We've just had a thing with Sherlock Holmes. 2 films, the Sherlock and elementary series and now enola Holmes, despite Sherlock Holmes being near (in copyright

We've just had a thing with Sherlock Holmes. 2 films, the Sherlock and elementary series and now enola Holmes, despite Sherlock Holmes being near (in copyright terms) the end of copyright. So that would tend to disprove the thesis. Plus it suggests that having the author on board is valueless. Would you want to pay the author a fee and get them on board, or do you want them bad mouthing your new film? Further, any author that writes a book with any legitimate expectation that it's going to be made in to a film is probably successful enough already. JK Rowling probably wasn't expecting a film deal. She wrote the books without that expectation. I'm interested in a copyright that encourages and allows her to write books, not make her into a multimillionaire. If anything her success means she can write less books. Is that a good thing? I'm not in favour of keeping her in penury, but copyright should be about allowing them to work, not make it so they can stop.