A Sci-Fi Romance Author’s Brush With Hollywood

Cover for Heather Massey’s steampunk romance A Tale of Two Thieves (A Villainous Affair #1)

Every so often, there’s discourse about adapting romance books into movies for theaters and television. Although periodic news emerges about romances that have been optioned—usually trad published books—it doesn’t always translate to the movies being made. At least the authors made more money for their books, so there’s that.

The reasons it’s nigh impossible to shepherd a romance from book to screen are many and varied. The main one is that Hollywood is mostly ruled by white men and studios helmed by men. They don’t have a track record of caring about or cultivating content geared towards women, other marginalized genders, BIPOC folks, and disabled people. Hollywood barely throws any crumbs to white female romance authors at the top of the publishing hierarchy, let alone anyone else. Color me surprised.

A related and major reason for the scarcity of romance book adaptations is the lack of gender diversity among filmmakers. According to Women and Hollywood:

1) Women account for 50% of moviegoers. (MPA 2019)

2) On the top 100 grossing films of 2019, women represented:

• 10.7% of directors

• 19.4% of writers

• 24.3% of producers

• 70.4% of casting directors

Clearly, the folks in charge of Hollywood studios aren’t handing out enough jobs to marginalized gender filmmakers. Unfortunately, this goes for white female studio executives as well. Solidarity is for the birds, I guess.

The hard truth is that those statistics aren’t conducive to routinely getting mainstream genre romance movies helmed by marginalized gender filmmakers made and distributed to theaters within the Hollywood system. Given the potential expense, sci-fi/fantasy/paranormal romances probably stand even less of a chance than contemporary/historical. Think about it this way: if dogs ruled Hollywood, they wouldn’t make many movies that would appeal to cats.

When barely 25% of producers are women—who are more likely to be interested in a genre romance film—romance authors can expect very few calls from Hollywood about optioning their books. At this rate, any books that do get made into films would be statistical outliers. Fun, huh?

This situation is discouraging because plenty of romances would make entertaining—and profitable—films. The problem isn’t the books; it’s the difficulty of pushing them through the pipeline, or even getting into the pipeline. And of the ones that have been adapted, the opportunity is usually given to white cis female romance authors first. Everyone else just needs to wait their turn. /sarcasm

Hollywood connections aren’t always what they seem

With the above issues in mind, I’m going to share an anecdotal story about a time Hollywood expressed interest in one of my self-published sci-fi romances. There are many paths to adapting a romance book, although it typically involves a literary agent shopping a trad published book to their counterparts in Hollywood. My path took another form altogether however, and reaching that point took decades. That said, my cautionary example is meant to illustrate what form a dead end can take in the film industry for a romance author.

The tale starts with a friend of mine. Really, it’s a friend—my best friend. For privacy purposes, I’m going to refer to this friend as they/them.

This friend has been an aspiring screenwriter for as long as I’ve known them. They’ve written many screenplays, two of which were produced. My friend, who is white, was also paid for script doctoring and writing TV commercials.

Their work eventually led to representation by a Hollywood-based manager (a white man). The company mostly manages actors, one of whom you’ve heard about because he starred in a popular Disney+ Marvel live-action show. Another actor the agency represents has starred in high-budget Netflix and Amazon series. In other words, my friend has legitimate representation.

Several years ago, my friend traveled to Los Angeles because their manager had scheduled meetings with several parties who had been impressed by their pilot script. It was a good development. Alas, the only thing that came out of that trip were some quirky stories about my friend’s experience of taking the meetings.

During that trip, my friend mentioned I was working on my steampunk romance saga A Villainous Affair. This was partly as a favor to me and also part of my friend’s routine habit of pitching material to their manager. Hollywood loves IP content, so why not? Neither of us had anything to lose.

The manager indicated he’d like to review the books after they were done because he knew European producers who were interested in European-set stories that had miniseries potential. AVA is set in England and is a serial story in novel form, so it fit the bill. Note: the manager’s interest wasn’t really about the story content; rather, he wanted to know if AVA answered his business need.

Fast forward several years later. My friend had a script on submission (a female lead in a western, for what it’s worth), but despite an auspicious start, interest had dwindled. By that time, I’d finished AVA.

As promised, my friend sent the books to his manager. Keep in mind that the manager had expressed interest. He could have said no at the time of the pitch, and I wouldn’t have boo-hooed over the “rejection” at all. Anyway, the manager briefly reviewed the material and indicated it looked promising.

