Juergen Boos, President and CEO of Frankfurt Book Fair, has said the event has plans to expand its remit to launch an official network of market-focused events at film festivals across the world to promote and facilate book to screen adaptations.
Boos, Frankfurt’s longtime director, made the announcement this morning during an industry session at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where he broke down the event’s decades-long journey to embracing and promoting film adaptations.
“Years ago, we created a book-to-screen day in Frankfurt, and one day is not enough anymore. We have to extend it to 2 days,” Boos told the crowd in KV. “We’ve now done book-to-screen at Berlinale and Prague.”
Boos added: “Our idea right now is to build a network of book-to-screen events worldwide, working with the film festivals. We are now talking to the Toronto Film Festival, the Busan Film Festival in Korea, and the Venice Biennale.”
Boos continued to say his vision behind the idea is to provide the network of producers and rights holders working between cinema and literature with the “information according to the standards they want.”
“This is what we are working on right now, and we have a lot of partners. We are talking with German Films, but also the people at the Gotham Institute in New York,” he added.
The Frankfurt Book Fair is the publishing world’s premier market event. Over the years, Frankfurt has had a steady presence in the film world. The Books at Berlinale pitch event was launched in 2006 and features 10 selected publishers and agencies who pitch their titles to 200 European film producers. Frankfurt is also the official partner of the Cannes Market’s ‘Shoot the Book’ event. The Venice Film Festival also hosts seperate book adaptation market, which celebrates it’s 10th edition during this year’s Biennale.
This year, Frankfurt will launch ‘Book-to-Screen’ formats with its partners at the book fairs in Brussels and Thessaloniki and has a presence here at Karlovy Vary.
Karlovy Vary runs until July 12.
