A press release announcing the formation of Opus:
The Dark Knight Trilogy: The Complete Screenplays follows the summer release of the brooding, epic film that continues to galvanize public and critical reaction. Opus debuts its imprimatur title in the Opus publishing program, helmed by Applause founder Glenn Young.
In announcing the publication, Young said: “Before the actors recorded their lines—in Dolby Atmos; before the actors were ever cast, or clothed in flowing capes and costumes; and before the special effects team splashed Gotham in all its glory across the wide screen, there were three scripts in simple black and white, typed on standard bond paper. Even the greatest cinematic flash at Hollywood’s disposal amounts to just another fireworks show without the underlying steel mesh of a good story. It is words which create myth. Look there for the true source of cinematic animation, power and meaning. Certain film effects may depend on the IMAX camera’s three dimensions, but others, deep in the soul of the Dark Knight, barely require two.”
“What makes a super hero super?” Young asks. “His archenemies always have just as many super powers and super gadgets. The Dark Knight screenwriters, in the book’s opening group discussion, ponder this question. Ultimately, they conclude, it is a hero’s moral character that permits him to triumph. This was true, they realized, even of the first great literary hero, Achilles, in Homer’s epic poem The Iliad. It is in battling the enormous questions of life, death and honor that a hero stands out. As Americans cast their own rueful collective eye over recent events, Jonathan Nolan’s ruminations on this grave matter are a chilling reminder of every individual’s moral obligations to society. And especially of those who wish to be called heroes.”
Jonathan Nolan: “To me, there’s no moral there other than the individual choices that Batman makes along the way. And this is where you take it back to The Iliad. When you get to the end there’s no Trojan Horse and there’s no winning of the battle. It just ends with Achilles and Priam negotiating over Hektor’s body. That’s the end of it. And you realize it’s not way. It’s about a man. It’s about the individual decisions made by a hero and the difficult choices he faces and the odd, sometimes tacit rule-set that he forms over the course of it, answering the question of how far is too far?”
Published in coordination with Warner Brothers, DC Comics and Faber & Faber, the volume contains the complete screenplays from Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises, with 60 pages of storyboards and a symposium among the screenwriters, Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan, and David S. Goyer, about the evolution of the superhero and his world.
Young, as founder of the theatre and film house Applause, previously published screenplays by William Goldman, Bruce Joel Rubin, Paddy Chayefsky, John Cleese, Oliver Stone, James Cameron, Graham Greene, Richard La Gravenese and Terry Gilliam, among others. His Terminator 2 introduced the “Book of the Film” concept to the industry.
Barney Rosset Inspiration for Opus List
Young named old friends Barney Rosset, John Calder, Dick Seaver, and Lyle Stuart as inspirations for his new enterprise.
“I want Opus to be a home that welcomes work the corporate clubhouse cannot sanction without its legal department redacting the heart out of it,” explains Young. “These were fearless guys. They knew the heart of publishing is in taking the writer’s risk and storming the ramparts for the cause. They were each themselves literary engines of our time. Not simply to keep replacing worn out cultural track, but laying new track in challenging terrain. They were not just spreading ink on a page. There’s gunpowder and adrenaline and bile in the dark fuel on their pages.”
One of Opus’s new titles, the disturbingly erotic The Patient Ecstasy of Fraulein Braun, was a cause Rosset advocated until the end of his life. “Mueller’s book is the reason you start a publishing house. She lights a fuse for a new generation of debate on old settled questions. You don’t abandon the field because it’s explosive; you collect kindling to build the heat. I would have signed her novel at Grove in a heartbeat.”
The Opus Way
In forecasting his new company’s plans, Young said: “A business plan for a new publishing venture is tough to justify as a work of nonfiction. Few works of fiction require as much imagination as the standard P&L. But for a new imprint, lacking even a month’s sales figures, it’s magical realism at best. Fine to distract the accountants, but a Ouija board and a set of intelligent instincts tells a publisher more. I long ago scrapped my profit-and-loss spreadsheets in favor of another form of reckoning. For decades now, each time I sign up a new author, I say a prayer. And it is this: ‘Oh, Lord, let it break even!’ And that simple un-MBA, contra-corporate non-derivative-backed entreaty remains my mantra as we open the doors to Opus. ‘Let us recover what we have sowed to make the next season—the next harvest—possible—and possibly richer and more fertile than the last!'”
