There is a really interesting short story I read and I'd like to adapt it into a short film. I have done research and found no other adaptations of it, and I was wondering how difficult it would be (financially and legally) to get the rights to do this. I am a student and I would make the film for non-profit purposes, with intentions of submitting it to a few film festivals.

Maybe this will help. It was the first hit on the google search of "obtaining rights for film."

elliott.

you can always start off be writing a respectful letter to the author (if this is a recent book, and the author is still living.) if you're goals for it aren't that huge you may have a good chance.

No matter what you're going to have to go through the publisher, BUT if you can get the writer's contact info and contact them first just explaining what you want to do, that could help you with the publishing company letting you do it.

Sometimes they'll you do it for free it's something really small that people don't know about and it's not really for profit.

Sometimes they'll give you rights for just a $1,000 dollars because they don't think anyone else will ever be interested in the story.

What you want to do is option the rights to the book. YOu give them $5 or $1,000 or $5,000 depending on many factors to be the person who gets to try and make the movie. After a year, two years, or whatever the contract says, and you havent made the movie, it goes back to the publihser, or whoever. This is all in very general terms and its a lot more complicated than this. The real deal is if the book is half decent and well known someone else already optioned it, even though it will probably never be made into a movie.

Well, I found the author's literary agent and sent him an email, and they responded basically saying "look, we know you have no money to give us, so we won't give you the rights, now F*** off." (except in an extremely polite way). My word of advice, don't try to obtain any literary rights without MONEY, also, don't play the "I'm-a-poor-college-student-who's-doing-this-for-educational-non-commercial-purposes-so -please-give-me-the-rights-for-free-card" these people want to suck the money out of every available teat. They're never going to stop suckling those teats, so make sure you got money to offer. Nothing is for free.