Jim and John Thomas suing Disney to reclaim Predator rights

Started by Kailem, Apr 16, 2021, 12:46:54 AM

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Jim and John Thomas suing Disney to reclaim Predator rights (Read 91,517 times)

Voodoo Magic

It's all based on how a judge initially interprets the dates and evidence itself. Only a judge can order a preliminary injunction.

molasar

Quote from: Voodoo Magic on Apr 17, 2021, 04:58:11 PM
If the Thomas Brothers win, they'll only have 100% rights of future productions, not pre-existing.

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"Under the termination provisions, prior "derivative works" "can continue to be" distributed as before.  17 U.S.C. ยง 203(b)(1).  Plaintiffs' recovery of the U.S. copyright to their Screenplay therefore does not prevent Defendants (Disney) or their licensees from continuing to exploit prior derivative works, including the original Predator film and TCFFC's five sequel films."

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And let's all note for the canon record, that even the Thomas Brothers considers the AvP films as sequels!  8)

Ok, I just took it that the first film is still tied somehow to their screenplay. Thus is a base product for the franchise.

Galactus123

Has Illfonic said anything about this? I hope we still get more content and patches for Hunting Grounds.

Proteus

A friend in the industry (and close to Fox) thinks the best thing for the brothers to do is take a settlement if Disney offers, otherwise they'll have to shop around the rights again if that is what they want to do. Either way, they'll get significant money. If rights revert to them, he assumes the franchise will die off. He also thinks an injunction will take place ceasing production of Skulls and the comics. Ugh. Just... UGH.

BigDaddyJohn

Isn't that a bit of a stretch though ? I mean it's too early to tell right ?

Proteus

Quote from: BigDaddyJohn on Apr 18, 2021, 12:25:43 AM
Isn't that a bit of a stretch though ? I mean it's too early to tell right ?

Of course it's too early, but he's been in the industry for over 30 years and knows how messy these legal things can get. I trust his experience and knowledge what goes behind the scenes, and if he doesn't feel good about it, then neither do I.

Kailem

Quote from: Proteus on Apr 18, 2021, 12:16:40 AM
A friend in the industry (and close to Fox) thinks the best thing for the brothers to do is take a settlement if Disney offers, otherwise they'll have to shop around the rights again if that is what they want to do. Either way, they'll get significant money. If rights revert to them, he assumes the franchise will die off.

Honestly, if they did end up getting the rights back and shopping them around, I wouldn't be surprised if that's what would happen.

The fact that we're getting another movie so soon after the failure of The Predator feels like a sign that Disney is moving fast to try and make money from the property (yes it was conceived before the Fox takeover, but if they'd wanted to they could have canned it like they did with various other Fox movies, but instead they chose to move forward). It was part of the deal when they paid to buy Fox and it's now a part of their catalogue, and something they clearly want to profit from. If they no longer owned it, and had to pay to get the rights back to make any more movies/comics/whatever, there's no way they would. It's a franchise that has value, but when you're talking about the same company that now owns Marvel, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, even Alien, they're not going to bother.

Obviously that would leave other studios to potentially pick it up, but I'm just not confident that any of them would. Not after they look at how less than amazingly well the last movie did.

Voodoo Magic


Drukathi

Quoteit understandably drove much of the fan community into quite a state of turmoil.
QuoteMost of the distress was due to the uncertainty regarding what would happen to the current Disney era Predator projects in the works, most notably the Dan Trachtenberg directed "Skulls"

;D ;D ;D

State of turmoil is synopsis of this pseudo-predator.

Stitch

I'd guess that Skulls will likely be OK, since it was in production prior to the lawsuit. No guarantee as it'll be down to the judge's decision, but the wording implies to me that it probably will.

Sadfsce

Whoever wins, we lose

BigDaddyJohn

Neat ! Precision and clarity in this article ! Thanks guys !

irn

Skulls might be okay since it started production before the rights reverting, but I'm not 100% sure how that all works. If it is affected then they might just retroactively change it by replacing all the Predator-related things with something similar but different and essentially create a new IP.
But yeah I can see them sitting on the rights and there never being any more Predator films to stop it getting ran into the ground like Terminator was.

SiL

Or they just negotiate a bigger piece of the pie -- which is basically what any settlement Disney could propose would amount to anyway.

There's potential for disaster but there's also potential for it just ending up them renegotiating the rights and selling it straight back like nothing happened.

Nightmare Asylum

Quote from: SiL on Apr 18, 2021, 11:04:12 AM
Or they just negotiate a bigger piece of the pie -- which is basically what any settlement Disney could propose would amount to anyway.

This is the end result I'm imagining, if anything does indeed change at all.

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