Bestselling American author, Jonathan Lethem, has revealed the unusual terms of a film option deal he has planned for his new novel, You Don’t Love Me Yet, which was published in the US on 13 March. Under the conditions of the deal, he will not receive a hefty upfront fee for the rights to his manuscript. Instead, the filmmakers must pay him 2% of the film’s budget as soon as it secures a distribution deal, meaning that the sum he receives will depend entirely on the winning studio’s fiscal strategy. But by far the most unconventional clause is that, five years after the film’s US premiere, all rights to the story will be released into the public domain.

In Lethem’s words, published on his website: ‘… after a [five year] waiting period during which those rights would still be restricted, anyone who cared to could make any number of other kinds of artwork based on the novel’s story and characters, or the film’s: a play, a television series, a comic book, a theme park ride, an opera – or even a sequel film or novel featuring the same characters. For that matter, they can remake the film with another script and new actors.’

Although Lethem will retain copyright of the text and the studio will continue to own distribution rights for the film, the actual content will be up for grabs. The move is sure to stir controversy in the artistic world, particularly among other authors who more specific about protecting their rights in option deals, ensuring that revenue streams of determined values will reach them for much longer time periods. However, Lethem – whose career exploded into the mainstream in 1999 with the publication of his offbeat cop thriller, Motherless Brooklyn – has defended his course of action:

‘Lately I’ve become fitful about some of the typical ways art is commodified. Despite making my living (mostly) by licensing my own copyrights, I found myself questioning some of the particular ways such rights are transacted, and even some of the premises underlying what’s called intellectual property. I read a lot of Lawrence Lessig and Siva Vaidhyanathan, who convinced me that technological progress …  made this a particularly contemporary issue.’

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