ABSTRACT
From a legal perspective, writing a screenplay by ourselves is the easiest scenario. Problems with collaborators typically occur over issues of screenplay ownership, the sharing of profits and expenses, and how to decide whether to accept offers for the screenplay's purchase. Under US copyright law, unless they have a contract that says otherwise, script writers who work together writing parts of the same script may be considered joint authors. The ownership of rights is often affected by which author came up with the idea on which the screenplay is based. Joint authors have certain rights under copyright law; if the authors want to change these rights, they need to do so by a contract between them, such as a writers’ collaboration agreement.
