250 Words on Options

When a movie studio wants to adapt a writer’s work they “option” it, which means they pay you to NOT make a deal with another studio while the project is in development.

Options aren’t terribly rare in the graphic novel world. Studios troll long-form comics for stories. Visuals already provided! Pre-packaged storyboards! I know cartoonists who’ve had their work optioned. Very few resulted in actual movies.

Each of my books had a studio sniffing around it at some point, although only Mom’s Cancer was formally optioned. They flatter you with praise and bedazzle you with suggestions of which famous actors might play your characters, and promise to get back to you soon. Then they don’t.

My favorite story: a producer with 20th Century Fox contacted me about my book Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? I, the world’s worst promoter, replied, “I don’t think it’d make a very good movie, it doesn’t really have much of a plot.” He reassured me they were enormously interested so we arranged to meet at Comic-Con International a few weeks later, whereupon he said, “We’re going to pass. It doesn’t really have much of a plot.”

If only someone had warned him.

While you can’t help drafting your Oscars speech when Hollywood calls, I’m jaded. Occasionally I’ll see a young cartoonist announce to the world that their story was optioned, gushing about scripts and casting, and think, “Oh, bless their heart.” Until the movie start shooting, it’s best to keep it to yourself.