Options and attachments: what you are actually buying
Short answer: an option buys time — an exclusive window in which you, and nobody else, may buy the rights on terms that are already fixed. An attachment buys nothing in the legal sense; it is a relationship you hope survives to production. Both get talked about as if they were acquisitions, and that misdescription is why a lot of projects turn up at financing holding less than the producer believes.
The option is the smaller of the two documents, and the less important one
A properly structured option is two documents that travel together: a short option agreement, and — attached to it as an exhibit — the fully negotiated purchase agreement that will be executed if the option is exercised.
The second one is the deal. The option agreement mostly sets a price and a clock.
The failure mode is optioning material against a purchase agreement that says "on terms to be negotiated in good faith." You have then bought an exclusive right to have an argument later, at the exact moment your leverage is lowest, with a financier waiting. Negotiate the purchase agreement first, attach it, and let the option do the only job it is good at.
What has to be in the option itself
The term, and the extensions. How long the initial period runs, how many extensions, what each costs, and whether the fee for each is paid before the prior period lapses. An option that lapses because a payment was late is a rights problem, not a bookkeeping problem.
Whether the fee applies against the purchase price. Usually the initial fee is applicable and extension fees are partly or wholly not. This is a negotiated point and it is worth real money on a long development cycle.
What you may do during the option period. Develop, rewrite, attach elements, shop the project, and — critically — whether you may commission a screenplay based on the material before exercise. That is a derivative-work licence and it needs to be granted expressly.
Exercise mechanics. Written notice, to whom, by when, and what constitutes payment. Then the purchase agreement signs, and a short-form assignment in recordable form gets delivered with it.
What you are buying is a derivative-work right
The reason an option to a novel matters is § 106(2): the copyright owner holds the exclusive right "to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work." And the § 101 definition of derivative work names the thing you intend to make — "a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version."
Adapting a book into a screenplay is exercising somebody's exclusive right. Doing it during an option period without an express development licence, or after the option lapses, is infringement dressed as enthusiasm.
Get it in writing, then record it
Section 204(a): a transfer of copyright ownership "is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such owner's duly authorized agent."
Then record the short-form assignment. Section 205(d) decides conflicting transfers: the earlier one prevails if recorded "within one month after its execution in the United States or within two months after its execution outside the United States, or at any time before recordation … of the later transfer." Otherwise the later transfer wins if it is recorded first, taken in good faith, for value, and without notice.
And the condition that defeats the unwary: § 205(c) gives constructive notice only where the document identifies the work adequately and "registration has been made for the work." Register, then record, then count the month.
Reserved rights are where the value actually sits
The purchase agreement should be explicit about what the author keeps. The usual reservations — publication, author-written sequels, stage, radio, and sometimes merchandising — are market terms, not statutory ones, and they vary enormously with leverage.
Two things to pin down whatever the split:
Holdbacks. For how long may the author not exploit the reserved rights in a way that competes with your picture? A reserved stage right with no holdback can put a competing production in front of your release.
Sequel, remake and series rights. These are frequently the real economics of a successful adaptation. Buying the feature and leaving the series right unaddressed is a negotiation you will reopen from a much worse position.
The termination overhang on any long-dated acquisition
An author's grant made on or after 1 January 1978 is terminable under § 203 in a five-year window opening 35 years after execution, and § 203(a)(5) provides that termination "may be effected notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary, including an agreement to make a will or to make any future grant." No waiver drafted into the grant itself survives that sentence. A later renegotiation is a different animal: in Milne v. Stephen Slesinger, Inc., 430 F.3d 1036 (9th Cir. 2005), the Ninth Circuit held that revoking an existing grant and issuing a new one was not "an agreement to the contrary," because Congress contemplated that parties could voluntarily terminate an existing grant and negotiate a replacement. Which makes the structure and timing of any regrant a diligence item in its own right.
For a picture in development this is remote. For a library acquisition, or a purchase of previously optioned material with a long history, it is a real diligence item — and the derivative-works exception in § 203(b)(1) means the existing film keeps running while new derivatives stop. Sequels are the exposure.
If you are a WGA signatory, the option is not entirely yours to price
The floors here run from the Company's signatory status, not the writer's Guild card, and they reach a narrower set of material than most producers assume. The 2026 Memorandum of Agreement describes the covered category as "Options of unpublished and unexploited literary material obtained from professional writers," and identifies the governing provisions as "the third paragraph of Article 13.A., Article 13.B.1.a., Article 16.A.3.d. and Article 16.B.3.i."
Unpublished and unexploited is doing real work in that sentence. Optioning a published novel sits outside these provisions. Optioning an unproduced spec screenplay from a credited writer does not.
On the numbers: the last Schedule of Minimums the Guild has posted is the 2023 schedule, which states for theatrical that the Company "may option literary material from a 'professional writer' for a period of up to 18 months upon payment of not less than 10% of minimum," with "not less than an additional 10% of minimum" for each renewal period of up to 18 months; and for television, "5% of minimum for an initial period of up to 180 days and thereafter 10% of minimum for each additional period of up to 180 days." The 2026 Basic Agreement term began in May 2026 and no 2026 schedule is posted as of this writing. Confirm the operative figures with the Guild before you rely on them.
