I don’t believe an entire newspaper has ever struck a deal to have one agency handle film rights of its stories and interests, so reading this story from the Hollywood Reporter certainly raised my eyebrows. The Gray Lady has hired Broder Webb Chervin Silbermann Agency to represent its interests in optioning stories published in the paper for film and television projects, and sure enough, Alice Ting, vice president strategic planning for the Times, said “I don’t think we’ve ever made a large commitment to one agent like this before.”
Ting said the Times decided to team up with BWCS because of an increasing number of requests from both individuals and production companies for option rights to New York Times articles. “Because we’ve gotten more requests, we thought we should probably work with someone much more familiar in this area than we are to pursue these option rights,” Ting said. “We’d like for people to be able to find our stories in any form, including movies and television.”
Though it all sounds well and good, I can’t help but think things could get thorny for individual reporters who move to non-fiction that either repurposes or adapts their articles. Because if they get film interests, who represents – the agent for the reporter in question, or BCWS?