I've been getting ready to tackle my very first screenplay ever, a biopic about a gambler/hustler from the 20's and 30's in the South. But then my husband brought up a very good point- Is this going to be a completely original screenplay, or am I wanting to make a screen adaptation of the biography that inspired this project? I'm fairly new at this area of writing, though I've got a strong theatre background and am very comfortable around stage and film scripts. What do you folks think? What challenges am I looking at with either option? Thanks in advance!
If you're adapting an existing biography for the screen you may have copyright issues to worry about. An original screenplay, on the other hand, won't give you that problem.
I think adaptations attract more audience, more of the reading kind at least. When we read "based on X book" we go like, "a-ha, interesting...".
Anybody could directly adapt a book, so I think you should take an original spin to justify it being you who writes the story. Plus isn't that more fun and satisfying as a writer than copying verbatim from one page to another? I'm writing a biopic about the 19th century Australian Tom Wills with robots thrown in. I had thought about adapting his story a couple or more years ago, but needed the anachronism as originality to motivate the effort. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wills