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say I wanted to take a film and turn it into a broad choose your own story adventure? I say broad as in I know I may never finish it, but if I were to publish it, how open ended and full of variety must it be to avoid breaking any copyright rules, if even possible to avoid breaking such? And, as a last resort, would I have to completely avoid at least one version of the original film plot completely?

I am not a lawyer.

However, fan fiction is catagorized as a parody, which is covered under free speech laws. If you are writing a fan fiction and not expecting to generate revenue off of it, you are fine.

https://reason.com/2019/07/29/the-first-amendment-and-a-parody-of-a-police-department-web-page/
https://legalonline.blogspot.com/2011/04/parody-how-far-protected-speech.htm

But that doesn't have to do nothing with copyright infringement. Except this is a weird copyright infringement about pornography.

That's just Mizal's way of saying anything that Fic says should be ignored.

Thanks, I just come to read a game written in English advanced, so advanced  that I did n't know what it was about. So I was afraid have lost my sanity

Hey, I posted that in confidence, damn you!

Look, I surrender, I'm back to writing reviews. I got the three most recent as of today, including Gower's story! I just needed an extra long vacation to get a hold of my laziness.

Copywrite laws are more about taking credit for the ideas of other authors or artists. I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that you can write fanfiction as long as you do not recreate the plot of any previously written material. To answer your question more specifically you should write a standalone work that is based on the movie but does not have the same plot. Sort of like this is what would have happened if you choose to do X rather than what they chose to do in the movie. I would not copy anything directly (other than maybe well-known characters). You can reference the movie and say something in the story intro such as "this story is loosely based on XXX by YYY, and is an alternate ending starting from ZZ scene." I do believe that is fine because you are giving credit and not stealing ideas from the original author.

You can look up Fair Use rules to make sure you aren't violating anything there. Since you are not making a profit off it I think you will be okay. 

Also, I would read: 

Tips To Write Better Fanfiction

That link is to s helpful document on this story genre.

Thanks for your reply. Due to having read the linked article and already researching fair use laws, I meant more in the sense of getting in trouble with the site, for I've come across sites who are more stingy. 

Thanks also for your reply. I think to remove the base plot of the film I'll instead swap the order around, and perhaps merge pieces from the film and book the film itself was based off of. In that sense it will be like a collage of the two sources with pieces cut from both and pieces added of my own. 

Though again, for not even being certain of ever publishing such a work, I'm putting in quite the thought, so I must say most of this is more curiosity than for a very likely potential of a published work. 

I wish you luck with it!

Fan fiction is generally fine so long as you put a disclaimer that the characters/setting are not yours and you aren't publishing to sell or gaining any money from it.

However, not every author is OK with it. Anne McCaffrey didn't allow it, for example.

https://reporter.rit.edu/views/fanfiction-legal-battle-creativity

True, I have heard of such instances. However, there is a small load of fanfiction for this film on other sites, a few being my own, and no one has ran into trouble nor myself. Still, I understand your warning and will always heed to the possibility of the copyright owner wanting any or all of my work taken down. 

Here's a list of authors that don't like fanfic of their work.

* Anne Rice
* Archie comics (Lol)
* Dennis L. McKiernan
* Irene Radford
* J.R. Ward
* Laurell K. Hamilton
* Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb
* P.N. Elrod
* Raymond Feist
* Robin Hobb
* Robin McKinley
* Terry Goodkind

Pretty sure George R.R. Martin doesn't like it either.

Well my author ain't on the list, the film company hasn't caused issues, and I can't find anything for the author on fanfiction. Either way, thanks for the list of authors to avoid creating fanfiction of their works. 

challenge accepted... I need to make a game where you can travel between all of these authors' most popular books based on choices. I have some reading to do.

If you really must, how about making it a parody of the Page Master movie as your way of travelling from book to book while you're at it?

YES! my lord, so much Copywrite so little time.

EndMaster, Dennis L. McKiernan? Isn't his "Iron Tower Trilogy" just "Lord of the Rings" Fanfic? LOL!

Yes, artists and authors retain copyright regardless of someone is using something for profit or not. And people can't legally make derivative works without license to do so.

But in the case of fanfic, many authors allow it do long as the fan is not selling it. Of course, they could send a cease and desist and it would have to be taken down. And I wouldn't mess with any author that explicitly forbids it.

Yeah I do know it is sort of a tricky thing. The laws automatically protect any original work the moment it is created, but typically requires action from the author to be put in effect. They usually only do so if the derivative work is affecting their ability to sell the original, which is why works not written for profit are usually ignored. They also can not collect damages on free work (unless they have a reason to believe the damage is to the reputation of the original work resulting in decreased sales). The technical writing community has to be careful to follow these laws because we often have similar products/documents as competitiors and we do make profit on it. We also are warned to never use images off the internet--my company was sued for this by giphy (or some other photo image website) several years ago... 

Long story short it probably won't happen for fan fiction because (usually) fan fiction promotes the origional work and increases the love/popularity for it.

Also, for the record, my story-game idea above is a sarcastic joke.

Fun fact--music is also covered and technically if you post a song or video on social media they can legally sue you. This includes sharing things from other events/media that uses the music. Youtubers May have the right to the song, but if you don't and post their video that is copyright violation.

This is also never typically actually enforced...

As someone who has had to wade into an itellectual property fight before:

Copyright is only part of the equation. In your case, if you're writing fan fiction for a movie, you are just as likely to engage in trademark infringement. Whereas copyright is essentially protection from plagiarism, trademarks protect reputation. I don't know which movie you're writing about, but there is a good chance the title of the movie (and/or the name of the franchise) has been registered as a trademark, and so any work that invokes that name and describes a comparable plotline would be in violation.

And to be clear, copyrights and trademarks don't need to be registered to be protected. If someone wrote or created something, and they can prove it, then all of the IP rights are theirs.

But will you get sued for posting a story on this site? Only if the trademark owner sees you as a threat or a nuisance, probably.

A few years ago, there was a proliferation of Star Trek fanfiction, up to an including two independent recreations of the 1960s sets, and dozens of web episodes posted online for free. This continued for a while until one production, which was to be called Star Trek: Axanar, held a very successful crowdfunding campaign. This caught the attention of the trademark owner, CBS, which cracked down not just on Axanar, but everyone.

That being said, I doubt anything on CYS is likely to bring down such corporate wrath. There is already fanfic here on Star Wars, Saw, Super Mario, and god knows what else, and if those haven't gotten the site shut down, chances are no one is paying attention. Just don't make your fanfic too successful, I guess.

I should also point out that the phrase Choose Your Own Adventure is itself a registered trademark, currently owned by Chooseco LLC, based in Vermont. They recently sued Netflix for using the CYOA name without permission in a movie last year.

Interesting, the plot thickens! I now have to go work on my decide your personal choice story...