An unexpected twist

Now here’s where it gets odd. The manager forwards the books to one of his other screenwriter clients, a white woman. No, he didn’t tell my friend about this plan up front. Then the manager asked her to review them with an eye towards adaptation for television. The manager even shared one of his client’s scripts, I suppose so my friend and I could familiarize ourselves with her work.

Meanwhile, my friend and I are like, ?????????

This was nothing like what my friend expected. They never assumed the manager would farm the job out to someone else—for no pay. And if he wasn’t going to pay someone, why not have my friend adapt it? They’d done a ton of work on spec already, so what’s one more?!

The manager didn’t indicate if he was trying to help his other client land a job out of this or what. But she should have been offered fair payment for what would have been a big, complex assignment (check out the AVA series primer if you don’t believe me!)

Upon initially reviewing the blurbs, she was excited by what she saw. But a very short time later, surprising no one, the client informed the manager that she wouldn’t have time to read the books or do anything associated with them. Which is, like, the right answer! I’m guessing the full weight of the work that would have been involved in adapting the books must have sunk in.

The last thing I wanted was for another female writer to provide unpaid labor for my own series. A series I myself wrote on spec—and could do so because of my significant privilege. But that doesn’t change the fact that the system (e.g., Hollywood, the trad publishing industry) unfairly pressures all kinds of writers to regularly work on spec. And so the devaluing of women’s art continued….

Another problem was that my books might not have been a good match for this screenwriter. If she’d been offered work-for-hire money, she might have taken the job. But to adapt a story one isn’t excited about for no pay is asking far too much.

Yikes all around.

And that’s how it ended. When the manager’s client set a boundary, the manager declined to move forward, apparently because he couldn’t get an initial pilot script done with free labor. But if he had, would he have put the project out on submission?

My “brush” with Hollywood demonstrates how easy it is for industry people to shut down a romance book adaptation before it even begins. My friend’s manager would have loved an effortless project to sell, but his plan depended on lots and lots of unpaid labor. Not cool.

This example doesn’t even touch all the other ways an adaptation can go sideways, but a big one is how the film industry routinely overlooks BIPOC romance authors. Most of the trad published ones (it seems) don’t even get film options.

For example, why couldn’t there have been a simultaneous series adaptation of a book by, say, legendary romance author Beverly Jenkins when Netflix’s Bridgerton was in development? Why wasn’t a Beverly Jenkins romance adapted way, way, way before Shonda Rhimes had even heard of Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series?

We all know why. Go back to Women and Hollywood and review the statistics. They paint a damning picture of Hollywood’s appalling lack of inclusivity. That’s the main reason why we’re seeing precious few romance book adaptations. Even if a book is a bestseller, few in Hollywood value the work because of who wrote the stories.

A call to action

Only power players from underrepresented groups will routinely deliver romance movies that underserved audiences (such as romance readers) crave. Here are some concrete ways you can help make that happen:

• Boost the efforts of aspiring underrepresented filmmakers (e.g., producers, directors, writers) on social media. Talk them up among your friends!

• Donate money to organizations that support marginalized filmmakers.

• Start/continue discussions everywhere you can about the need for more inclusivity in all areas of filmmaking.

• Share infographics to highlight the film industry’s disparities.

• Write to publishers about your favorite BIPOC/disabled author/LGBQT+ author and tell them how much you’d love to see movie/show adaptations of their books.

• Be proactive by seeking out and consuming romance book content by marginalized creators at all levels. Many are under-marketed and depend on readers taking the initiative to find them.

• Explore, consume, and support alternate sources of romance content by underrepresented creators, such as crowdsourced projects, social media, indie films, etc.

Together, over a long period of time, we can help make a difference and get the romance book adaptations we want and deserve.

Thanks for reading!

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Book 1 of A Villainous Affair, A Tale of Two Thieves, is affordably priced at $.99. Discover for yourself why the story piqued the interest of a Hollywood manager.

I heard that some folks use content warnings as a shopping list for books, so here are the ones for AVA. Given the story’s dark content, they’re also handy if you need to be an informed consumer before reading.

Or simply enjoy the gorgeous cover art by illustrator Elizabeth Peiró!

Covers for Heather Massey’s steampunk romance series, A Villainous Affair

View Elizabeth Peiró’s work at Art Station

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Treat yourself to one of her prints at INPRNT