How much would it cost for an author to turn his book into a movie?

Rocio Karvis: yeah, that's not how it works.

Ardath Templer: Close to nothing, really. I mean, all an author will spend is his time, converting his book into a screenplay. Authors don't usually pay money to make their book into a movie, unless he really wanted it to become a movie but no one was interested in adapting it, so he would have to pay Hollywood to make it into a movie. Actually, it's quite the opposite. If an author writes a decent book, movie producers will pay the author for rights to use his book for a movie.

Maurice Breuning: That's not how it usually works. A studio or a production company buys the film rights to the book and then they put up the money to make the movie.How much it costs depends what the film needs and whether you feel like paying Hollywood rates. A film with an unknown cast and director, set in the present day and with no exotic locations or special effects, starts at about $10 million. I'm not sure if that includes marketing.! If you go independent, you can do it for a lot less, but you then have problems getting distribution. (Cinemas won't show it, because they think not enough people will watch it for them to make a profit.)...Show more

Galen Gowers: Nothing

Cedric Grimstead: If you're talking about commercially-released movies (e.g. the ones based on the Harry Potter books), the movie producer buys the rights from the author and then the author has nothing further to do with it. The author gets money; the producer pays for the production of the movie.