I understand that someone might be a valuable firsthand source to get interesting details and core pieces of a real story right. But how can someone secure the movie rights or book rights from them? Stuff happening to you doesn’t exactly mean you’ve created something and should have copyright, or does it?
You’re basically asking about the difference between an authorized vs unauthorized biography.
If you sell the rights, that’s just getting some nominal fee in exchange for your participation in the process. You may have insights and knowledge of certain events that aren’t easy to find without your help, so some media production company may pay for you to fill in those gaps.
None of that is strictly necessary, though. Anyone can write about anyone else, so long as they aren’t making false claims about the source, or making other negligently false claims of fact. (Don’t do false advertising or libel.)
Libel is pretty hard to prove. Historically, you can probably get away with a little libel to sell books, fyi. But you didn’t hear it from me.
Usually what makes it worth it is if the person in question has any works under copyright. It is usually fair game to make an unauthorized biography of a politician since very little of their public work is protected. In contrast, various artists, especially singer-songwriters, generally need to have their works be official since the copyright holders want control over how the artist is portrayed.
Write a manuscript or first draft of your memoir or autobiography. Contact publishers and if they like it or it has meaningful themes and they might make a profit off of it, they will do business with you. But memoirs are the most common type of manuscript these days. I tried getting my foot in the door but never received anything but rejection letters. You have to be persistent.
I think the question is more like, why should anyone have to pay to make a book/movie about things that happened to you.
Oh, I missed it.
Anyone sending original manuscripts gets rejected 99% (or more) of the time. You stand a better chance self publishing, but it’s serious work.
You have a right to your name, image and likeness. If someone makes a movie about your life and doesn’t pay you, you can sue them for damages. Here’s an example law, the one that covers my state.
Someone has to be willing to buy it, first off. Usually what you’re selling is a script or book that you wrote, though. Not necessarily the details of your life itself.
It’s complicated.
As I understand it, the short form is that the same laws that keep a corporation from taking photos of you in public and using your face and name to sell their product also make it hard for a movie company to tell the story of Erin Brokovoch or Queen without their permission. Not impossible, just “hard” – so hard that it’s often cheaper to just get permission and be done with it.
Part of it is likeness rights, part of it is defamation, and part is just the threat of an expensive lawsuit.
