Tom Clancy: Sellout, or did he just lose creative control?

Commercial | Self

[Liberty Tree Surgeon]

Has anyone caught the previews for the movie, "The Sum of All Fears"? In it, they specifically tell the audience that the evil terrorists are European neo-nazis. I refer you to Yahoo! Movies for a brief description to this effect.

The only problem with this is that in the book, the terrorists responsible for blowing up the Super Bowl are Islamic Fundamentalists working out of Lebanon.

So, did Clancy sell out, or sell the film rights without keeping a degree of creative control?

LTS

[oldvike]

He has said time and again that he sells the rights to his movies with no questions asked. He has absolutely NO CONTROL over the movie.

[FreeperinRATcage]

I've been wondering this myself. Always thought Clancy was of conservative bent...not so sure now.

[fuente]

Well that might change after this movie.

[oldvike]

I certainly hope so. This is a disgrace what Hollywood is doing to his book.

[Conan the Librarian]

If I remember the story right....I read it years ago....the islamic terrorist were working with East German Terrorist. Will have to see the movie to see how bad they trash it.

[SuziQ]

He sold the rights to the book, and when he does that he effectively loses control of what the authors want to do with it for the screen. It was egregious with 'Clear and Present Danger'. They left some of the best parts of the book out of that movie! I loved the characters of Portagee, and Buck, and Buck's family. The family would have been a great story line in a movie, but now they can't use them because no one would know who they are!

I may have to go see the movie anyway, but I'll re-read the book first!

[Liberty Tree Surgeon]

An East German communist terrorist. But we cannot have the good name of Marx besmirched. The director's Hollywood cronies wouldn't approve.

LTS

[Revolting cat!]

"Tom Clancy is the most successful American bad writer since James Fenimore Cooper"

-- Christopher Buckley in the New York Times Book Review (quoted from memory.)

[Chemnitz]

I think at this stage he could have maintained some creative control. Maybe not for the first one, but surely later. They need content in Hollywood.

Maria von Trapp signed away all rights to her story, so people made millions and she was powerless. But she did that willingly, yet complained later. "The Sound of Mucous" was first a hit in German, then copied in English.

[brbethke]

It's the way Hollywood works. Unless you're Michael Crichton or Stephen King, once you sell film adaptation rights, you pretty much lose all control over what happens to the subsequent film. I know of writers who've sold their books to Hollywood and in the final reel, only the title of the book remained unchanged.

[SamAdams76]

Clancy was interviewed on C-SPAN a couple months ago and this very question came up concerning "Sum Of All Fear." Clancy just smiled into the camera and said that he sells movie rights "for the money" and he couldn't care less what liberties the movies companies took with his book so long as he got his check. So if Clancy doesn't care that Hollywood is bastardizing his novels, why should we?

[PLK]

Don't you guys get it yet. It's the evil white mans fault for everything.

Time to send everyone to RockyD's movie reviews.

Click here for un-P.C. movie reviews

[michaelt]

I coulda swore that I saw Clancy's name on the credits as they flashed by during the commercial. I think he's an Executive Producer on this one.

It's too bad he gives up creative control - maybe he got a producer credit in exchange for that. It could mean more bucks for him.

Maybe even the leftist Hollywood types who are connected with this movie would have liked all the hype surrounding this movie had it stuck to the book and pissed off Arabs (and Native Americans, I might add.) Any publicity is good publicity, you know.

[SamAdams76]

I agree that Clancy is a pretty bad writer. A hack, even. His attempts to get Jack Ryan's wife and kids into the flow of the stories are downright embarrassing. Cathy Ryan is a joke. I mean, here is Jack Ryan putting in 100+ hour weeks with the CIA and his wife somehow manages to raise perfect children while working at John Hopkins as their top eye surgeon. Yeah, right!

But he comes up with some good plot lines and his technical research is top-notch, especially with respect to military tactics and gadgetry.

[brbethke]

Ah, I get it! Jack Ryan is actually ....

Buckaroo Banzai!

[brbethke]

Crichton is an unusual case. He's been known to sell the film rights before even writing the book. I've heard rumors that he considers the films to be the real deals, and the books are just throwaways he cranks out to milk a little more money out of the film deals.