emmy awards and two Golden Globes.

Disney will also arrive shortly and prepare an entrance with fireworks. He's invested $20 billion into streaming and will take his entire stable of beloved characters (including those from Marvel) to turn it into a hit.

Once upon a time there was the streaming service, especially of a technological nature and setting, and there were the production houses that rented their contents to that service. The latter wrote a large check every year in order to be able to retransmit them on the Internet. The competition of streaming, at the time, was cable TV, a similar service which, however, traveled on its own dedicated communication channel and entered a third of American households. Families wired a hundred dollars a month each month to join the club. At ten dollars a month, streaming finally tore cable TV apart. And the cable operators then jumped into streaming,

That's how everything fell apart. It also fell apart when studios realized that streaming services were eating their lunch. They were themselves becoming production houses that rested on a well-oiled technological infrastructure and above all sat on a mind-boggling mass of exclusive data on viewer behavior. Resource that has always been considered the holy grail of the entertainment industry. Since then, streaming has become the watchword of anyone in the culture industry, even stamped in the toilets.

The matter of original and exclusive content

It so happens that the race to produce original and exclusive contents seems like the final Formula One grand prix where the drivers and the constructors all have the same points. And the great thing is that it is not the United States Grand Prix, but the Grand Prix of all countries together. But where do they get all this content to serve it to streaming subscribers? Some are original scripts, while others are taken from literary, journalistic, essay sources, contents that have already traveled a certain path in their specific field.

Anything goes. And the beauty of it is that running isn't just about visual content, it's also about something that seemed to be endangered, i.e. vocal content of the radio or pipe broadcast type, i.e. audiobooks and podcasts.

Thus the literary estates of deceased writers begin to have the value of gold in times of double-digit inflation. The literary estate of Agatha Christie, who died in 1976, still yields an annual income for the heirs of 1,8 million pounds.

When John Updike died ten years ago, literary agent Andrew Wylie persuaded the heirs of the great American novelist to let him manage the writer's work. It was the agent himself who acknowledged that, at that moment, he didn't have great economic expectations. Even the executors had many doubts, but they let him try.

A chest came out of it. The Rabbit novels, written by Updike, have been adapted for television by Andrew Davies, one of the UK's leading screenwriters. The value of the rights to the adaptation was considerable. Production companies are racing to get hold of the other properties that Wylie represents.

Philip Roth, a client of Wylie's who disappeared last year, has its sights set on HBO, which is turning Roth's novel The Plot Against America (2004) into a six-part series starring Winona Ryder and Zoe Kazan. These are millionaire contracts.

Better dead writers than alive for publishers' budgets

While much of publishing focuses on new writers and living authors, the literary holdings of writers who have been dead for less than 70 to 100 years are gaining unprecedented value. It is an insatiable appetite, that of television streaming providers, for this type of material that we could loosely define as "classic". Along with streaming, the resurgence of audio, e-books and the globalization of the publishing industry are also acting as drivers. All these phenomena, many younger than 10 years, have strengthened the appeal of long-standing works of literature.

"The sheer volume of new books makes the industry amnesic, but many people are realizing the value of literary legacies." This is the belief that Dan Fenton, head of the "literary estate" of the British agency Peters, Fraser and Dunlop, expressed to the "Financial Times".

Earlier this year, Wylie sold the Chinese-language publishing rights to the works of Argentine novelist Jorge Luis Borges, on behalf of his heirs, for a seven-figure sum; 10 times the amount that had been achieved at the last auction in "far 2010", when streaming was roaring. Literary estates in the UK, and much of Europe, can rely on 70 years of copy protection, starting with the death of a writer, to make works financially profitable for the benefit of their heirs.

Gold mines

“They're gold mines,” says Wylie, who represents the literary estates of authors including Saul Bellow and VS Naipaul. Works of literature are difficult to adapt into an hour-and-a-half to two-hour film, but are ideal for episodic series on services like Netflix. “Feature film is actually not the best vehicle for works of a certain complexity in plot and characters. Their literary value is best reflected in a longer-lasting form,” concludes Wylie.

Death hasn't been the end of a writer's commercial value since the 1842 Copyright Act in the UK — and similar laws in other European countries — extended the protection of a work from being copied for seven years after the author's death and for 42 years from its publication. Copyright deadlines have steadily lengthened.

