This is a transcript of SYS 520 – The Legal Side of Screenwriting With Joshua Lastine .
Welcome to Episode 520 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger with www.sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I am interviewing entertainment attorney Joshua Lastine. He’s got lots of experience working with writers and directors and producers and also production companies as an attorney. I pepper him with legal questions, we talk about NDAs, release form, we talk about options and sales. We talked about getting the rights for a novel if you’re looking to write a screenplay based on some novel that already exists. We talked through those deals and how those deals work from a legal standpoint. We talk about how to get and what a deal looks like with one of these streaming companies like Netflix. He has been involved in some of the legal aspects of those as well. So, lots of great information for screenwriters. So, stay tuned for that interview. SYS’s six-figure screenplay contest is open for submissions. Just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. Our early bird deadline is March 31st. So, if your script is ready, definitely submit now to save some money. We’re looking for a low budget shorts and features. I’m defining low budget as less than six figures. In other words, less than 1 million US dollars. We’ve got lots of industry judges reading scripts in the later rounds, we’re giving away 1000s in cash and prizes. We have a short film script category as well 30 pages or less. So, if you have a low budget short script, by all means submit that screenplay. I’ve got a number of industry judges who are specifically interested and looking for short scripts, so hopefully we’ll find a home for some of the short material. If you want to submit your script to the contest or just learn more about it or check out some of our industry judges just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. Also, again this year, we are running our in-person Film Festival in tandem with our screenplay contest. It’s for low budget films produced for less than 1 million US dollars. We have a features and shorts category for that as well. The festival is going to take place here in Los Angeles, California from October 4th to October 6th. If you produced a short film or know someone who has, by all means please do submit it. Shorts are very easy to program, I can run two or three of them before a feature film or do a whole section of just short film. So, we always accept a lot of short films and it’s just a good way to celebrate indie film, especially low budget films. But obviously if you have a finished feature film two, we’d love to take a look at that as well. If you would like to submit to our festival, check out our festival page, which is www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/festival and that’s just going to forward you to our FilmFreeWay page which is where we are taking all of our film festival submissions. The screenplay submissions you can do it on FilmFreeWay or you can do it uncover fly for that matter. Or you can do it directly on our Selling Your Screenplay page which is www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest.
Anyways, if you find this episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leaving a comment on YouTube or retweeting the podcast on Twitter or liking or sharing it on Facebook. These social media shares really do help spread word about the podcast so they’re very much appreciated. Any websites or links that I mentioned the podcast can be found on my blog in the show notes. I also publish the transcript with every episode in case you’d rather read the show or look at something later on, you can find all the podcast show notes at www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/podcast and then just look for episode number 520. If you want my free guide How to Sell a Screenplay in Five Weeks, you can pick that up by going to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. It’s completely free. Just put in your email address and I’ll send you a new lesson once per week for five weeks along with a bunch of bonus lessons. I teach the whole process of how to sell your screenplay in that guide. I’ll teach you how to write a professional logline and query letter and how to find agents managers and producers who are looking for material. Really is everything you need to know to sell your screenplay, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. So, now let’s get into the main segment. Today I am interviewing entertainment attorney Joshua Lastine. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome Joshua to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. Really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Joshua Lastine
Hey, thank you, Ashley. Thanks for having me. And thanks for having me audience. I really appreciate it really happy to be here.
Ashley
So, to start out, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background. Where do you grow up? And how did you get interested in the entertainment business?
Joshua Lastine
Oh, gosh, I have a pretty typical Hollywood story. In that I’m from bum nowhere, small town Iowa town of 300-500 people but I always had dreams and ambitions of moving to LA, moving to the big city. You know Luke Skywalker on tattooing and wanted to hop in the x plane and fly off. I knew literally since I was probably six or seven years old that I wanted to be involved in Hollywood in some capacity. I’ve always had a business mind and business acumen. So, I knew I wanted to be somehow involved in the business and legal affairs side of things. If you remember way back to the VHS days when they rerelease Star Wars on the nice golden VHS package. They had the pre-interviews with Alan Ladd Jr, who was an executive for Fox and was one of the primary champions, they got George Lucas’s deal to make the initial new hope. And it was really just kind of obvious to me as a kid that I wanted to be part of this crazy movie making world. So, in 2011, I moved out to LA, went to law school at Pepperdine in Malibu, got my first job working doing music licensing at American Idol, and then looking at credit statements for the Twilight films, working for Lionsgate and that was kind of my first office job, if you will, in entertainment in 2011. Worked a bunch of different add and interns at various studios and production companies, got to work for Marvel Studios, which was pretty cool at the time, because it was just right when Disney bought the mouse this kind of still pre-merger esque sort of-ish. Graduated, went to the CIA mailroom, did my time there for a year. And then I’ve just been working various Council jobs, primarily helping in development and production, business and legal affairs. And since 2021, opening my own law firm and now representing my own individual clients, writers, screenplay, writers, actors, directors, producers, and a handful of production companies and studios.
