’80s Film Franchise Rights in Peril

[Rev. Powell]

https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3587112/friday-13th-rights-war-just-beginning-many-80s-film-franchise-rights-peril/

This is probably good news. Hopefully it will mean fewer reboots and lame sequels.

[Archivist]

This is really fascinating, and could herald an era of better movies made from these franchises. It's good to know that Stephen King has been reclaiming the movie rights to his work. Does anyone know if these rights reclamations still have effect if the studio makes another movie in the allotted time? Fox hung on to Fantastic Four by making an ashcan version years ago, and they kept pumping out X-Men movies to help retain movie rights, too.

[chainsaw midget]

Just because an author gets the rights to his work back doesn't mean he gets back what people actually think of when they think of the movie. 

Costumes, character designs, music, those rights are often separate. 

Recently Marvel comics was going to use the Deadpool movie costume in one of their comics for a story and was told they couldn't. 

Movie rights can be really weird. 

[Rev. Powell]

Does anyone know if these rights reclamations still have effect if the studio makes another movie in the allotted time? Fox hung on to Fantastic Four by making an ashcan version years ago, and they kept pumping out X-Men movies to help retain movie rights, too.

Without doing much research---not always. The reason Corman made his FANTASTIC FOUR movie was to preserve the license to those characters as a matter of contract law. What the article is discussing is a matter of statutory copyright law that allows the original creator to reclaim the copyright after 35 years.

The original creator might have decided to waive that statutory right in a licensing negotiations in exchange for more money, or signed away his claim to copyright altogether. That's common but not universal. If they didn't give that option away by contract, they can exercise their statutory right to reclaim the copyright. At least, as I understand it from reading two secondhand articles in trade publications and not researching the underlying statues at all, lol.

[zombie no.one]

I think in the F13 case, one person owns the rights to the 'Friday 13th' name, and the other owns the rights to 'Jason Voorhees'...hence why a bunch of F13 sequels don't actually have 'Friday The 13th' in the title (i.e. JASON X)

They really need to make a part 13 though! they just have to...