Well, okay, not free exactly, at least not in the long run…but Jonathan Lethem is offering a gratis option on You Don’t Love Me Yet to one lucky filmmaker, in exchange for two percent of the operating budget should the completed movie score a distribution deal. “I’ll wait until distribution to get paid so a filmmaker without many funds can work without having to spend their own money paying me,” Lethem explains on his website.
There’s one more catch: Five years after the film’s debut, all ancillary rights to the book and the film will revert to the public domain. That means that anybody who wants to will be able to make their own theatrical, television, or another cinematic adapation—you could even create your own sequel. “I’ll still hold the copyright on the text of the novel, and I’ll be the sole proprietor of those rights,” Lethem says. “Similarly, the filmmaker will own the copyright on his or her film itself… What we won’t do is hold onto the characters—their names and characteristics—or the plot and situations, the notions and conceits and milieu of the book, all those other recognizable characteristics which would ordinarily continue to be legally controlled by the filmmaker or his/her investors (whether or not there was ever any likelihood of them being put into use).” I just shot Lethem an email asking if this would also extend to other writers using the characters from his novel in their own fiction, the way science-fiction author Michael Moorcock encouraged others to use his Jerry Cornelius character, and he wrote back, “Sure, why not?”