Ashley
Perfect. So, I’m curious, you say since you were six years old, you really felt this calling towards the entertainment history? Do you have any idea what it was like? Why did you in this small town look at Hollywood and think this is where I want to spend my career?
Joshua Lastine
Like I said it, I think the thing that really first piqued my interest is seeing those kind of precursors to behind the scenes, seeing the making of film and realizing that there’s an actual industry and hands on art that goes into all facets of getting a movie done, I was just kind of enamored by the entire process. And through just continuously, kind of how do I say things in life would pop up. You know, we had the writer strike in 2008, right when I graduated high school, Marvel Studios launched themselves in 2008-2009, right when I was getting into college and stuff, I really saw a clear trajectory towards Hollywood and entertainment. I myself was a media consumer DVD collector always hung out at the local blockbuster in high school. It was just an obvious and natural fit for me to try to take on Hollywood.
Ashley
Gotcha. So, I got a bunch of legal questions here that I’m going to start firing at you. And I get a lot of legal questions from screenwriters, which I try not to answer, since I’m not a lawyer, and really have no background in any of this legal stuff. So, let’s just…
Joshua Lastine
Let me say though, that anything that I say on here can’t be construed as actual legal advice, and that you have to consult an actual attorney and all of this is just kind of my best advice in general.
Ashley
Certainly. And that is exactly how I think people should take a podcast, this is not legal advice. This is simply some information that you can use to find a qualified lawyer to get actual legal advice. And if that lawyer is you, then then you can have a relationship with those clients. And then it becomes legal advice. But this is certainly not that. So, let’s talk about getting the rights to a novel or some other intellectual property. I get a lot of questions on this. Just in general, maybe you can give us some sort of tips on this. If you are a screenwriter, you read a novel that you really like, what is that path to going and approaching that novelist? Do you get a lawyer to make that first past, you try and do it yourself and then get a lawyer to negotiate on the back end, but just walk us through that what you’ve seen as a lawyer?
Joshua Lastine
Yeah. You know, ultimately, I think it really depends on the on the flower or high-profile nature of the book, or lack thereof, so to speak. If it’s an indie book, or self-published book, if it’s something you find on Amazon, or if it’s something that you find that’s been, you know, buried in a library for several years, and no one seems to know about it, it’s very obscure, I would just go about approaching the actual author themselves. And in very much I can tell a story where I read something very meaningful to me in college that seemed pretty obscure. It was a biography of a African American secret service agent and pulled a few places around called the publisher didn’t really get an answer reached out directly to the writer on Facebook in built in cultivated a relationship through him. I’m not a producer or anything, but I ended up representing him and finding him a producer and getting his book options and that was just a direct, you know, Facebook cold call, if you will. Now, obviously, if it’s something where, you know, if it’s on the Oprah Winfrey book club or on the Reese Witherspoon, hello Sunshine book club, you know, good luck, there’s going to be a bidding war involved. And you’re going to have to, you know, mine the services of a highly skilled agent and entertainment lawyer to try to navigate those things. But if it’s something that feels doable, manage your expectations, but if it seems doable, I would just reach out directly to the writer. And in today’s day and age, when you can get a hold of somebody in a million different ways, you know, between Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, X, whatever it’s called now, I think that it would behoove you to try that avenue first. And then also, obviously, try the publisher. More often than not, the publisher is going to have some sort of lingering writes or lingering connections or obligations in connection with turning the book into a screenplay. So, they’re always going to be have some sort of something to say about it, I guess.
Ashley
So, you mentioned sort of this range, this spectrum of, you know, you have the obscure books that maybe are self-published, haven’t done and don’t have a ton of sales. And then versus the best seller or the Oprah Winfrey book club. Is there some metrics you could sort of give us to sort of how does a writer determine? And I mean, it’s easy. If it’s on the Oprah Winfrey book club, it’s easy to determine that that’s a pretty high-profile book. But what is sort of the range that you would put in obscure How can you look at this? Can you go on Amazon and look at the Kindle sales and say, well, they’ve only sold 20,000 books? So that’s probably means they’re not getting a ton of heat from producers?
Joshua Lastine
Yeah. I think, you know, I can’t give you an actual like number amounts to follow or whatever. But I think that if you look at the review section, the number of reviews, the quality of those reviews, if you go on Amazon, or Kindle, or Walmart, or anything of that, I’m pretty sure those places lists the number of sales for those particular books or items, just doing a general Google search. I mean, really, that’s probably the first thing you should do is you should hop on deadline or Hollywood reporter and do a Google search to make sure the property isn’t already in development somewhere. Nine times out of 10, I’ll have a client asked me about a book or a property, and I’ll look it up and see it’s in development turnaround hell at so and so plays and has been since 2001, or something like that. And so, you know, good luck and trying to get the rights. But it’s not going to be a clear black and white like, Oh, so many this many sales means it’s a hit. And this many sales means that it’s not, I think you have to be a little intuitive. And look at the prestige of the author, have they written anything lately? Are they a new author? Are they old author, you know, all of these things are going to come into play into it.
