Producing an epic has always been a huge risk for Hollywood studios. From Gone with the Wind to Titanic, the higher the budget, the more there is to win—and to lose. Despite the fact that huge budgets are often offset by foreign pre-sales, video/TV deals and licensing/merchandising income, it took three studios—Fox, Miramax and Universal—to make the current Master and Commander.

It's no wonder, then, that when Hollywood agent Steve Fisher of APA tried to sell the film rights to Patrick O'Brian's 20-volume Master and Commander series a decade ago, he met some resistance. "Imagine trying to sell a Napoleonic-era franchise of nautical adventure books [to Hollywood]. I was not met with a lot of enthusiasm." At that time, O'Brian had a cult following of die-hard aficionados, but had not yet broken into the mass market. However, Fisher says, he was the beneficiary of good timing. "After I took him on, he seemed to break out—there were profiles on him in everything from People magazine to the Wall Street Journal, all talking about his phenomenal book franchise."

The journey of a film rights option—even one that ended up as an epic—is rarely straightforward. Tom Rothman at the Samuel Goldywn Co. was behind the option of the first book, Master and Commander, and developed it for a couple of years. Then Disney took up the option when it fell out with Goldwyn and developed it for another few years. In the meantime Rothman had moved to Fox, so when the Disney option expired, he re-acquired the rights. In the interim O'Brian's star had risen, and Fisher was able to make a deal worth over a million dollars.

However, there are 20 books in the series, each featuring the same two lead characters, Aubrey and Maturin. Although the producers initially optioned the first title, and then Far Side of the World too, they had a rolling option on every other title. Fisher hopes that these options will be exercised as soon as the box-office results on the present movie are in.

Norton editor-in-chief Starling Lawrence is delighted with the movie and its impact on the house. Norton is bringing out tie-in editions of Master and Commander and The Far Side of the World, and has so far subscribed between 600,000 and 700,000 copies of the two books into the trade. These titles have also been reset, as the paperback edition was several generations old and the type had become, he said, "small and muddy." Lawrence has committed to re-setting and re-releasing the entire series over the next year, with the tie-in books eventually going back to the signature Jeff Hunt artwork. There are currently five million copies of the books in print in the U.S. and around three million in the rest of the world, which gives the movie a built-in audience.

Both Lawrence and Fisher agree that O'Brian (who died in 2000) would have admired the movie. Lawrence thinks "he would have been hugely impressed by the acting and more than impressed by the tribute to his subject matter, which is really overwhelming."

At a budget of $150 million, Master and Commander towers above the other historical literary epics that are being released for the holiday and Oscar-qualifying seasons. Meanwhile, the adaptation of Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain is gathering some good critical attention before its Christmas Day release. The film has great Hollywood credentials as well as a publishing pedigree (a National Book Award winner, now published by Vintage). It's been directed by Anthony Minghella, acclaimed for The English Patient, and it stars Jude Law and Nicole Kidman.

The West is an epic setting, too, and director Ron Howard has made the most of Thomas Eidson's sweeping story (first published as The Last Ride) of a father who abandoned his family and went to live with Apaches. He returns as an older man to try to reconcile with his daughter and gets to use his tracking skills when his granddaughter is captured by a band of renegades. Father and daughter must ride out together in search of the missing girl. Random House is bringing out a trade paperback tie-in edition of the book, now retitled The Missing to match the movie, to coincide with the film's release.

The Missing is the latest in a recent small spate of westerns. Kevin Costner starred in and directed Open Range, an adaptation of Lauran Paine's The Open Range Men (Dorchester) that opened in August. Forthcoming is Ned Kelly, an adaptation of Our Sunshine by Robert Drewe (Penguin). Scheduled for release next March, it stars Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom as the outlaws who caused havoc in 1880s Australia. On the same theme, Peter Carey's The True History of the Kelly Gang (Vintage) is in development with Neil Jordan attached to direct. A great story cannot be made—or remade—too often.