More on Movies, Net Profits, and Authors

Well, I've just been pointed to another LA Times piece that goes over the numbers a bit more:

• Olivia Goldsmith, author of The First Wives Club, was paid $250,000 for the movie rights, although worldwide gross for the film was reputedly $181.4 millon.


• Winston Groom was promised $350,000 and 3% of the net profit for the movie rights to Forrest Gump. He got ... $350,000.


• Alice Walker, who was supposed to get 3% of the gross for the movie version of The Color Purple, eventually got something, but only "a fraction" of what she thought she was owed.


• Art Buchwald sued Paramount Pictures for what he said was theft of the concept from his treatment for the idea of Coming to America. He won in court, after being told by the studio that although the movie grossed $350 million, there wasn't any money to pay net profits. Must have been a catered lunch or two that put them in the hole that completely.

The story has a great quote:

Ernest Hemingway once noted that authors should drive up to the California border and throw their books over a fence while studio officials throw bags of money back over the fence. That, he said, should be the end of the transaction.