Ashley
Now, what are some just expectations? So, if a writer is going after a fairly obscure novel, they’re able to get the contact information of that novelist, they’ve never had a movie produced out of their self-published novels. Like what would a deal like that look like? I mean, I assume you’re not going to have to pay them $10,000 for two year option, or two year, right, but just realistically, like, what should a writer be prepared to offer? Can they get it for 500? I could get the movie rights for two years, for $500. Like just what in your experience would seem sort of reasonable for one of these obscure novels?
Joshua Lastine
So, we have this thing that I like to call a poor man’s option agreement, it’s really a call to shopping agreement, or an attachment agreement or a collaboration in a way a rose by any other name, right. But really, it is kind of a precursor to an option purchase agreement whereby a writer is collaborating with a owner of a property, typically a an author of a book, write a book author, and that writer and that author are going to come together and collaborate, the writer is going to write a screenplay and on spec, and they’re going to have, or they’re going to write a pitch or they’re going to create development materials in some way, create an outline, Bible, whatever. And they’re going to have a 12-month free period where the rights to that book are exclusively pitched and sold by that writer. And the tick for tack, instead of is that, you know, the writer is going to negotiate the sale of their particular services as it relates to writing the screenplay and any additional writing services and if they can manage to get themselves a producer fee and producer credit and that kind of stuff. But the sale of the property itself is left in the hands of the book owner, either with the assistance of the writer if they have their own entertainment lawyer, they have a producer and they have experience in that field, or the writer themselves can go get their own lawyer and how have their own interests represented. So that really is kind of a, you know, the downside for the book author, so to speak is only the period of time that it remains exclusive, which is highly negotiable, you know, it’s standard to be 12 months and exclusive period with the screenplay writer, but you can make it three or six or whatever. And you’re and the author of the book is only out that amount of time. Now, I’ve seen these, I’ve seen option agreements that are a little more robust in terms of, you know, kind of the difference between an option agreement and a shopping agreement under an option agreement, the screenwriter is more acting as a producer, and they’re going to be able to buy and control those rights for a set amount of fee. It’s almost better to it depending on what the writers position is, if they’re not trying to be a producer, to me, it’s almost better to say, hey, look, you’ll handle the sale of your property, and I’ll handle the sale of my property. And we’ll all be attached and we’ll all win, but no money between us is going to exchange hands.
Ashley
And that wouldn’t worry you as a screenwriter, spending a lot of time doing the pitch deck and adapting a screenplay, you got 12 months, and then it doesn’t materialize. And then you as a screenwriter, putting a lot of time and effort into that, and then you have nothing to show for because you don’t own the rights.
Joshua Lastine
Well, so you’re going to still own the rights to the screenplay that you wrote, you’re just not going to own any rights to the underlying material. And to the extent, you know, they someday down the road want to find a separate writer and completely read, do the idea, completely separate from the idea in the screenplay that you wrote, that is within their parameters to do and you’re kind of out that risk. But more often than not, what likely will happen is if the shopping agreement goes in, turn around, if nothing happens, the property owner will likely be approached by another producer 5-10 years down the road, and they’ll say, hey, where are you at with this book? And then they’ll usually say, hey, I got a screenplay already right lined up, because nobody wants to redo work. And, you know, I think…I don’t want to say it’s an unfounded claim. But I think it is kind of a proverbial boogeyman in the closet that you know, rights holders are going to enter into deals with producers behind the backs of screen black writers to sell the screenplay, and then they’re going to go out and cook the initial screenplay writer out that gets very tricky from a studio perspective and a business and legal a spirit affairs perspective, because that really muddles up the chain of title of the property. So, we’re not really inclined to do that. If I’m working for a sophisticated studio, sophisticated production company, and there’s another writer involved, we want to include them in some kind of way, even just to buy them out, even if we’re rewriting it, because we don’t want to have any holes or potential claims in the chain of title. Yeah, so I don’t want to say that it doesn’t happen because it certainly does. But at a more, how do I say a higher level when there’s higher stakes and higher dollar amounts involved. Usually, those problems weed themselves out because the company’s the studio’s production entities want to stape off a claim.
Ashley
Okay. So, I got two follow up questions. So, the first one is, you never run into like an ornery, like the novelists gets ornery. And once the deal was going through, then he’s like, well, no, actually, I want 10% of the budget. And that could potentially kill the deal, as opposed to getting an option up front. That’s all that lays all that stuff out. You haven’t seen that as a problem.
Joshua Lastine
It does happen, you know, you try to protect yourself as much as you can, by including language in the shopping agreement stating that the parties will negotiate in good faith. And they’ll use customary parameters with regards to fees, taking into consideration the budget amounts, and the parties have to act reasonable, and they can’t withhold their approval over any deal to intentionally frustrate the purpose of an agreement. That’s all language that we would include in a typical shopping agreement. The sad truth or sad reality of it is that anyone can breach an agreement at any time. So like, even if you have a deal, like that lined up, people can still be a problem. Even if I, you know, say I’m going to buy the rights to a screenplay from an author for XML, they can create problems down the road if they just don’t want to play ball. So, while it’s it is a concern, I don’t know that it’s any more of a concern than just generally entering into an agreement and thinking that the other side may or may not uphold their end of the bargain.
