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Landing Movie/TV Book Deals with Erin Heinecke · WriterCon

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Hey, writers, it's New Year's Eve and Laura and I are of course
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out party. But to tide you over until the next new episode, we've
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combined two interviews with the wonderful Aaron Heineke. Aaron is a movie TV agent
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who has worked for major studios and best of all, has actually made some
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terrific deals for writers selling their books so that it can be adapted into TV
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and movies, and that is all the rage right now. So I thought
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these would be great interviews for you to savor while you enjoy your family and
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friends during Holadays. Okay, Happy New Year, See you next time.
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Erin, thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Okay,
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you are the director of TV and film for what is I think the
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largest literary scouting agency in New York, YEP, Franklin and Siegel. So
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what is it that a scouting agency does. It's interesting. It's one of
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those things that you hear the word and not a lot of people know about.
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They hear scouting and they're like a location scout, talent scout, what
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are you doing? And it's basically an intermediary agency was founded scouting American North
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American books for foreign markets. Overseas. So we represent over twenty five foreign
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publishers in different territories telling them what does well over here could work for their
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agencies. Years ago, somebody got the brilliant idea of, hey, Hollywood
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needs to find out about this stuff early, as do our foreign publishers.
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Let's start scouting for some Hollywood types. And that's how it started. And
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I've been at Franklin and Siegel since two thousand January two thousand, like to
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keep my jobs in the every century changed jobs. And you've worked on a
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lot of very successful projects, a lot of book to movie successes. Yes,
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yes, I mean it's hard. The ratio is not that high of
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books that get optioned that I would say, out of one hundred books that
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get optioned, I would say eight to ten. Make it really, I
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wouldn't even guess it was that high. Yeah, well, I think that's
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if not everyone who writes a bookstream a lot of people seeing their book turned
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into some kind of visual media, movie, TV, whatever. How do
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you make that a reality? How do you make that happen? There are
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a lot of steps and a lot of people involved in getting that. Well,
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let's walk through them. Absolutely. The first step is obviously, write
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a book, and that's I'm sure everyone's got one in the desk drawer.
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That's the first step. And the better book the better, right exactly,
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because it's not only a dream to have it be seen as a movie or
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a TV. You want it done well, you want the right people to
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do it, and you don't want allowsy version of your book to hit the
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screen. Well. Are there things that make some books step stand out?
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And I don't really mean like genre. It just means some qualities that you
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see recurring, strong story, strong characters. Because when you're doing an adaptation
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a screenplay, you can change things around. It doesn't matter if the writing
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is super strong or super literary the book, that's going to change anyway in
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the screenplay. You look for things that will translate to the screen. Are
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there great chase sequences? Is it an action adventure? Are there set pieces?
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Is there a character that we care about we love to hate? Is
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there stuff going on that's going to keep an audience intrigued? Right? That
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makes sense? All right? So you write a spectacular book and the book
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great book, bestseller, sales millions, then you want to makes it more
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likely. Doesn't always it doesn't need to be, but it definitely gets people's
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attention and it's going to get you a better market price for your option fee.
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So once you get the big book and it's a huge success, then
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hopefully you would have a LID agent recommend you to a book to film agent
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and they split the commission. They split the fifteen percent commission. Is the
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agent essential for the movie deal? I would say more often than not,
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nine times out of ten you're going to need an agent for a film deal
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or a TV deal. Bollywood more comfortable working with an agent. Yes,
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they're known quantity, they know them if they you know the reputable agency that
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they're coming from. Also, it's for legal reasons. They want to protect
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themselves and the authors should want to protect themselves as well, so it's for
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both sides. They can't take anything unsolicited or on an agented. Now,
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you talked about writing best sellers, but it seems to me maybe not as
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often, but sometimes books I've never heard of, or even indie projects that
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were not high profile books still end up getting turned into something movie, television.
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Absolutely, and now there's no better time than now because there's so many
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avenues to go to. There's not just the traditional broadcast networks or the traditional
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studio movies. There's streaming. There's Netflix, there's Hulu, there's Amazon.
