On 18.4.2012 14:30, John Buttimer wrote:
One thing they should look at is sales of books after an adaptation. How many people went out and bought the HP books (multiples, since many may have bought the first and not liked it after that) and the LOTR ones versus say goodkinds series after his tv adaptation. Then figure out if a complete rewrite is better or if they should stay closer to the source material.
Trying to view this from the production company's point of view. Why should the production company doing the feature/show care how much books people buy afterwards? It doesn't make money for them. They don't make the feature/show so the author can profit. That doesn't mean that they don't want to make it entertaining and popular. If they think that is best served by straying from the source material, so be it.
One thing that's been sort of neglected so far in this discussion is that the people in production companies who hold the purse strings, while certainly savvy in the business sense and have to have some aptitude for storytelling and seeing the story visually in a way it can be made, are rarely as talented as the people they employ to create the feature/show. And they have to make decisions that make sense for the studio. I know I would be more than a bit cautious about okaying a budget worth a few hundred million dollars and possibly getting no more work in the industry, if I didn't have good reasons for how I thought the finished work would turn out good and make money, in the case it didn't. So they tend to bet towards the things that have been proven sound.
-- Paavo Kakko "Ivory towers appear beyond the gate Invisible fortresses of escape Traversed by ramparts made of hopes and fears Impervious to reality" Fates Warning : The Ivory Gate of Dreams