By way of civility, Young is guided by the spirit of Robert Lantz, his incomparable friend who made every contract as potent and amusing as the Campari and soda he imbibed at the Russian Tea Room.
Kay Radtke Key to Opus Development
“My very first publishing decision was by far my easiest,” says Young. “If this operation is to thrive, it will be due to the leading role Opus Executive VP Kay Radtke has played vigorously from the start. Simply put, Radtke is one of the best repositories of publishing wisdom in the industry.”

Starting in February, the Opus publishing program of fiction and performing arts gets into full swing:
The Dervish, a novel by Frances Kazan
Francis, The Holy Jester, a novel about St. Francis, written and illustrated by Nobel Prize-winning author Dario Fo
The Patient Ecstasy of Fraulein Braun, the explosive first novel by Lavonne Mueller
Shep’s Army: Bummers, Blisters and Boondoggles by Jean Shepherd
13 More by Shanley by John Patrick Shanley, Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning author of Doubt and Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Moonstruck
A Serving of Scandal, a novel by Prue Leith
Shakespeare on Theatre, compiled by Nick de Somogyi
Chekhov on Theatre, compiled by Jutta Hercher and Peter Urban; translated by Stephen Mulrine

Our White Knight—Hal Leonard
Behind every successful publisher is a dynamic and steadfast distributor. Young credits the creative support of Larry Morton, John Cerullo, and their team at Hal Leonard (including Mike Hansen and Marybeth Keating) as the single critical factor in his decision to return to the publishing swim. “Quite frankly,” says Young, “if Hal and its sales team had not embraced me, you would not be reading this press release today. My faith in Hal Leonard is not based on spin; it is based on experience in a tough game with long odds.”
The Opus Team
Young and Radtke are joined by Greg Collins for his wise editorial expertise and Sue Knopf as their longtime production and design guru. Pat Gold, Director for Special Projects, contributes her analysis about new opportunities in media and the arts.
“Am I allowed to say, in this release,” Young asked Radtke, a past president of the Publishers Publicity Association, “one of the chief joys of this venture is that everybody around me is a valued friend? Or isn’t that businesslike enough?” “Well,” Radtke opined, “it might be acceptable if it came right at the end.”
Glenn Young, founder of Applause Books, edited and published (in addition to the screenwriters above) Michael Caine, John Houseman, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Gelb, Mel Gussow, Stella Adler, John Gielgud, Herb Gardner, Al Hirschfeld, and Michael Blakemore among many others. He is co-editor of the Works of Harold Clurman and served as the long term editor of The Best American Short Plays series. He commissioned and published the first ever edition of Shakespeare’s First Folio in modern type. He founded The Working Arts Library with programs starring Jeremy Irons, Emily Watson, Brian Cox, Helen Hunt, Claire Danes, Cicely Berry, Samuel L. Jackson, Blythe Danner, and Jonathan Miller. He taught literature and drama for many years at Wesleyan and the graduate program at Columbia.
Kay Radtke was executive vice president and associate publisher of Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, and prior to that senior vice president and associate publisher of Dodd, Mead, where she directed the publicity, advertising and marketing programs for the company’s extensive list of adult fiction (including the Agatha Christie mysteries), nonfiction, and children’s books. She has handled the publicity campaigns for books by Arthur Ashe, Barbara Michaels, Michael Caine, Terry Gilliam, Edward Gorey, Jean Shepherd, Stephen Sondheim and William Goldman, among others. She began her trade publishing career at Charles Scribner’s Sons and has also been publicity consultant to Amistad Press under Charles Harris. She is a past president of the Publishers Publicity Association and has served on the Executive Council of the Association of American Publishers, General Trade Division. She also is co-founder and co-director of the University of Michigan Introduction to Book Publishing Workshop.