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Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

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Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#231

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

Asparagirl wrote: post #186
shadowgovt wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some authors have had good luck with self-publishing Indeed. What are the relative statistics on authors who have managed to bootstrap themselves vs. authors who make a comfortable living through the Big Five?

It’s not common, but it does happen. Andy Weir, author of “The Martian” and “Project Hail Mary”, originally gave his work away for free online on his website. He only self-published to Kindle (for the lowest possible price setting, 99 cents) because some of his fans didn’t know how or didn’t want to manually install his home-rolled ePubs on their devices, and begged him for the Amazon/Kindle distribution.

Hugh Howey is a similar case.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#232

Post by havblue »

Gormanu wrote: post #64

With Who Framed Roger Rabbit, it’s not really clear whether the author originally came up with such a great idea and script, or if Disney just brought it to life so brilliantly on screen. I’m leaning toward the second. It’s cool that he got the rights back, but without Disney this idea just isn’t going to "sing" again.

It would be difficult. Aside from the characters and the cast, one of the biggest heroes of the movie was the script. It was dense with irony, jokes about the noir genre, straight man/funny man jokes and physical humor. You don't need the original cast to make a new Chinatown comedy with toons. It's a matter of assembling a story that's interesting and funny, with associated recognizable cartoon characters.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#233

Post by mold_aid »

skybrian wrote: post #121
neves wrote: post #101

The phrase below is worth the read: > giving creative workers more rights without addressing their market power is like giving your bullied kid more lunch money. There isn't an amount of lunch money you can give that kid that will buy them lunch – you're just enriching the bullies

Misleading phrases like this are why I dislike Doctorow. Just before that he tries to sell us on the idea that there are no alternatives when actually there are. For example, you don’t have to publish a book through the Big Five. There are many large and small independent publishers, and some authors have had good luck with self-publishing. I do think copyright law needs reform, but don’t trust Doctorow to explain it…

>There are many large and small independent publishers

Are there many small press distributors? How's SPD doing these days?

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#234

Post by abracadaniel »

mattmaroon wrote: post #92
HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad as it is, when stars from classic Hollywood stop being visible but are still known to be alive at a highly advanced age, dementia is often the case. Gene Hackman, Gene Wilder, and Jack Nicholson are notable cases, and I just assumed Beatty was similar.

Do you think perhaps there is a sample bias because old actors who retire and don't have dementia don't get written about?

Or possibly, actors who still have their faculties tend to keep acting, even into advanced age. Not sure if that's true, but even the perception of that being true could lead to these kinds of assumptions.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#236

Post by expedition32 »

elondaits wrote: post #38
eastbound wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ful…

Ofcourse ideas are not free. Are we arguing Disney did not write a check?

Plenty of people earn lots of money licensing their art to Hollywood. Some people just have more business acumen than others.

And yes if you are selling art for money you are a businessman. Get an agent if you cannot hack it for crying out loud.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#237

Post by recursivecaveat »

ramses0 wrote: post #222
joecool1029 wrote: post #16

Sorta 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…

Similarly Wheel of Time had one... I had to dig deep and converse with an LLM to figure it out. I proposed to it "copyslop" as the term of art, it came back with "placeholder productions", "copyright keepers", and eventually there seems to be a "real" term-of-art called "ashcan" - https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/9jxvtb/til_a... In any case: """Yes, you're likely thinking of the "Wheel of Time" pilot e…

The 1994 Fantastic 4 movie was the same deal. Produced for $1M, never released. I guess it's hard to make a legal standard for "actually trying" with a license, but it is really weird to see that you can keep these licenses alive with these zombie products.

Another less token one I'm aware of is the Marvel themed land of Universal Orlando. Universal has an indefinite license to the IP as long as they don't 'mishandle' it. An easy way to make it very clear that you haven't done that is to just never change anything. So all the rides, signage, etc is carefully maintained but identical to how it was 20 years ago.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#238

Post by chimeracoder »

badlibrarian wrote: post #202
chimeracoder wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He once sat in his basement for an entire month "playing the DRM off" his record collection What are you referring to here?

He set up two computers and manually played low-res DRM-protected MP3 files out of one and into the other for weeks, documenting the process on BoingBoing. He touted this not only as freedom but "preservation."

> He set up two computers and manually played low-res DRM-protected MP3 files out of one and into the other for weeks, documenting the process on BoingBoing. He touted this not only as freedom but "preservation."

I see. When I hear "record collection" I think of vinyl records, so I was quite confused how DRM was relevant there.

Re: Disney Lost Roger Rabbit

#239

Post by CGMthrowaway »

latexr wrote: post #50

> "Termination of Transfer" was introduced via the 1976 Copyright Act. It allows creators to unilaterally cancel the copyright licenses they have signed over to others, by waiting 35 years and then filing some paperwork with the US Copyright Office. You have to wait half a lifetime?! Talk about a performative (pun unintended) law. > when Congress gives creators new copyrights to bargain with, the Big Five (or Four, o…

The real cheat isn’t the 35-year wait, it’s work-made-for-hire and assignments of future unknown rights (VR, AI, metaverse, whatever - in 1995 for example it was the digital-performance right in sound recording)
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