The Difference Between Original Screenplays and Adapted Screenplays

Nothing!

What is the difference between writing an original screenplay, on one hand, and adapting a script based upon material from another medium, for example a novel?

The answer: No difference.

In each instance the goal is the same: Deliver to the audience the best movie you can.

As a film school professor I was expected to loathe that thing called ‘Hollywood,’ in particular its obsession with profit, and its purported nepotism, as if the entertainment industry stands alone regarding family connections and the bottom line. Does not the dry cleaners at your corner focus first and foremost upon the bottom line? How about, say, Sentry Insurance, or General Motors, or U-Name-It?

It’s called ‘the bottom line’ because everything stands on it.

If you don’t meet the bottom line, everything falls apart.

Stating this over the years has earned me substantial disrepute among scholars, critics, pundits, and snobs. I have been pejoratively characterized an apologist, a company man shilling for bloody, rapacious, evil, money-grubbing Hollywood.

It’s not entirely untrue.