Life rights: what you are actually buying

Nobody owns the facts of their own life, so a life rights deal does not transfer a copyright. What it transfers is three practical things: access and cooperation, a period of exclusivity, and a release of claims for defamation, false light, and right of publicity.

What a usable life rights agreement contains

• Cooperation obligations. Interviews, personal materials, photographs, correspondence, introductions to other subjects.
• A grant of the right to portray, including the right to fictionalize and to depict the subject in an unflattering light.
• A release and covenant not to sue covering defamation, privacy, false light, and publicity claims.
• Exclusivity with a term and a reversion, so you are not paying for a right that sits dormant while the project stalls.
• Consideration structured in steps — option payment, exercise payment, bonuses on production and on sale.

The part producers get wrong

Third parties. Your subject can release their own claims; they cannot release their ex-spouse's, their business partner's, or their late father's estate's. Map every identifiable living person in the script and decide, deliberately, which ones need paper and which ones you will handle through the fair-report and substantial-truth analysis.