Ashley
And yeah, so you’re sort of getting at this next question a little bit. So, there was a situation where I and when I say I was hired, I was tasked with basically right Unlike the first act, it was a comic book. And they gave me the comic book. And I adapted like the first 30 pages of the screenplay, but they didn’t actually pay me. And they were trying to get they said, well write the first act, and then we’ll take it out, we’ll try and get funding, and then we’ll pay you. And whatever I was, I had a good relationship with the producer. And so, I went ahead and did this. You know, it didn’t come to fruition and stuff. But I always wondered, it’s like, I mean, anybody that adapts that comic is quite likely to adapt it in a very similar way that I adapted because it was based on the same material, like what do they actually owe me like there was nothing in writing, it was just a handshake type of a deal. I wrote 30 pages of this script, or whatever it was 20 pages of this thing. Like what happens in those situations? And it seems to me as the writer, I mean, the producer are in more trouble than I am as the writer because if they ever go and make that movie, I could come back with a pretty legitimate claim.
Joshua Lastine
The devil certainly in the details on something like this. We see this a lot with something like the Tolkien estate. I think Lord of the Rings, Amazon just fought off a similar legal battle, where like in the 1990s Tolkien son had commissioned a screenplay writer to try to adapt the smoly, or whatever the Lord of the Rings show is based off of, and obviously Amazon does their own adaptation, and they’re going to use parts from the book, there’s going to be overlap, right? If you’re adapting the same thing. In those instances, it really boils down to a question of fact, and getting into the nitty-gritties, of sorting out the creative elements. You know, another good lawsuit that kind of highlights something similar, but it was also something different, you know, Netflix was sued by the estate of who’s Sir Francis Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes, because they’re show Eleanor Holmes, which is a depiction of Sherlock Holmes’s sister and his relationship, Sherlock Holmes with that character. The estate of the author claimed that they used elements of his character that are not contained in the public domain. There are there are parts of Sherlock Holmes story that are in the public domain because they were written longer ago, and then there are parts of his story that are still protected and owned by the estate. And what they allege is that the characteristics of Sherlock Holmes being sensitive, and caring, and having some sort of relationship with people, that that character, personality, if you will, that element is the protected element versus the cold, calculated non-emotional Sherlock Holmes, that character is not protected. And so, they sued Netflix over this thing. And I think they probably settled at a court or whatever. But that’s how granular and nuances these things can get. You know, it really depends. I mean, ultimately, in those situations, it’s going to be a Is there enough money on the hook? Is there enough proof, high profile to these things to make it worthwhile for a writer to try to find a lawyer and bring a lawsuit? And the instances of Lord of the Rings I guess it kind of is, right?
Ashley
Yeah, billions of dollars out there,
Joshua Lastine
Right. Let’s just do a double check and compare the drafts and see, and you know, they’re there. If you are a WGA writer, there are some protections, there’s WGA arbitration right you have to submit all earlier drafts of a particular screenplay, and they contact each rider and they do comparison and stuff. So, there are more protections, if you are WGA, than if you’re not WGA. But ultimately, you know, you’re never going to have a foolproof plan of protecting yourself. And I teach entertainment law to producers and film students and writers all the time. And you know, that that’s kind of one of their biggest questions is like, how do I ultimately set myself up for the utmost protection that no one can steal my idea ever? And the answer is you can’t, like you can’t go and monitor and police China or North Korea and whatever they do, if you may create a song and Kim Jong likes it for whatever reason, he’ll just take it from you. But at the same time, Deep Impact and Armageddon came out in the same year. And both did very well in spite thereof. So, you know, there’s a difference between having an idea, and more than interpretation, but your manifestation of that idea is always going to be different from somebody else’s more or less, unless you’re directly copying.
Ashley
Perfect, perfect. So okay, so let’s move on to how screenwriters can protect themselves. You know, the WGA registration is definitely something that I recommend. It’s super easy. It’s fairly inexpensive. The Library of Congress getting your copyright, let’s just hear sort of your take on that. What’s the value of the WGA registration? What’s the value of the Library of Congress? And I’ve actually heard some pushback where if you go and get your copyright through Library of Congress, it can make things difficult when you sell your script, as there’s some you have to then there’s a real chain of title issues or whatever. But maybe you can just give us into 2024 as we sit here, what is your take? What do you recommend to screenwriters, they finish a spec script, what should they do to protect themselves?