In the United States, books published before 1978 are protected for up to 95 years, causing some literary estates to leave the narrow family circle to become real financial franchises.

The first instinct of many Victorian and early XNUMXth-century literary estates was to protect the reputations of authors, rather than capitalize on their works. Spouses, relatives or friends of authors such as Alfred Lord Tennyson and TS Eliot destroyed documents or restricted access to archives to prevent the public from learning about what they considered private aspects of their spouse's life.

The Ian Fleming property

This attitude has gradually changed since the 60s, under the pressure of Hollywood studios and the consideration that some characters in the stories were real commercial brands. Ian Fleming passed away in 1964, two years after the release of Dr No (007 License to Kill), the first James Bond film. Fleming's heirs entrusted Ian Fleming Publications, an independent London publishing house, with the management of the literary heritage of the London writer and in particular of the character created by Fleming, James Bond, agent 007.

Ian Fleming Publications, which owns all literary rights to works of any kind based on 007, published the first "continuation novel" in 1968. Fleming had passed away at 56 four years earlier. The task was entrusted to Kingsley Amis, with the clear indication not to deviate from Fleming's style. Thus he published Colonel Sun by Robert Markham, the pseudonym of Amis.

A perfectly fitting commercial operation is to continue with Fleming clones. One of the major franchises of the modern culture industry was born, James Bond, Agent 007. Ian Fleming wrote 12 novels and two short story collections. All of them have become blockbusters. Robert Markham and William Boyd wrote one, Christopher Wood, Jeffery Deaver and Anthony Horowitz two, John Edmund Gardner 16, Raymond Benson 12, Charlie Higson 8, Steve Cole and Kate Westbrook 4 each. If you add up to the film adaptations alone, and Forbes did, the Bond franchise has grossed over $16 billion across its 24 official films alone. Skyfall surpassed the $200 billion mark with a profit of $900 million.

How to preserve and continue a literary heritage

“The dilemma of all literary estates is: Will we devalue our ancestor's work by inflating it? In reality, the goal is to bring people back to appreciate timeless books,” Jonny Geller, president of the British literary agency Curtis Brown, which represents the legacy of Ian Fleming, told the “Financial Times”. "No one wants a fan to read a sequel novel and end up feeling it is incomparable to the original." So the operation is very delicate.

There are two approaches to this dilemma. The first is conservative and the other is expansive. The first aims not to distort the writer's work with apocryphal extensions for commercial purposes only, the other instead tends to use the writer's reputation and fame for new initiatives that move strictly within his stylistic bed.

The simplest way to culturally enhance a literary heritage and make it bear fruit is to republish the original works, both in new formats such as e-books and audiobooks, and through the sale of foreign rights. For most literary estates, except the most popular and commercial authors, this is the only real option available. "The main job - says Dan Fenton - is to keep the works of the classics fresh in the minds of publishers, when they go to establish editorial plans".

It is easier for a publisher to make novels available in e-book format than in print. Furthermore. the appetite for the classics has grown in some overseas markets. “There's a lot of interest in classic Anglo-Saxon literature,” said Lisa Dowdeswell, head of the Society of Authors' literary estate in the UK. “In the past, we struggled to sell LP Hartley's The Go-Between (1953), but recently everyone wants it, especially in Europe”

The continuation novels

Some literary properties, however, choose the path of continuation novels with writers able to clone the author's style. But this happens in most cases for writers with strong commercial potential such as Ian Fleming or Agatha Christie.

“For most of the literary estates we represent, the Fleming model cannot be replicated. You can't hire a successor to Nobel laureate Naipaul to continue a novel like The Bend in the River,” Wylie told the Financial Times. But the growing confusion between literary fiction and commercial fiction has made it easier for the summer to hire good novelists who can continue the work of the dead.

In 2018, an A-list writer like Lawrence Osborne accepted the assignment from Raymond Chandler's estate to write Only to Sleep, a continuation of Philip Marlowe's The Big Sleep. Anthony Horowitz, another accomplished writer, has published his second novel with 007, Bond, Forever a day. "In the past, we've never thought it possible to approach big names to write sequel novels to James Bond," Corinne Turner, chief executive officer of Ian Fleming Publications, told the "Financial Times".

