S&S Goes Hollywood with Gotham Group

By Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 8/14/2008 8:59:00 AM

After years of working informally with the Los Angeles-based management company The Gotham Group, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing has made a more formal arrangement with the Hollywood outfit. In a bid to reap deeper financial rewards from book-to-film deals, S&S Children's will get a cut of films based on literary properties it retains film rights for that Gotham turns into movies. 

"We've found historically that New York publishing and Hollywood have eyed each other nervously across the dance floor for years," Rick Richter, president and publisher of S&S Children's Publishing, told PW. This deal, he said, comes out of a realization that "if we come together we have more of an influence on the outcome."

Although publishers like Random House and HarperCollins have struck their own deals to get a bigger stake in Hollywood literary adaptations—Random House has partnered with Focus Features on Random House Films and HarperCollins has established Sharp Independent at HarperCollins—the S&S-Gotham deal is unique. Whereas Random is cofinancing films with Focus, S&S will not be investing money in production. Instead, because the house controls the material—the deal pertains only to works that S&S has the film rights for—it will share the revenue with Gotham. And, in a symbiotic relationship with Gotham, S&S will also turn certain projects from Gotham into books. 

Since the development cycle for Hollywood material can be lengthy, the hope is that S&S can turn certain film-bound stories from Gotham into bestsellers. "The creation of a book," Richter explained, "is not an expensive proposition from a development standpoint. And we're bringing an equity to the table that wouldn't otherwise be there." 

Although it's rare for publishers to retain film rights to adult titles, it's less rare for a house to get film rights in children's, which is one reason why the partnership with Gotham is resting in Simon & Schuster's children's division.

Ellen Goldsmith Vein at Gotham Group said, "The thing we’re excited about is bringing filmmakers and writers to Simon & Schuster that they haven’t had the opportunity to work with in the past." To that end, as the New York Times reported, filmmaker David O. Russell (Three Kings) is working on a book series for S&S called Alienated, which is slated as a trilogy and set for a fall 2009 release, as well as drafting a screenplay around the idea. 

Goldsmith Vein told PW that the idea for Alienated originated with her producing partner on the project, Mike Richardson, president of Dark Horse. She said Richardson pitched the idea for Alienated to Russell and, after discussions, the three realized it made sense to do something in book publishing as well.

Although neither party mentioned other projects, Richter said the partnership will yield "as many projects as makes sense." He estimated that, over the past three to five years, S&S Children's has placed more than 100 projects under option through Gotham.