2023-05-19 17:32:30
The Cannes Film Festival is also a market, and all occasions are good for doing business there. Among them publishers, eager to sell the rights to adapt their books, came to the Croisette to meet producers in search of good stories.
About one in five films would be an adaptation, according to a 2018 study by the journal Weekly Books. And the rights, which vary according to the works, would be negotiated between 45,000 and 200,000 €, according to the National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image (CNC), sometimes well beyond when it comes to coveted bestsellers. .
A dozen books pitched to film professionals
For ten years, meetings between publishers and producers have been encouraged throughout the year by the Civil Society of French Language Publishers (Scelf) through the “Shoot the Book” operation. An initiative born here, in Cannes, the fruit of a conversation between its general delegate Thierry Frémaux and the publisher Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens.
In a catalog of several hundred works with high potential for adaptation sent to producers, a dozen of them are “pitched” (summarized) in front of film professionals, then individual meetings organized the next day within the framework of the of the movie.
Novels, thrillers or graphic novels
Short clip, highlighting the atmosphere, sets and characters, the publishers have a few minutes to praise the potential of transcription in the image of each book, including, this year, Satisfaction de Nina Bouraoui, Abyssesa thriller by Sonja Delzongle, and several graphic novels, the adaptations of which have exploded.
About 30% will be optioned and may one day come to life on screen. A Turkish book and an Italian had already found takers even before this year’s session, and Nathalie Piaskowski, general manager of Scelf, recalls that the 2019 adaptation of Our Lady of the Nileby Scholastique Mukasonga by Atiq Rahimi was born at the festival.
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