NORMAN SPINRAD OFFERS HIS ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY FOR BUG JACK BARRON, called “One of the 100 greatest films never made,” on Amazon after 4 decades:
http://www.amazon.com/JACK-BARRON--screenplay-Norman-Spinrad-ebook/dp/B007BGPL64/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1329838703&sr=1-1
(free of charge February 24, 25, 26)
This is the orginal screenplay adaptation of BUG JACK BARRON I wrote way back in the 1970s under an indie option which never got picked up. Several options later, BUG JACK BARRON, the novel, was optioned by one Gary Weis, who sold the option to Universal.
With the option running out, Universal exercised it, that is, bought the rights to make the film, for Costa Gavras, with a screenplay by Harlan Ellison. For whatever reasons, they didn’t like the Ellison screenplay, or several others, including this one. Costa Gavras fell out of the project, and the film has yet to be made, though many, many directors, and producers have tried to get the the rights from Universal.
Despite all these attempts, Universal has sat on the film rights to BUG JACK BARRON for decades with no explanation. Recently I asked them to produce a copy of the contract that supposedly gave them the rights to hold onto the film rights to the novel forever.
No response. It was once even suggested to me by a producer that I should direct the film from this screenplay. This stiuation was even written up in a book called THE 100 GREATEST FILMS never made.
However, what was not in that book is the apparent reason why Universal is trying to hold onto the film rights to BUG JACK BARRON even though they have no intention of making the film, even though serious directors, producers, and so forth have repeatedly tried to purchase the rights to do it.
What I have recently learned is that the reason for this is that as long as the studio can claim that the BUG JACK BARRON project is technically “active” they can use it as an overhead deduction for tax purposes. This does not only apply to BUG JACK BARRON but to scores, perhaps hundreds, of “ghost projects” at Universal, and who knows how many industry-wide. Scores of millions of dollars of tax deductions are involved in this shady though apparently legal tax scam, maybe even hundreds of milions.
Which is why Universal has stone-walled agents, producers, directors, myself, and so forth demanding that they produce a copy of the contract--the underlying one with Gary Weis--giving them the film rights to BUG JACK BARRON in perpetuity, namely because they can’t. Instead they claim they don’t have too.
Which is one reason I am offering the screenplay on Amazon which I wrote under a previous option and to which Universal never had rights and which I do, even though the copy I was able to secure, written as it was on a manual typewriter decades ago, is not quite perfect. Because perhaps public exposure of this situation may somehow rectify it.
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