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There's so many more up and coming. Once CBS all Access, every network
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is going to jump on that. And there's just so many places to go.
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And with streaming, you're not beholden to a schedule. It's endless.
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They can make it, they can put it up, you can watch it
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whenever, and I think people are getting into that, you know, binging
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shows on their own schedule, watching it on their own schedule, you know.
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So there's no end to the material that they need. So the buying
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season is all year long. I imagine pilot season has become all year long
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too. It's which is great, which is great for authors, which is
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great for scouts like me. Okay, so you've written the book, You've
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got an agent. Now what Now you have the agent submissions and it's a
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good thing to talk with the agent about their plan. Do they see this
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as a series? Is this a limited series of recurring series? Is this
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half hours? This is an hour? Or is it a feature film?
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How are we going to do this and have a plan in mind at targeted
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submission so that's when they take over and they say, I think this is
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a feature film and I'm going to submit to X, Y and Z producers
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and they usually come up with a plan, or they may say, I
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think we're going to go to directors for this. This is a director's piece.
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We're going to do that and target it towards you know, specific talent.
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How much of that and I know this is going to be hard to
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quantify, but how much of it do you think is skill of the agent
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and how much is just right book in the right place at the right time.
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You definitely want a skilled agent, but it's the ladder, I think.
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I think it's probably a little bit of the ladder because you can have
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the best agent in town. If people aren't buying that genre, that type
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of thing. It's timing is huge, So you definitely want your agent to
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be skilled and well connected and well respected. But timing is everything, all
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right, So you got the agent, they're making submissions. I'm going to
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guess the next step is somebody likes it, hopefully and hopefully many like it,
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so then there's an auction. You can have the out right by or
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hopefully if many people there are many parties bidding, you got yourself an auction
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on your hands, and the agent handles that. And it could be a
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case of when fifty Shades of Gray was on the market and it became this
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runaway hip because of the e book sales, because people could read it on
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the subway and nobody knew they were reading a naughty read, and the mommy
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book clubs came and made it a huge it. It took off. The
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author and her agent flew to La. They set themselves up in the Soho
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House in West Hollywood, and that book was so huge and every he wanted
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it that they could sit back and everybody came to them and did like their
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dog and pony show of why we should get this. And I had to
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remember was one of the studios made their own redroom with like the whips and
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chains, the whole thing. I don't know if that's true or not,
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but everybody tried to woo her. And in the day, my studio Universal
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got it for them and Focus features their smaller kind of art house subgenre,
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and they won the day. And it was basically because they were willing to
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pay a good amount for the option price, but they also had the right
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vision, and the author was like, they're the ones I want to do
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the book with. They get it. Can you say a little more about
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that? I mean, what was the vision? Did the author have something
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in particular in mind? I think they came with that we're definitely going to
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get a female director, we're going to go and the plan that they had
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for it, which had done so incredibly well. They paid a hefty option
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price they paid I think it was four million dollars for all three books.
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Yeah, but they filmed at Vancouver. They were two relatively not unknowns,
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but lesser known actors, Jim dorn In and to go to Johnson. They're
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well known but not big enough to open a movie. So they saved on
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the budget. They really scaled it back of a very smart Sam Taylor.
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Sam Taylor Johnson your name is. She was the director and she really did
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a great job of like, all right, let's keep the budget low.
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And they were so smart to do that in films too. The second and
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third film were shot back to back, so they saved money doing that and
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it has grossed over a billion dollars. That turned out to be a good
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investment, absolutely, So everyone scoffed at them for paying four million. Really
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yeah, it sounds like a good investment paid off. So you were saying
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that the actors couldn't open the film, right, It was the It was
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the book. It was people were coming to see that book come to life.
