I understand that someone might be a valuable firsthand source to get interesting details and core pieces of a real story right. But how can someone secure the movie rights or book rights from them? Stuff happening to you doesn’t exactly mean you’ve created something and should have copyright, or does it?
Write a manuscript or first draft of your memoir or autobiography. Contact publishers and if they like it or it has meaningful themes and they might make a profit off of it, they will do business with you. But memoirs are the most common type of manuscript these days. I tried getting my foot in the door but never received anything but rejection letters. You have to be persistent.
I think the question is more like, why should anyone have to pay to make a book/movie about things that happened to you.
Oh, I missed it.
Anyone sending original manuscripts gets rejected 99% (or more) of the time. You stand a better chance self publishing, but it’s serious work.