Joshua Lastine
First thing you absolutely want to do as WGA registration, even before you think about federal copyright registration, register it with the WGA, that’s going to be your ultimate protector and safeguard, or they’re set the standard much, much higher than the protections of the federal government. And you know, relating to your question about, you know, filing for copyright protection, and whether that kind of muddles or messes up the chain of title, I can say that there is some truth to that if I’m a writer, and I file for copyright protection, my screenplay, more likely than not, when someone’s going to come around and want to buy that screenplay, I’m going to probably want to start what is known as a loan out company, or some sort of shell corporation of some sorts to help sort out my tax purposes, some sort of company to hire myself as a professional writer. Well, now I have to do what is known as an assignment agreement between myself and my company, to make sure that that company has the rights and you know, it can turn into a proverbial nightmare, especially when you have multiple people, you have two writers on something. Now you got to sign things to separate loan out companies. So, there’s a practical reason why you might want to wait until you’re at like the final. This is the green light shooting script. You know, generally speaking, copyright protection begins when an original work of authorship is fixed into a tangible medium. So, the second your pin, you know, puts that final period on the last sentence, you have some level of copyright protection, the federal protections and the federal grants, you know, that that lets the world know about your property. And that avails you have certain statutory rights and statutory damages. But ultimately, you’re still protected if you don’t file for copyright registration. Like I said earlier, again, you know, if you write a movie about dinosaurs invading a theme park, and somebody else writes a movie about dinosaurs invading a theme park, the elements that are protected between the two is going to be your writing style and your interpretation of that thing, not the underlying, you know, cliched idea.
Ashley
Gotcha. So, what about NDA and option agreements? I get writers sometimes coming to me and I feel like it’s, I feel like they’re being a little bit overly paranoid, but they will be asking, should I get a producer to sign an NDA? Now, again, I’m not a lawyer, and I come this is more from the practical standpoint is that if you’re putting more roadblocks in the way of producers reading your screenplay, that’s probably not the greatest idea. So, I’m always very down on writers trying to force NDAs. But there’s the flip side about release forms. But maybe you can start with the NDA. What’s your take on writers getting the producers to sign NDAs?
Joshua Lastine
Never, never, never asked someone to sign an NDA. I mean, in that particular circumstance, even for me, I’ll have clients that want to send me a screenplay to for me to read, and then they’ll send an NDA for me to sign. And I’m like, there’s no way in hell, I’m going to sign an NDA and open myself up to potential liability for something that I already don’t want to do, which is read your screenplay.
Ashley
That sums that up. Yeah, that sums it up perfectly.
Joshua Lastine
And again, unless you have something that is just so genie in a bottle, just so brilliant, that you feel that like someone can just take that very specific thing and steal it, which like, I don’t know, like, if you have an obscure real life character, something like that, you know, like those kinds of things. Don’t give them the secret sauce. Here’s a good analogy. Don’t give people your secret sauce, but everybody knows how to make a cheeseburger. You know what I mean? Like, if a great example of this I don’t know if you saw the movie just came out recently called Infinity Pool with Alexander Skarsgard and Mia Goth. The premise of that movie is wildly crazy. Rich American tourists go on vacation in a third world country and they get to commit acts of crime. And then they clone those tourists and kill the clones in penance of the crimes that the tourists commit. very niche, very specific idea. I had the same idea five years ago for something almost substantially similar. Did those writers take my idea? Absolutely not. It’s just, you know what I mean? Everyone thinks that they have the most brilliant idea in the world. And you may very well so do but it’s going to be your interpretation, your manifestation of it in terms of a screenplay that’s going to get it sold, not the generality of it, you know what I mean, Groundhog’s Day has been done a million times, it’s your version of Groundhog’s Day, that’s got to sell.
Ashley
Yeah. So, what about the release forms? When I submit to producers, I would say on average, maybe 10% of them will say, I need you to sign this release form before I’ll read your script. Frankly, I’ve signed them without even spending much time reading most of them. And I’ve never had a problem. I know that’s not great advice. But that’s the reality of it. But what’s your take on these release forms in general, for writers? What how do you recommend they navigate that?
Joshua Lastine
So, know who you’re getting into bed with first and foremost, but anyone who has any level of sophistication at a high-level producer status is probably going to ask you to sign those forms. You know, I’ve represented a lot of SNL writers and SNL actors throughout the days, and the moment they step on set, they have to sign an idea release submission form saying it same thing, if you want to be a writer in the John Oliver room, or the Daily Show, or whatever, the second you step on set, the ideas are free flowing, and they’re going to be free to be used by the company or if you see substantially something similar years down the line. This is just an idea incubator, and you’re releasing all claims there too. So, know who you’re getting into bed with if it’s somebody extremely shady, you know, maybe you don’t want to do it if they don’t have like a particularly great track record. But if it’s you know, someone with a little bit of cachet. Again, path of least resistance, don’t set yourself up for failure by being like, ‘Oh, I’m too good to sign this.’ Again, odds are your idea is not that new or novel or original as you think it is.
Ashley
Yeah. Are there any red flags that you could sort of point to things that you’ve seen that you would really consider red flags in a release form that might clue writers in that maybe this is a shady producer?
Joshua Lastine
No, I can’t say that I’ve ever seen anything that particularly stands out as shady in that way.
Ashley
A lot of times, I’ll see language that seems really broad, like, you know – We’re in the motion picture business. So, we are coming contact with ideas all the time. So, if we produce something that is similar to your thing, it’s not because we stole your ideas, and you release us of any things and that you have to pay 1000 … most will pay you $1,000.