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And I remember at first they had cast Charlie Hunter as the lead as
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Christian Gray. He was from Sons of Anarchy, and everyone was like yeah,
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yeah, and then I think he got scared and walked away for the
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project or had I know, maybe have scheduling conflicts, And now that I
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think about him, like he would have been all wrong, he wouldn't have
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been right for it. So it had a couple of things, and it
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was It just was one of those things that when they released it and Donald
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Langley at Universal had this vision like people are going to go with their girlfriends
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go to dinner like they did to the Sex and the City movie. And
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I didn't think so. I was like, women are kind of private about
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their you know, kind of sexy reads and sexy movies they're privately watching on
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cable, but I don't think they'll go out. Well I was wrong.
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They got together in groups and they went out with their girlfriends to see it.
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So you've been released. At least one of them was on Valentine's Day.
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Well they try they each one around Valentine's Day. So and that paid
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off. It was a good gamble. We'll walk us through the rest of
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the process. It then get you get the film deal and then hopefully they
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get moving and they get it done again. This can be you can be
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in development. Hell, the exec who bought it could have left and abandoned
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it. Who knows, but hopefully you get it made. Then once it's
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made you then they premiere it and that's the whole step. Usually, if
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you're a first time author, you're not going to really be involved past the
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option. I mean they may as a courtesy, but some places cloud you
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don't have enough cloud or you don't you haven't done this before. But some
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places give the author a crack at adapting it sometimes like oh, you want
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to be a screenwriter, do you have any credit? Have you done it
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before? Wanting to take a crack at writing? You know, any insight
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on how to make that happen, because I'm sure that's what most many at
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least authors would like. If they would like that, I would say,
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make yourself of the Yeah, I forget what it is they called what's the
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program that you're supposed to be? Like final draft, that's be very adverse
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in it, be very you know, make yourself comfortable with that format communication,
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you'd know what you're doing exactly. That helps. But you know they
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did it like with Gone Girl, they gave Gillian Flynn. She hadn't done
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a screenplay before. They turned turned out well for her as well, So
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there you go. She continuing to do that with the Sharp Objects whatever else.
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I don't know she did that, but she got other projects from that.
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May be too busy now, that's true. Yeah, But one of
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the first things that I got option when I was early on, I got
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a client, Industry Entertainment, to get twenty fifth Hour by David Benioff.
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He wasn't well known at all. He had a couple of literary novels under
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his belt. Nobody really knew him. The industry exactly. Industry got this.
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They got Spike Lee to direct, Edward Norton to star, and Philip
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Seymour Hoffmann is amazing cast. And after that he was never out of work
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a day. He never had a free day after that because he did a
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Batman movie after that, and then before you know it, here comes Game
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of Thrones. Right, so I think he's I don't think he's you know,
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sweating, you know, he's sweating a budget and appears to be content
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to work in television and film. I mean, such great chances now,
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so they're really you can really become like they used to say, film was
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a director's medium, TV's the writers medium. Now it's a little bit of
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both because I think you're getting a less talent interested in doing TV thanks to
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things like True Detective and Big Little Lives. So it's it's really kind of
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spicing up the TV market, which is nice. Any words of advice,
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and I know this is a pretty big, broad general question, but if
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you're going to give any advice to authors who are writing the Brokes and might
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want to sprinkle something off it to make it more appealing to Hollywood, what
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might that be? I would say, And this can maybe help if like
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you don't have an agent you're looking to get an agent, do you research
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check out? Also have the elevator pitch for your book at the ready,
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and that means have a two or three sentence pitch. If you had to
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pitch your book very quickly. How would you describe it in two three sentences?
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It's going to hook somebody in. So I would work on that and
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also check other books that are similar and check their acknowledgment sections for their agents
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recommendate like they always thank their agent and their acknowledgments. You can be like,
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oh, well, this book is kind of similar. I think that
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audience would appreciate this my book. Maybe solicit that agent from there. Just
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do your research and keep note of who's repping what, who's buying what,
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and just the more informed author is, the better it is going to do
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a little bit better. It makes sense. Aaron, thanks for being on
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the podcast. Happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
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Aaron, thanks for coming back to the podcast. Happy to be here.
