Producing : Securing The Right Rights For A Screenplay by Chan Cunningham

You need the rights anytime because its not yours. If you proceed I would take out the lyrics and replace them by your own writing or have AI come up with something. If you can't do that my advice is to go and talk to an entertainment lawyer that sort of fits the scope of your project. What your doing right now is thievery.

Thanks for the input. I wouldn't say this is thievery as I have merely written a spec script. I have not sold it, am not trying to sell it, have not produced it yet, and have no immediate plans to produce it. So my question is when I go to produce it, if I do, what rights do I need. And no way will I ever use AI for screenwriting in any capacity.

You are a producer states your profille and you have (though no immediate) plans to produce it. That's enough, my friend.

Dan MaxXx I don't think its necessarily about a fee, but about Springsteen or the owners greenlighting him to use his copyright protected song.

Dan MaxXx Willem Elzenga I know that there exists a set of screening rights that lets you use songs in your film but only for festivals. As soon as it moves to distribution though, you need the proper set of rights

Willem Elzenga I see what you mean, but I think you may be missing the point. I am trying to determine what rights I would need so that when I want to produce it, I can secure the rights and producing it wouldn't be theft. I think it's a combo of derivative work rights and sync rights, but I feel like there is another music related set of rights in there that I would need.

Your talking rights, but you need to own them.

Willem Elzenga Yes...I'm asking which rights to own. Just derivative works rights to own? And worry about the musical rights when going into production?

Chan Cunningham I wouldn't even develop it without securing the rights because, among other things, synchronization rights are "at large" meaning the copyright holder can charge literally anything they want - there is no standard sum. Also, unless you have actually secured those rights, no investor will likely be interested in talking, at all. That's just a hard fact, sorry to say. What we did on Eartha Kitt C'est Si Bon is actually get the copyright holder on board among our investment group.

As stated above, you'll want those rights in place before moving forward as the charge can change/be anything and once you've produced the film you're kinda stuck and have to pay whatever they ask or you're sunk. Also, it's good to know up front if you can't afford the rights and/or if they won't even engage/not interested, so you know if you need to rewrite it to fit with other music before investing too much time/effort/money.

Shadow Dragu-Mihai, Esq., Ipg Douglas Esper Thank you both! Yes I have no plans to develop it at the moment, was more so looking to see what to ask for when I do eventually communicate with the copyright holder. Had just written the spec for fun and wanted to make sure I could show people (friends and family) the script if I wanted to! Again, thank you both for your insight!

Chan, super cool. Here are a couple places to identify the rights holders and get info n some of the various licenses. Should help on the journey.

Harryfox.com (the Harry fox agency) has a search tool to determine who wrote the songs and which publishing rights service they use.

Ascap.com

Bmi.com

At those sites you can look up most songwriters/songs and find out who owns the publishing and get contact info.