At the Cannes Film Festival, a quick introduction to publishers

The birthday cake didn’t say: millefeuille. This year at the Cannes Film Festival, the 76th of which^e Edition ends May 27th, shoot the book! The 10th anniversary was celebrated; The age of reason for this event, which combines literature and cinema and allows publishers and producers to meet to adapt works for the screen.

Of course, this marriage has existed since the birth of the Seventh Art, when filmmakers happily flocked to libraries to quickly find stories to tell—Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe…

This included television, then theater, and more and more video games – for example, on May 31, a game adapted from a novel by Vernon Sullivan, under the pseudonym Boris Vian, will be released. And we will kill all the ugly ones (1948), published by Fayard (ugly as hell Co-produced by Arte France and La Poule Noire).

There is a trend towards documentary fiction

In Cannes, publishers and producers meet, discuss literary news and film projects. Collected over two days, May 18 and 19, Operation Shoot the Book! allowing them to better understand trends. And enjoy the presence of strangers. The adaptation rule is always the same: producers get an option – a one-time renewal – on the book, for twelve or eighteen months, then buy the rights if the project takes shape, for between €40,000 and €400,000.

“We are here to facilitate meetings, Notes Nathalie Piaskowski, Director General of the Civil Society of French-Language Publishers, which brings together more than three hundred publishers, including Shoot the Book! is an emanation. If large publishing houses have integrated sales departments, it is more difficult for smaller structures. For a long time, film producers looked for books themselves [à adapter]. Today it is the publishers who go to them. »

Take a picture of the book! It has always been held in Cannes, but it will be necessary to wait until 2019 for the event to join the official program of the Marché du film. It was Paul Ochakowsky-Lawrence, then head of POL editions, who worked to ensure that the festival created a space in its film market dedicated to “Adaptation Rights”. This, unfortunately, was done a year after the editor’s death. This formalization gave impetus to the demonstration. Shoot a book today! There is Angoulême (BD), Lyon (Quais du thriller) and Montreuil (children’s literature). But also in Los Angeles and Bombay.