Book Adaptation Rights Market Coming to Venice

The Venice Production Bridge, a popular festival and conference for film and TV production, will host its eleventh annual Book Adaptation Rights Market this September to drive networking opportunities between publishers and producers.

Book adaptations are an increasingly popular way of creating new film productions. Netflix, for example, reported in 2025 that its book-based titles had over nine billion global views. 

“As demonstrated by the growing presence of literary adaptations at major international festivals and on global streaming platforms, adaptations are no longer an exception but a central component of the contemporary content landscape,” the Market’s brochure reads. 

The Market will host 30 publishers, publishing houses, and literary agents, from nine different countries this year. They will showcase their catalogues and network with production companies to potentially drive film and TV adaptations of books. Around 1,400 producers will be attending.

Pascal Diot, the head of the Venice Production Bridge, said in a phone call that the unique part of the Market is that publishers come with a variety of books, not just one or two offerings. This allows producers to get a feel for the publisher as a whole, and to develop longer-term relationships. 

“It’s a win-win situation for both the producers and the publishers, because automatically the publisher has to know exactly what the producer is looking for, what kind of things he's interested in, and he will always have something to propose to him,” Diot said. 

When selecting publishers, the organizers always aim for variety. 

“Quality is always the first thing,” Chiara Marin, the Market’s coordinator, said. “Then of course, we try to maintain a balance between countries and also between genres.” 

“We also try to get a balance between big publishing groups and smaller ones,” Diot said. “We have, of course, big publishing countries like France, Italy, Germany, but we are also taking some small countries like Georgia, or Greece, or Taiwan, in order to give the producer also an opportunity to see other cultures.” 

The Market will run from September 4 to September 6, 2026, in Venice, Italy. Options for book adaptations can take multiple years to be legally nailed down, so deals aren’t always directly made there, but numerous projects have come out of it in the past.

“ With this kind of programs, maybe they start here to speak with them, and then they develop over the years. So it’s always a little harsh to say they signed it here,” Marin said. “But at least they get in touch for the first time here.”