Now the harder half: what an attachment actually is
An "attachment" is a director, a lead, or a producer who has agreed to be associated with the project. It is used in financing conversations as though it were an asset. It usually is not one.
A letter of intent is not a commitment. It is a statement of present interest, almost always conditioned on the script, the schedule, the money, and the person's availability — which is to say, conditioned on everything. Attaching a name to a deck is a marketing act.
Pay-or-play is the commitment. It is the point at which someone is entitled to their fee whether or not the picture is made, and it is the only version of an attachment that is genuinely bankable. It is also expensive, which is why so few real attachments exist at the development stage.
Exclusivity and dates are the useful middle ground. A holding period, a first-position commitment for a defined window, an agreed start date with consequences for a change — these cost less than pay-or-play and are worth more than a letter of intent. If you are being asked to treat an attachment as real, ask what happens if the person takes another job in March. The answer tells you what you have.
Get the paperwork at engagement. Performer agreements, and for a SAG-AFTRA production the signatory work, come first. The Guild's own guidance to producers is explicit: "All professional performers must be given an employment contract, W-4 Form and I-9 Form no later than the first day on the set," and its production pages advise submitting a signatory application "no less than 4-6 weeks before your first date of work." Budget tier matters — the Low Budget Theatrical Agreement covers "films shooting entirely within the United States with a total budget of less than $2,000,000," and the Ultra Low Budget Project Agreement sets a "maximum budget of $300,000."
A New York wrinkle worth knowing before someone "packages" your picture
New York licenses the business of procuring engagements for performers. Under General Business Law § 171(8), a "theatrical employment agency" is a person "who procures or attempts to procure employment or engagements for an artist," and the definition excludes "the business of managing entertainments, exhibitions or performances, or the artists or attractions constituting the same, where such business only incidentally involves the seeking of employment therefor."
That final clause is the whole test, and it is the clause most often left off when the exclusion gets quoted. A manager who is actively procuring the engagement is not incidentally seeking employment. Section 185(8) then caps the fee — for a placement in class "C" employment, "for a single engagement, ten per cent of the compensation payable to the applicant," with twenty per cent in the orchestra, opera and concert fields.
The line between a licensed agent and a manager packaging talent onto a project is a licensing question with real consequences for whoever is on the wrong side of it. It is worth knowing which one is standing across the table.
"Life rights" is a package, not a copyright
There is no copyright in a person's life, so there is nothing to assign. What you are actually buying is a bundle: a release and covenant not to sue, cooperation, access to materials, and where possible exclusivity.
The statutory piece in New York is the right of publicity. Civil Rights Law § 50 makes it a misdemeanour to use "for advertising purposes, or for the purposes of trade, the name, portrait, picture, likeness, or voice of any living person without having first obtained the written consent of such person," and § 51 supplies the civil action on the same terms. If you are reading older cases on this, read them carefully — § 50 was narrower than § 51 for years, and the two now run in parallel.
For deceased subjects, § 50-f creates a post-mortem right — and two gates do most of the work before you reach the merits. It reaches only a "deceased natural person domiciled in this state at the time of death," and no action lies for a use "occurring after the expiration of forty years after the death of the deceased personality." There is a third limit that matters for older subjects: the statute applies only to individuals who died on or after its effective date, computed from the enacting act as 29 May 2021 (L. 2020, ch. 304).
The digital replica provision is the part that has moved most recently. It reaches use of "a deceased performer's digital replica in an audiovisual work, sound recording, or for the live performance of a musical work" with knowledge that the use was unauthorised — which is broader than the audiovisual-only formulation it started with, and worth re-reading before any archival or de-aging work.
None of this displaces the defamation and false-light analysis that a biographical picture also needs. It is one part of the clearance, not the whole of it.
The short version
Negotiate the purchase agreement first and attach it to the option.
Get the development licence expressly — writing the screenplay is exercising a § 106(2) right.
Short-form assignment, in recordable form, delivered at exercise.
Register, then record, within the month.
Reserved rights and holdbacks in writing, with sequel and series rights addressed.
Treat attachments as what they are — and price the difference between a letter of intent and pay-or-play.
Life rights are a release package, cleared against §§ 50, 51 and 50-f, and against defamation exposure separately.
An option is cheap. What makes it valuable is the quality of the document sitting behind it.
Sources: 17 U.S.C. § 101 · 17 U.S.C. § 106 · 17 U.S.C. § 203 · 17 U.S.C. § 204 · 17 U.S.C. § 205 · Milne v. Stephen Slesinger, Inc., 430 F.3d 1036 (9th Cir. 2005) · WGA, 2026 Memorandum of Agreement · WGA, 2023 Schedule of Minimums (Optioned Material) · SAG-AFTRA, Low Budget Theatrical Agreement · SAG-AFTRA, Ultra Low Budget Project Agreement · SAG-AFTRA, Ultra Low Budget Producer's Guide · N.Y. General Business Law § 171 · N.Y. General Business Law § 185 · N.Y. Civil Rights Law § 50 · N.Y. Civil Rights Law § 51 · N.Y. Civil Rights Law § 50-f