“We think your novel will make an excellent kids’ series.”
“How about [Completely wrong actor] to play the part of [Your hero(ine)]?”
“We love it, but can we cut the [Entire point of the whole damn book]?”
Hey, Hollywood. How about you trust that we did our best to write a good book and at least try to be faithful to the actual content?
Not that I’ve got close to getting there, yet. But I have seen enough books murdered by the hollywood process to know a little something. Between whitewashing, cutting exposition in favour of big boom or T&A, or just plain rewriting the whole damn thing… It’s a wonder you still call it movie rights.
It should be called “Title rights” because the thing that winds up on the screen has little to no resemblance to the original.
Hell, if I ever make it that far, I want my manuscript to be murdered by Studio Ghibli. They at least turn out something pretty and nicely surreal. Look what they did to The Little Mermaid, aka Ponyo.