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Screenings are being set up this week for streamers Amazon Prime Video, Apple and Netflix to check out and potentially acquire Warner Bros' axed Looney Tunes movieCoyote vs. Acmeafter the studio's phone ran off the hook the entire weekend from angry filmmakers and talent reps over their third feature film kill after Batgirland Scoob Holiday Haunt!
The more egregious Hollywood sin with Coyote vs. Acme is that it's a finished film was intended for a theatrical release, while the other two movies were still in the works.
[...] Amazon also is a great landing pad for Coyote vs. Acme as the studio has three upcoming movies with its star John Cena: Heads of State, Ricky Stanicky and Grand Death Lotto.
Also, during a very noisy weekend for the movie on social media with Coyote vs. Acme and Gravity Oscar winning composer calling Warner Bros. "bizarre anti-art studio financial shenanigans I will never understand," some have told me that the killing of Coyote vs. Acme didn't come from WBD CEO David Zaslav himself. Rather, the blame should be set at the feet of Warner Bros. Motion Picture bosses Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy and Warner Bros. new Animation Head Bill Damaschke, who are being made the scapegoats. The motives here were to protect the Looney Tunes IP and also scrub the studio of product developed by the previous administration.
The only thing wrong with that narrative is that De Luca and Abdy never have had any previous offends of killing a previous administration's films or finished movies. Not until landing at Warner Bros. As my mother use to say, "There's no such thing as a coincidence."
[...] While Warner Bros Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said that the media's coverage of Batgirl's cancellation was "blown out of proportion" back in September 2022, I guess he wasn't seeing or hearing the harsh criticism from the Hollywood creative community and the film's creatives and talent, both on social and by phone.
Also, what does the Coyote vs. Acme move by Warner Bros Discovery say to DC bosses Peter Safran and James Gunn? Can their movies or projects be killed at a last-minute's notice? Along with Chris DeFaria, Gunn is a producer on Coyote vs. Acme. The Guardians of the Galaxy architect was a co-scribe on the movie. We understand that the filmmaker-friendly Gunn and Safran's greenlights moving forward are bonafide and not in danger of any tax tricks.
The Looney Tunes brand isn't Harry Potter, and it's certainly not The Marvels. The brand has been turned upside down, reinvented and reset several times during the course of its 90-year-plus history at Warner Bros. Certainly a family movie that grosses between $160M-$200M worldwide wouldn't do damage to the studio, but rather play directly to the audience it's suppose to play to.
(Score: 2) by EJ on Thursday November 16 2023, @08:55PM (8 children)
If they want to make money from it, then they should release it to the public for sale. If they don't want to do that, then they don't deserve copyright protections.
The USA may not be a socialist society, but it's still a society. If you aren't doing something to benefit the society, then you don't really deserve its protections.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Thursday November 16 2023, @09:27PM (4 children)
Why isn't that their property to shelve for as long as they want to? What about situations where the final product isn't worth releasing? Not every movie is a gold-mine.
My perspective on this is that I've written a few short-stories but I don't see why anybody else is entitled to them even though I've never published them. They're not good enough right now.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Thursday November 16 2023, @10:10PM (1 child)
Well your example falls flat in this particular situation since movie's authors actually still do want to release it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2023, @02:50AM
> ... since movie's authors actually still do want to release it.
The problem here is that the movie's authors almost certainly are bound by a work-for-hire contract.
Under the current copyright law (I'm familiar with USA, may be true elsewhere?), default copyright protection automatically goes to creators. You own the work you create and even if you don't bother to add "(c), 2023" to it, you likely have a defensible copyright if someone steals your work and you sue them.
Work-for-hire was invented to get around this, contracts are signed where any (c) material created belongs to the sponsor or company that hired the creative person(s). Not only for script writers, this applies to all sorts of creative technical work as well--in exchange for getting paid the company that sponsors or hires you owns the rights to the work.
The work-for-hire contract wording needs to be very specific. We did a project for a large company that resulted in a book manuscript. Once we delivered it, the sponsoring company chose to not publish it. Over a year or so, we looked into things (this was early 1990s) and eventually discovered that both sides were ignorant of the law. While we wrote under a typical engineering services contract, it did not include the work for hire language. Not wanting to piss off the sponsor (they were also sponsoring other interesting work) we discussed with their legal dept. and eventually got them to agree that we owned the (c). At that point we took the work to a publisher and got it published. Of course there was a publication contract, but that's another story.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2023, @11:01PM
Nobody's saying you would be forced to hand them over, just that you don't have copyright protection. If you left them lying on a bench in a park and someone happened to find them and published them, tough shit.
I think copyright should go back to the model where you must submit a copy of the work and get a registration number, and only that registered work is protected. Want to keep it secret, fine, but if it leaks, too bad, so sad.
(Score: 2) by EJ on Friday November 17 2023, @01:22AM
Copyright laws probably need special provisions for big companies that offer less protection than for small writers. In this specific case, most of the people involved in creating the movie want it released. Copyright law should give them a way to take it back from the company.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by crafoo on Thursday November 16 2023, @11:06PM (2 children)
I think making copyright non-transferable and limit it to 15-25 years or so would fix things.
as far as the socialism/communism globalist free-trader kosher sandwich: there is a third way, and it built the USA industrial base, Japan, Germany, and now China into economic powerhouses. It's inherently anti-globalist though, so you can imagine our current elite class does not want you to even know it exists. Maybe Check out Michael Hudson's book if you're curious. He was a semi-reformed marxist when he wrote it (it's actually a collection of his essays) but don't hold that against him. Interestingly, the only people reading that book ATM are Chinese. Go figure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2023, @02:54AM (1 child)
Which Michael Hudson book are you recommending? There are a bunch--
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Michael-Hudson/author/B000APC58U [amazon.com]
Just say no to off-hand, sloppy citations & references...
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday November 18 2023, @08:57AM
The one with the cover... you know, the long title and everything, and his name at the bottom. Yeah, that one, you can't miss it.