The quickest way to sell a film idea is to have it be a successful novel first - but there is still no guarantee that anything will ever happen. William Goldman's "The Princess Bride" is a marvellous book and a 20th Century Fox executive loved it immediately.
Goldman calls these executives GGs, Greenlight Guys who have the power to have a film made - to 'green light' the project. "I wrote the screenplay... the GG at Fox liked it... Home and dry," says Goldman in his introduction to the screenplay. "Problem: the GG at Fox was fired."
That's far from uncommon so Goldman shouldn't have been surprised and he probably wasn't. But he'd done a very strange deal with Fox that meant they bought his novel but wouldn't buy his script until they'd seen it - because they weren't sure the book was filmable.
After his GG was fired, Goldman had to buy the book back from them, but he did and it was his to pitch again. And again. "I know of at least two GGs who... shook hands with me on the deal [and] both got fired the weekend before they were going to set things in motion. Believe this: one studio (a small one) closed the weekend before they were going to set things in motion."
Ultimately, it was filmed in 1987 - and he'd written the book in 1973. The book remains far superior to the movie, which didn't do very well on release but by the mid-Nineties the film's video sales had made it a big hit. "I started writing something for my kids when the Seventies started," says Goldman. "It's the Nineties now and your kids can see it."
Factory Line - Part 2: I've Got This Great Story, George Clooney's Practically Signed.
Factory Line - Part 3: It's Set to Go - but it's Not Set-Set.
Sources:
"Four Screenplays", by William Goldman, Applause Books 1995, ISBN 1-55783-198-X
"The Princess Bride - 25th Anniversary Edition", by William Goldman, Bloomsbury 1999, ISBN 0-7475-4322-4
"Which Lie Did I Tell?", by William Goldman, Bloomsbury, 2000, ISBN 0-7475-4977-X
