Well, the first thing to tip you off he’s either lying or being fed a bunch of malarkey from a grifter is that he claims there’s way more money in screenwriting. If you’re Aaron Sorkin or the Coen Brothers then sure. If you’re a fucking nobody who wrote a couple of books that nobody outside of a community of MAP’s knows about then not so much. The days of massive fees for screenplays are long gone and nobody is getting Shane Black deals anymore.
Unfortunately for him, Pat is the type of bottom feeder who thinks The Matrix is a little known arthouse flick so he wouldn’t know enough to even convincingly lie about it.
I could go into the tedious minutiae of it all but there were studio agreements put in place after the writers strike so after you deliver at least a treatment, a first draft, a final draft and pay percentages to your agent, your lawyer, the producer and, in this hypothetical case, the book publisher, you’d come out with about 65-70% of the total purchase price. If the studio signed the WGA agreement they must buy the screenplay for between $72k up to around $130k Give or take a few hundred bucks. But that payment comes in installments so if we like the idea but not the actual screenplay and only want a first draft, you’ll only earn around $36-45k and then you’re off the project completely outside of your credit.
Divide that by two with the mystery writing partner who never gets tagged and you’re looking at a likely best case return of $18-23k for a first time sale spec script. If that’s really a lot more than your book sales then I suggest applying at McDonalds and working your way up to manager, Pat. You’ll earn more and you can probably take home the leftovers to fill your trough.
