[flagged]
> I admittedly haven't read that rambling post, but...
...you probably should.
Disney Lost Roger Rabbit
31–40 of 260 posts
Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit
#32Sorta related since Disney held a share in it previously but Dick Tracy exclusive rights are still held by Warren Beatty who produced and starred in the role back in 1990. He had to fight off a challenge from Tribune Media in court decades ago but stipulation was he had to produce new Dick Tracy stuff every few years. It’s lead to a series of increasingly surreal late night specials on TCM where he appears in charact…
Wow, TIL. I had assumed that Warren Beatty was suffering from dementia due to his great age and his retirement from cinema. I had no idea he was still making media appearances.
Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit
#33I don’t know if Cory Doctorow has read the “fantastic 1981 novel”, but I have (decades ago) and as I recall the plot of the book and the plot of the movie are very different from each other. The author of the book didn’t write the screenplay and I doubt he had much (if anything) to do the character designs in the movie. So even if he has the rights to his novel back, it’s not at all clear to me that he could just make (or sell a license to make) a straight, recognizable sequel to Disney’s movie without getting back into bed with Disney, and clearly Disney isn’t interested or they’d have done something by now.
Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit
#34This is so freakin awesome! Roger Rabbit was actually played in 35mm just last Thursday in Central NJ. What a treat it would have been to known that the original author got his characters back. I was lamenting on all the time that had passed since release. This cheered me right up! Will we see a whole Roger Rabbit universe now?
He's got a book out with a Jessica Rabbit origin story, that he's trying to shop a film adaptation of. The RRCU may be go.
Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit
#35> This is a nightmare scenario for a creator: you make a piece of work that turns out to be incredibly popular, but you've licensed it to a kind of absentee landlord who owns the rights but refuses to exercise them. This nightmare scenario involves selling the rights to your character to a company that has the ability to produce, advertise and cast a movie with talented actors. I'm certain I never would have heard of…
You quoted one of the key sentences from the piece, and yet missed the point. It's the "you've licensed it to a kind of absentee landlord who owns the rights but refuses to exercise them." part that is important. In the case of Roger Rabbit, the problem is the Disney has not made any new Roger Rabbit movies or other media in 35 years, despite the first movie being very successful. No doubt other concept, that could b…
This seems like one of those scenarios where you find out Disney did make a Roger Rabbit sequel, but they never marketed it, or it had a limited release in 12 California cinemas, and it only existed as a pro forma device to show they still controlled the character and would have the option to make sequels for another 35 years.
Bonus if it randomly starred or was directed by someone who later became famous, or if there are blog posts calling it an unknown masterpiece.
Nice to hear that didn't happen in this case and the author gets a second chance!
Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit
#36> Creative workers bargain with one of five publishers, one of four studios, one of three music labels, one of two app marketplaces, or just one company that controls all the ebooks and audio books.
> when Congress gives creators new copyrights to bargain with, the Big Five (or Four, or Three, or Two, or One) just amend their standard, non-negotiable contract to require creators to sign those new rights over as a condition of doing business.
Beautifully explained the complex situation and its kind of scary how it applies to tech as well in some areas.
The second point is also true w.r.t big tech & privacy regulations.
Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit
#37I loved WFRR as a kid, and of all the movies I loved as a kid, it has definitely held up the best. I re-watched it recently and it is still great. Hilarious, thoughtful and just the right amount of dark.
One of the reasons I still love it is that it hasn't fallen prey to the usual Hollywood practice of taking something you love and shovelling it down your throat until you're sick of it. It saddens me when you see a really good movie with a bunch of bad sequels, or TV series that were once great but ran for 10 seasons too long.
Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit
#38> This is a nightmare scenario for a creator: you make a piece of work that turns out to be incredibly popular, but you've licensed it to a kind of absentee landlord who owns the rights but refuses to exercise them. This nightmare scenario involves selling the rights to your character to a company that has the ability to produce, advertise and cast a movie with talented actors. I'm certain I never would have heard of…
> that has the ability to produce, advertise and cast a movie with talented actors. Isn’t that most of the work? You get: A lumpsum for your initial research that ended up as a character that people like, They get: The idea of a character, but then they have to invest billions, build projects that work, tie relationships with cinemas and actors, advertise worldwide and maybe they make billions if they worked properly…
For over one decade now, maybe two, seemingly every big (or mid?) budget movie Hollywood has produced is based on existing IP: a comic book, novel, previous movie, TV show, or even non fiction article. I’ve been surprised many times by movies which seem original but are actually based on a French comic, or some other semi-obscure (internationally) source.
That tells me that ideas aren’t free. There’s a value to a fully cooked, ready to wear, tried and tested ideas.
As a second point, many good Hollywood pitches remain in development hell, unable to get a satisfying script, or a “second act that works”.
Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit
#39Direct link to the article: https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/18/im-not-bad/#im-just-drawn... It's a long-winded article, even for a lawyer, but the payload seems to be a crack at the head of the RIAA, which is suing Midjouney. "In other words, Glazier doesn't want these lawsuits to get rid of Midjourney and protect creative workers from the threat of AI – he just wants the AI companies to pay the media companies to ma…
It's a readable and enjoyable text about a complex issue. You can't really distill anything about copyright without actually talking about history, relevant examples, and how it affects other industries, or other creative works, or...
Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit
#40[flagged]
Not sure if sarcasm. If not:
Is 35 years not long enough? Disney knew the terms going in.
I think it should go back to the 25-year automatic ownership back to the actual creator.