Joshua Lastine
That’s just standard lawyer language. And, you know, again, if it’s Jordan Peele sharing an idea with Ron Howard, they’re going to have their attorneys go back and forth and negotiate that thing to death or whatever, but the average producer who has one of those submission release, it’s going to say, more or less, the same thing is going to be overly broad, because they want to protect themselves from the – hey, I wrote Armageddon, and you wrote Deep Impact, we’re going to sue each other.
Ashley
So, what about option agreements? And I know the proper answer is to always get a lawyer before you sign a legal document. But one of the things that I have encountered myself as a screenwriter, and I get a lot of emails from other screenwriters out there, a lot of these independent films that are getting made, they’re optioning a script, but the option payments might be $500 for a year, so there’s really no money to hire a lawyer and look at them. Just what do you suggest to people when they’re a new writer, they’re getting an option agreement sent, the producer likes their script, but they don’t have you know, they’re only going to get $500 from this option agreement. So there’s really no money to go and pay a lawyer. How do you navigate that? What is your advice for those folks?
Joshua Lastine
So, my first piece of advice is always if someone’s going to try to buy your script and give you a contract, I would really always try to bake your legal fees into that price. And I think you can be straight up forward and honest with the producer and say – Hey, I’m going to have to go out and hire an attorney. Can we up this by whatever, he’s going to charge me and they’ll say, you know, go get a bill from a lawyer and we’ll figure it out, but nine times out of 10 that’s usually how the conversation will go. Because, you know, we’re going to charge some money, but if it’s just a one off, we’re going to review this thing with you very quickly. It can be as cheap as 500 bucks in some instances. Let me let me put it this way. If it is your baby, if this screenplay is your flesh and blood and pound and sweat and tears, and you birthed the screenplay with all effort and force, and you’re just really proud over the moon of the screenplay, go get an attorney, just suck up the money and take the expense. If it’s something, you’re kind of like – hey, it’d be great. If this gets made, it’d be great if I get a pay day. But ultimately, it’s not going to make or break my career or, you know, keep some level of perceptiveness about it, hey, you know, I don’t get paid 3000 bucks or 500 bucks or whatever, you know, it’s not the end of the world, then maybe you don’t necessarily need to go out and hire an attorney.
Ashley
Gotcha. And same thing.
Joshua Lastine
You guys are writers you have just like, you know, I majored in creative writing in college, it was kind of what I do is creative writing. So, you know, sit down and read the contract and see if there’s anything that screams out to you.
Ashley
Can you just run through it again, this sort of goes back to my red flags question on release forms, but are there some things in an option agreement that is right or really should be in there, and then some things that should not be in there?
Joshua Lastine
You always want to make sure that there’s some sort of reversion, if for whatever reason, they exercise the option fee, and they pay you the screenplay fee but they just sits on the shelf somewhere, you’re going to want to be able to take that out someday, and be able to resell it. So, make sure that there’s a reversion clause, make sure you’re paying attention not only to the fees themselves, and the dollar amounts, but the timing of those payments. You know, you want to make sure you’re getting your option fees right away, and they’re paid within five days of signing the option agreement, if it’s the purchase price, they need to pay it upon exercise no later than the startup principle photography, you want to try to maintain your credit, or if you’re WGA, your credit will be protected. If you’re not WGA, you want to insist that the credits are determined using WGA rules. That’s a pretty easy give for most people to be in compliance with.
Ashley
Now, you mentioned that but I had a producer pushback on that, with the WGA things, basically saying, as a writer who’s never been in the WGA, putting that in the cause. I’m not a WGA writer in the WGA is not going to put me through their arbitration process. And in fact, it could potentially hurt me in the sense is, I’m not in WGA. And if they go and hire a WGA writer, and it says in my contract, you’re the WGA standards, or whatever, the WGA, for sure, is not going to give me any credit, because I’m not a WGA writer, no matter how even if I’ve written 99% of that script, their arbitration process does not actually arbitrate non-WGA writers. So, this was something that a producer told me, it was actually I take that back, it was a producer/manager, he was my manager at the time, and he didn’t want that in my contracts for this reason.
Joshua Lastine
You know, I had never heard that before. And I negotiate a lot of these deals on both sides of the table, both on behalf of the writers and be on behalf of the studios and producers that do the option agreement. And for nine times out of 10, every non-WGA writer I’ve done a deal for you know, we’ve in some way, shape or form guaranteed the very least the determination, how do I say… the process that the WGA would use to determine credits that the producer would use a similar process. I’ve never heard that before. But so, I’ll have to research.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, gotcha. So, as I said this was just my manager, that was just his concern, is that not being the WGA? He was skeptical that the WGA would ever give me any credit, not being in the WGA. And I think it even says in their bylaws. I think if you read their arbitration process, a non-WGA writer won’t can’t get WGA credit, but don’t quote me on that anyway. So, what about finding legal representation? I get a lot of questions on this, you know, be someone in Nebraska, they don’t have an agent. They don’t have a manager, they don’t know anybody that knows someone. But they have a script, they’ve won a contest. They’ve got some producers may be interested in optioning their script. How do you find an attorney that you can work with? You know, what are the questions you should be asking these lawyers? And just what should you look for in an entertainment lawyer?
