They say you’re always supposed to follow the money.
One of the things about trying to write movies and TV shows is that if you want to make a true story, you have to figure out the life rights.
There are a lot of murky rules surrounding life rights. If someone is a public figure, you don’t have to option them. and we covered that you can always option something written about them as Hulu did with Pam & Tommy, which gives you a workaround.
But if you want to avoid being sued, you’ll want to secure the life rights. So what do you do if you’re getting the rights from a criminal? Do you really want to pay cash to a bad person in order to make some entertainment about them?
Well, Netflix found itself in that situation recently. Its new series, Inventing Anna, is about con artist Anna Sorkin. While she committed mostly white-collar crimes, she’s still a criminal. And new details show that Netflix paid her $320,000 to use her story for a TV show.
Author: Jason Hellerman
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
