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How does it work? If Palladium Books owns the IP and contracts it out to a movie studio does Palladium Books have any say in what is done with the movie? Do they get say on writers, actors, the script, or any of that? My assumption is no but it could depend on the contract too. Anyone know if Kevin has ever talked about this before?

Don't know specifics about the Palladium deal, but generally when you accept a movie option you don't get much creative control, especially if it's not a super well-known property. Harry Potter would be treated with different respect for the originator of the material than, say, the Breachworld RPG. I assume in the case of Rifts, Palladium Books and/or Kevin would get producing credits.

Studios don't pay tens of thousands of dollars (at least) to be told how they're going to monetize the property.

I'm with Jason on this. Most of the time you are selling the use of the characters/setting/whatever for a set period of time and do not have tons of control.

JK Rowling had almost no input on the Harry potter series until after her (4th or 5th, I forget which) book had come out, and all had been #1 best sellers.

To be honest, at this point I'm wondering what kind of tenure the deal Kevin & Palladium has or had with Bruckheimer. Even if the contractuals agreed to say that Jerry Bruckheimer has, say, ten years to do as he will eventually with the IPs owned by Palladium regarding Rifts, I don't think Kevin would lease out Rifts like that forever. Look at the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a perfect example of Palladium licensing Eastman & Laird's work: eventually, keeping Palladium involved with the TMNT IPs wasn't something that Kevin wanted to maintain. That's not to say Jerry Bruckheimer doesn't want to eventually do something with or like Rifts as much as short of paying Palladium Books a 'keeper fee' to keep Rifts' IPs available every time the clock ticks down on the end of said control, but I suspect that Kevin would eventually not want to have Rifts sitting on Bruckheimer's back burner as a 'maybe' that's just an asset to be used or not someday.

But whatever agreement exists between Palladium and Bruckheimer is none of my business. Here's to another year of Rifts being Rifts as the awesome game it is!

-Boe.