Joshua Lastine
Yeah, so I mean, again, it’s 2024. We’re all reachable by several modes of communication. The first thing you want to do is just jump on Google and just start looking for an entertainment lawyer. Obviously, if you’re looking in the LA or New York areas, you’re going to get a more experienced or more seasoned entertainment lawyer, but you’re probably going to be paying a little bit higher of a price for it. So, you take that into consideration. The number one thing that I think is important when in determining a lawyer is your relationship with that lawyer and how you guys work together and the general vibe of it all. It’s not too dissimilar from dating, this is a relationship that hopefully will be, you know, continuing on indefinitely for a very long time. And you want to make sure you’re getting into bed with the right person on both sides of the table and make sure that your personalities match, and that each party’s expectations will be met. If you have the expectation that your lawyer is going to be there 24/7, then the attorneys got an expectation they here to be able to pay for that.
Ashley
So, one of the things that came across in your bio was, you’ve done some deals with Netflix and Amazon. And I’m curious again, I get a lot of emails from writers they’re always asking, oh, I got this this script and it’d be perfect for Netflix. How can I get in touch with Netflix? And I’ve never sold anything to Netflix so but my understand my guess is there’s production companies that are totally independent from Netflix, but have a relationship with Netflix, you would option your script to them they would take it to Netflix. But just walk us through one of those deals. What can a writer expect if they get to a production company that has that deal with Netflix? And is going to take your package in there? What is it? Is it WGA minimum? Is it way above WGA minimum? Just what where would a writer sort of land and something like that?
Joshua Lastine
So, it drastically varies on the type and style of content. Like a Hallmark movie is not going to be the same as a big sci fi whatever, or a TV show is not going to be the same as a three hour epic or whatever. So, take that all into consideration. The thing about trying to get into a Netflix or Amazon is that you want to find like you said someone who regularly sells to Netflix or Amazon and it would seem to me the most obvious thing to do is find producers who are already creating content that are in line with whatever your particular story or brand is because it’s going to be you know, it you’re not going to sell a horror something to Hello Sunshine, right? Not necessarily but loose example. So, find those shows are those films on Netflix or on Amazon that have similar themes, budgets, producers, cast to look feel and vibe to what you’re going for, find out who produced them and who sold them to Amazon and start pitching there.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah sound advice.
Joshua Lastine
I really tell people to like pick your top five favorite things and look and see who produced them. And don’t look at the top guy on the totem pole. Look at like the third or fourth guy… they’re going for their next deal.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. And sound advice and for sure all that information is on IMDb Pro so people can have a membership there. So, let’s talk about social media for a minute. Twitter, Tik Tok, YouTube, these are all great, I feel great avenues for writers to get stuff out there. So how can you protect your stuff? If you do like a 45 second joke on tick tock, what is your protection on something like that?
Joshua Lastine
Very minimal. Jokes have very minimal protection. But you know, it’s very hard to say that I’m the only one that has ever told this joke. And I created this joke from inception and not find some sort of instance of somebody throughout all of history also telling a similar joke. So, jokes have very minimal protection to the extent you’ve done something truly unique in original work of authorship, I’m sure there are instances where you can get copyright protections in a joke you make creating a joke book of some sort. But you know, be aware that your average Tik Tok dance, your average Tik Tok meme, your average, whatever, you know, that you’re posting online, can be potentially stolen and reproduced at nauseam, and the burden is on you then to A) bring a lawsuit and b) prove that you have copyright protection. Most people I know are not taking their Tik Tok clips, going to the copyright registration office filing them for protection, even if they do have common law protection is really, you know, you’re not going to get damages per se, unless you file for federal protection. So again, you know, a great case in point I’m writing a fantasy novel/animated series of my own design and making, and I posted a bunch of images that I created via mid journey or real engine or whatever the heck it’s called. The AI stuff, and you know, like, is there a risk that someone can take one of my characters and use it for something? Sure. But ultimately, these are probably the very rudimentary sketches of these particular characters, and you know, my final version of them and someone else’s final version of them and my ideation of them and their ideation. them are going to actually be wildly different when they finally come out. They don’t know what my story in my subjective head. So, I wouldn’t be too concerned with overly sharing things on Tik Tok or social media. I mean, like, if you’re in a confidentiality agreement, if you have something in development and you know, there’s paperwork saying you can’t post things, then sure, absolutely. But I think social media is a great way to create a brand identity. And you know, going back to your website, and kind of what it is this podcast and what you do selling your screenplay, I really, truly believe that no matter what you do in this world, in 2024, you have to have some sort of online brand, some sort of online presence, some sort of online cloud personality, that people can go quickly google and search and find out very quickly who you are, and what you’re all about. You know, going back again, to the idea of selling your screenplay, one of the things that I don’t think writers do enough, is study kind of the entrepreneurship side of being a screenplay writer in that, you know, there are a million books on how to pitch things. Pitching an idea on Shark Tank is not too dissimilar from pitching an idea to a room of producers. Yes, the settings and the subject matter are different, but the same sort of, you know, skill sets will apply. And reading things going back as early as Plato’s rhetoric to How to Win Friends and Influence People, the art of the pitch, pitching perfect, you know, there’s a million pitch books out there that aren’t specific to screenplay writing pitching, but are just good entrepreneurial pitching books, I’d recommend that that writers spend some time researching those.
