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Rights Acquisition & Optioning |
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Once you believe you have tracked down the owner of the rights, engage a lawyer to assist you in acquiring them and to help you deal with some potential minefields, such as:
- People who misrepresent their ownership
- Rights that are the subject of a pre-existing dispute
- Rights in a work that is allegedly in the public domain
- Rights from a foreign jurisdiction (usually best to engage a lawyer in that jurisdiction)
Obtaining rights from the correct source is a fundamental part of the production process, since all subsequent steps flow from these rights. No rights, no production.
Compensation for creatorsDetermining the compensation for creators or rights holders is often a difficult element of negotiations since a number of factors are at play. These factors can include:
- Level of public awareness of the work or creator
- Other bidders competing for the same rights
- Personal vision or preferences of the creator
- Your budget
As a first step, familiarize yourself with the appropriate guild agreements, such as those with the Writers Guild of Canada (WGC). When dealing with members, the guild agreements will often prescribe the rights a producer can acquire, the cost of those rights, and required residual payments.
Creators will often want some combination of the following payments:
- Flat fee paid upfront
- Ongoing per-episode royalty payments (in the case of television series)
- A percentage share of profits (for both television and film projects)
Accommodating these demands can complicate budget-making since producers need to keep track of all the various payment obligations and definitions for the various participants. You can either:
- Set at the beginning the amounts to be paid.
- Make the amounts a function of the budget, that is, the amounts you pay creators/owners will depend on the size of the production budget.
For producers, the former option is preferable: if you know up front what you have to pay, you can determine your cash-flow needs.
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