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Thanks again. You have not always been with the literary scouting agency you
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started out working. You were with Barwood right, Yes, the Barber Streisand.
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Is that a production company? Yes, that's Barber Streisand's production company.
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What kind of work did you do there? I was a story editor there
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and I had been there for three years. And I had been previously in
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publishing in the rights department and in some new York Publishing House or something hang
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with Oh my gosh, what'd you do there? I was in subsidior rights,
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and I did both adult and children's rights. I did domestic and foreign,
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so I did a little bit of each. But I would get all
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these calls and faxes from movie production companies, from studios asking me who the
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agent is on this? We got one that said who is the agent for
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J Austin? So I just wrote and you said me me Cia, and
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that's the back and I just had a good laugh over that. But I
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started getting all these calls. I would get all these calls from film and
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movie people, and I kind of became interested. So I said, well,
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yeah, I'll give you the information you need, but let's can I
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do a little info in, you know, informational with you? How did
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you get started and really learned about this world of development that I never knew
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existed. So I was an English major. I love movies. To do
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something that married the two, Oh my god, perfect. So you transitioned
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then from Viking to barbar streisand yeah, which were they looking for somebody who
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could acquire projects? Or yes, I think they were looking for somebody with
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a book background. As well, so that was helpful. This is before
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or after the Prince of Tides. It was obviously based on a book,
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right, yes, which she was so involved in and so like really did
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a great job with it and work closely with the author. So yeah,
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it was after this. It was like late nineties that I was there,
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and it was after Amra had two Faces which didn't do so well, so
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she was looking. They were looking to acquire books. I saw a lot
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of theater too, that they could have adapted, because the two things that
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we kept getting submitted, the prospective projects that people wanted Barbara to do enttil
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two until two, like another l Until Yet Again, or Ventures in America,
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Yeah, or something like that, you know, like Papa can hear
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you? We got it? Or The Way We Were again, like they
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were. I could almost see a sequel to that one. They weren't one
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one for a long time. They were close. The Way We Were was
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based on a book though, right the film or maybe there was original maybe
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it was a novelization I'm remembering that came out. It might have. I
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think that might have been an original script. I'm not, don't quote me,
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I'm not. I should know that, but I don't know that.
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So you were at this point not just looking at books. You were just
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looking for looking pretty much for projects, for things for her to direct or
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things that she would just produce. And while I was there, we did
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a family movie for a Showtime Family we meaning with Barbara Streism. The company
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did YEA through Barwood Films, and we did a TV movie with Laurie Metcalf
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that was on NBC. And we also ready to a documentary about women and
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the pioneering women in Hollywood for AMC. Did that happen? That? Did
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that? Did that air? And it was amazing the number of women who
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worked in Hollywood as screenwriters as directors in the twenties and thirties as opposed to
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now even before exactly, but so many more. Then that seems even more
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timely now than when it probably aired. I think you do you still have
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the rights to that? They need to reissue that again. Get on at
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AMC. Really okay? And then at some point you transition from Barwood to
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working for Franklin and Siegel, where there are now right, and now you
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just scout for everybody. I scout for two. My two clients are on
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the feature side. I scout for Universal Studios and then on the TV side,
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I scout for Paramount TV. So two very big studios looking for two
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different kinds of things for two different mediums. How do you know what would
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be right for them? Because these are large entities who I would think do
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all kinds of projects. They do. Yeah, it makes it challenging.
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But when I came from when I was at Barwood, I felt like I
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had everything I was submitted was in such a narrow used like I said,
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yentele to or the way we were to like things that they just thought Barbara
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would be interested in starring in. And now it's like anything can go.