Beyond the print media there are many other outlets for a well-conceived and well-loved book. There is no more powerful and effective means of stimulating interest in a writer than through television and cinema. Many publishers are trying to capture the interest of content-hungry services like Netflix. However, one film agent thinks that such attempts are often inflated with illusory expectations. “I am not convinced that there is still a literary estate around with a value that no one has yet understood. The truth is that Agatha Christie is very valuable, but there are few others of the same or comparable value.”

The will of families

The wave of interest in film and television rights met a setback when, in 2011, Chorion, the British group that held a share of the rights to Agatha Christie and characters such as Enid Blyton's Noddy, entered into controlled administration. A story that has left a mark among the insiders. "It doesn't work if you buy the rights and ignore a family's wishes or focus on quality," Turner told the Financial Times.

“Some relatives are happy to receive a large check every month, but other families are more protective of the writer's reputation,” Dowdeswell of the Society of Authors, which manages the literary estates of writers such as Virginia Woolf and EM, told the Financial Times. Forster. Wylie says agents have to be very attentive to the heirs' wishes. “We listen carefully to the people who have benefited from the legacy. They have both legal and cultural authority.”

There is also the fact that the major literary estates are, in the end, medium-sized businesses, not huge businesses. Their finances are usually private. When Chorion sold its 64% stake in the rights to the works of Agatha Christie in 2012, it told bidders that the crime writer's books had brought in annual royalties of around £1,8m and international syndication fees of between £1,6m. and 3 million pounds. Hercule Poirot is rich, but he's not a billionaire.

Good initiatives and bad initiatives

However, an annuity of this bill is very attractive to the descendants of such writers. The Christie's literary property is now in the hands of his great-grandson James Prichard. In the UK, copyrights don't expire until 2046. Families tend to entrust the day-to-day management of literary estates to professionals like Turner. Professionals who understand the mission of protecting the past while looking to the future.

Some also argue that the risk of ruining an author's reputation with wrong initiatives is exaggerated. It is thought, rightly so, that the mistakes will be forgotten while the successes will strengthen the appeal of the original books.

For example, Roald Dahl's heirs endorsed the successful musical based on the book Matilda (1988). A show that strengthened the fame of the Welsh writer. “A bad movie or mediocre musical will be remembered only as a poor photocopy of the original, but a well-made musical, like Matilda, can enter the repertoire,” says Dominic Gregory, a consultant and former managing director of the Dahl's Heirs estate.

Dahl, the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), died in 1990 and his property is particularly active in the exploitation of rights. Among the various initiatives there was also an agreement with the Rococò chocolate shop for a line of themed pastry to celebrate the centenary of the writer's birth. “It takes a lot of courage and faith in the strength of the writer's work to undertake such initiatives, but these books will outlive us all,” Gregory told the “Financial Times”.

The Wild West of the race for rights

Neither Tolkien's nor Fleming's literary estates control the television and film rights to the two writers' works. In 1968 the rights to use Tolkien's work, including merchandising, were licensed to United Artists. In 2012 Warner Brothers was sued over the use of Lord of the Rings characters in some online slot machines. It is, therefore, rights armored in a 50-year old contract. For the heirs there is little to do.

The Bond film series is an institution in its own right, even if it helps book sales tremendously.

Literary estates, which have recently piqued the interest of streaming services, have a potential edge over the estates of writers already in the Hollywood roster. These properties, let's say more unexplored, still fully hold the rights to the works and can choose which projects to favor.

"There is a Wild West in television rights and everyone is trying to appropriate intellectual property," Geller told the "Financial Times" of Curtis Brown. “We have been here for 120 years, we have a lot of material and we treat everything seriously. The business of literary estates is vibrant.”

But there's no guarantee of success. Properties can get overexcited when their moment of glory arrives. The fact is, however, that for every successful adaptation there are many failures. But the chance for some books to outlive their authors is greater than ever.

“Roald Dahl wanted his properties to be well managed, so that his name would not end up in oblivion. And indeed his work is more alive than ever ”, concludes Gregory.

The information in this article is taken from the article Death is not the end: the lucrative world of literary estates by John Gapper which appeared in the “Financial Times” on July 26, 2019.