We recently learned that ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ had been sued over a copyright issue that even threatens the Tom Cruise-starring movie to be pulled from theaters. This is not likely to happen, but we are dealing with a new example of a legal problem that it threatens to strip Hollywood of many of its most popular franchises.
That’s the law
To understand what is happening you have to go back to 1976, the year in which the United States Congress introduced a major change in copyright law. The objective was to offer some protection to creators who, at the beginning of their careers, gave up the rights to their works due to a lack of negotiating capacity. For this reason, they had to wait 35 years to be able to claim them back, beginning to be applied to works carried out as of January 1, 1978, leaving out those made to order. And there are not a few screenwriters who want to take advantage of it.
To get the rights back in the North American market, the writers have to give two years’ notice of their intention to get them back. So the studio will have that time to pull something off or lose them. That yes, the term is not eternal, since they have a maximum term of 5 years from the end of the 35 years agreed by law to do so.
Other examples
The best known case is that of ‘Friday the 13th’, as it has led to several lawsuits that were settled last year with Victor Millerscreenwriter of the first installment, has recovered the rights in the United States of the franchise, while Sean S Cunningham, producer and director of the first part, keeps those of the rest of the world, and also of the mythical design of Jason Voorhees with his hockey mask. A mess that calls into question the possible future of the saga.
However, not all cases end the same. For example, Disney settled out of court with James and John Thomas, writers of ‘Predator’, to retain all rights to the saga. For this they were paid an economic compensation whose terms have not transpired. There it is also true that the studio had no choice if they wanted to avoid headaches with ‘Predator: La Presa’.
There are currently negotiations involving titles as diverse as ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’, ‘Bitelchús’, ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’ either ‘Mrs Doubtfire’but it is that the decision goes beyond the scripts and also affects the sale of film adaptation rights of novels. Stephen King already asked to recover those of works such as ‘The Dead Zone’ or ‘cujo’while the heirs of Roderick Thorp they did the same with the book that served as the basis for ‘Jungla de Cristal’. In the case of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ everything goes back
And then there are particular cases such as ‘Terminator’, whose first installment was written by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd, who divorced years later. The first did participate in ‘Terminator: Dark Destiny’, but she did not and now, in principle, they share 50% rights. You can already imagine how complicated things could be in the future in case of wanting to make another delivery if one of the two parties refused. However, in the end the solution will almost always be financial compensation, because even the law was born with that idea in mind. And in return the studios still regain interest in relaunches or late sequels, which is just what happened in the case of ‘This is Spinal Tap’ after several years of legal battle. Another thing is that there are authors who are not satisfied with that.