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It could be sci fi, it could be romantic comedy, it could be
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drama, thriller, you name it. They're looking. Both studios are looking
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for everything. Is there a difference between the two. I mean, how
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do you think do I take this to Universal or do I take this to
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Paramount? Well, I kind of break it down to is this a feature
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or is this for TV? And the overlap is greater now because TV is
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so good and they're taking such chances with shows like Big Little Lies and True
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Detective and things like that. So it's kind of all bets are off now,
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it really can be if I feel like there's something. There was a
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book that I got my TV guys to option that had been under option for
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feature. It was a book called Station eleven by Emily Saint John Mendel,
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Yes, which I love, but I read it, I was like,
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this is not a feature, this is a series. I could see five
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years easy out of this book, like as a jumping off point and going
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from there. And like you know, like Walking Dead was based on a
20:52
graphic novel, things like that, Like it can give you a jumping off
20:56
period, but if the characters and stories are so good, you can continue
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them on. So I told my TV guys like, let's keep an eye
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on this because when this comes up again for option, jump on it.
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And they did and they got it. So they're developing it as a series.
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I mean, the cliche has always been that, you know, the
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book was always better than the movie, in part just because that's what people
21:19
experienced first, but also because reducing a four hundred page, eighty thousand word
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novel to an hour and a half, well, obviously a lot's got to
21:29
be left out, But if you can expand it to a season of ten
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episodes or as you were saying, even multi season projects. That's got to
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open a whole world of much more satisfying possibilities for and we've seen it all
21:45
the time. Look at Orange is the New Black. That was a memoir
21:48
Piper Kerman wrote and nobody thought like, oh, maybe they'll get a season
21:53
out of this whatever, And just I think it was the fifth season that
21:56
just debuted. They're doing a sixth and they're signed up for a few more
22:00
seasons too with Netflix, and that's that was their big breakout hit, after
22:04
a House of Guards. It seemed to me when I watched The Handmaid's Tale,
22:10
the first season essentially adapted the book. There were some changes, but
22:14
more or less and editions in particular bit more or less adapt But of course
22:18
now it's still going. There was a season two that really used not in
22:23
the book, not at all, and got to go into different areas,
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you know, which is expanding it, which is interesting, which I thought
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was great. I mean, I wonder I want to see where they take
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it next. Are there things authors could be doing? You know, you
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want to put the book and make the book good, obviously, because that's
22:41
step one, but things they could be keeping on the back of their mind
22:45
that might make something have more potential later on down the line to movies or
22:52
streaming television or anything. I think kind of further to what I said earlier
22:59
about research, know the market, know what's streaming, no, what's popular
23:03
on Netflix and Hulu and Amazon. And I love it that little quirky shows
23:08
like Missus Masel did so well, and it kind of was a late bloomer
23:15
hit, like it didn't hit right away, and it was kind of word
23:18
of mouth that made that grow. And I love that show and the art
23:21
direction is just amazing. And I love the lead actress who just won an
23:25
Emmy, which she's wonderful, and Alex Forstein too, so they got two
23:29
Emmies in the acting categories. I think just knowing the market out there,
23:32
being realistic about what's popular, what's selling, what's out there, what your
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competition is, what are your comparisons, Just kind of being a well versed
23:41
knowing what is doing well on the market currently. I mean the project you
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just mentioned, Missus Mazel, is almost like a triumph of character over setting.
23:52
I think a lot of people are particularly younger people, will object to
23:56
a historical setting. But if they're a strong character, if it's interesting and
24:02
funny, you know they'll tune in anyway or see something like mad Men and
24:07
how well that showed. Like I remember watching Madmen and like my father and
24:11
my brother would say something like I remember my brother being so particular about the
24:15
set and he'd be like, I recognize that lamp. Yeah, nineteen sixty
24:19
six. They nail it. That's it. So it's it's having the great
24:25
setting as well for a great story and a world that we had seen before,
24:29
right, and great characters. It still seems to me that whatever you're
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writing, the character that was like a novel. Yeah, characters are paramount.
24:38
Absolutely, Aaron, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
24:42
Thank you so much, Rappy Billy appreciate it. Until next time, keep
24:52
writing and remember you cannot fail if you refuse to quit the school.