Ashley
Yeah, for sure. And that really was my whole sort of angle with selling your screenplay, there’s a million books on how to write a screenplay. But I never found a lot of resources on sort of the business stuff and how to actually go about selling it. So that has been our focus. So just taking a step back, I’d like to just get sort of your take on writers, I get a lot of emails from writers. And in my humble opinion, they’re being way too cautious with sending their stuff out. And I always tell people, and I’m saying this not in any way, being facetious, I will literally send one of my screenplays to anybody that wants to read it, because I just say that anybody who’s willing to take time out of their day to read one of my spec scripts, just I’m happy to send it to him. But a lot of people are just so concerned people are going to steal the idea or steal or do this or go into this this just maybe you can talk us through that a little bit. Just how can writers what should writers be doing? And can you be too cautious to prevent your stuff from even getting out there?
Joshua Lastine
Again, I’m a firm believer that even if somebody steals your idea, you’re going to be able to make your idea and make it your own particular thing. Like you know, the number of not documentaries, but scripted narrative, true life, TV shows or films about Pablo Escobar, or the Sackler family, or you know, like any of these things you can have, you know, three different TV shows about oh, who was the girl, Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Olsen just both played that candy girl in two separate series that almost debuted in premiered at the exact same time. Both of them were fantastic and brilliant. Both of them were wildly different. But both of them got made. I hesitate to believe that anyone out there has just such a rockstar idea that it can be stolen and that you’ll never be able to produce it again. Like I don’t know who’s sitting on that idea, but I would like to meet them. So yes, I think that you can be extremely overly cautious and overly protective. Again, going back to the idea of sending people NDAs before they read your screenplay, there’s no screenplay, I want to read that bad. And nine times out of 10 I’m not even really interested so much in reading the screenplay as much as I am the overall idea and hook because screenplays can get rewritten a million times over. But tell me your vision. Tell me what this is and sell it to me in that way, way before you ever sell it to me on paper.
Ashley
So, I just like to wrap up the interviews by asking the guest if there’s anything you’ve seen recently that you could recommend to her mostly screenwriting audience anything on Netflix, Hulu, HBO, anything you’ve been watching that you can recommend?
Joshua Lastine
It’s funny because my wife and I, we had COVID the last couple of weeks, so we spent a lot of time in bed watching television and stuff like that, and then over the Christmas period as well. We’re finding that we’re going back to the network villain of the week 24 Episode style TV shows, you know, suits we’re rewatching, Arrow and The Flash and Smallville and stuff like that. We’re finding that, you know, once upon a time, people watched TV, just to enjoy TV and just have something on and it didn’t need to be this cathartic, emotional or visceral experience. It was just good old fashioned TV fun. So, I encourage all of your viewers to go out and find a hidden gem TV show or something, a 24-episode, traditional style, you know, network TV show and just enjoy television and film because I people don’t enjoy the art of TV and film enough. And we need to get back to that. There was a point in time where people just went to the movies to see too hot naked bodies on screen, doing stupid stuff. I want to get back to that era.
Ashley
Good. So yeah, it’s almost a lost art, the 24-episode TV show. What’s the best way for people to keep up with what you’re doing? Anything you’re comfortable sharing Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, your website. I’ll round up I’ll put in the show notes so people can click over to it.
Joshua Lastine
So definitely follow us Lastine law on Instagram. Also, check out our website at www.lastineentertainmentlaw.com, I do a lot of podcasts. I do a lot of posts. Follow us on LinkedIn, follow Lastine Entertainment Law or Joshua Lastine on LinkedIn. That’s the best way to find me professionally. But yeah, you know, again, 2024, we’re all we’re all easily viewable at this point.
Ashley
Perfect. Perfect. Well, Joshua, I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to come and chat with me. It’s been very informative interview, I’m sure screenwriters going to get a lot out of this. So, I really appreciate it.
Joshua Lastine
I love it. Thank you, Ashley, thank you, audience for having me. Appreciate it.
Ashley
Thank you. So, we’ll talk to you later. Bye.
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On the next episode of the podcast, I’m going to be interviewing William Eubank who is an indie filmmaker, and he’s got a just a great passion for filmmaking really comes out in the interview. One of his early projects was actually a contained sci-fi story set in a spaceship that he personally built the set for in his parent’s backyard. It’s an incredible story. So, we talk about that, and how all that came together for him. And then we also dig into his latest film, which is a feature film called Land of Bad starring Liam Hemsworth and Russell Crowe. It’s a film that he directed and also co-wrote with so we dig into that project, how it all came together, where the idea came from, how he ultimately got it greenlit and produced and got himself on as a director. So that will be next month. And as mentioned, I’m only publishing an episode now once a month instead of once a week so that episode with William will publish on the first day of April which will be April 1st. So, keeping an eye out for that episode that’s the show, thank you for listening.