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New ruling could put James Franco's "Wizard of Oz" prequel in danger
By James Brady RyanJuly 7th, 2011, 9:18 amComments (16)
As you probably know, the reason why there are so many modern versions of characters like Dracula, Alice, and Dorothy Gale is twofold. For one thing, they're incredibly popular and well known. For another, these characters and their stories are public domain — no one's paying royalties on these babies! Which is why we have The Wiz, Wicked the book, Wicked the musical, Return to Oz, Lost Girls, and many upcoming film adaptations, prequels, and reinterpretations of L. Frank Baum's novel — the most buzzy of which is probably Oz, The Great and Powerful, directed by Sam Raimi and starring James Franco, Rachel Weisz, Mila Kunis, and Michelle Williams. People can just take these characters and run with them without paying a dime.
Except maaaaaaaaybe not. Because a new ruling this week by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals could potentially muck up some of these projects, with Raimi's looking the most troubled. The case was this: Warner Bros, which owns the rights to the 1939 classic film version, was suing a memorabilia company for its use of images from the film. The company felt this was fair use, since The Wizard of Oz is public domain. The Court diagreed:
We agree with the district court’s conclusion that Dorothy, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz.. exhibit “consistent, widely identifiable traits” in the films that are sufficiently distinctive to merit character protection under the respective film copyrights... Put more simply, there is no evidence that one would be able to visualize the distinctive details of, for example, Clark Gable’s performance before watching the movie Gone with the Wind, even if one had read the book beforehand. At the very least, the scope of the film copyrights covers all visual depictions of the film characters at issue...
Basically: you can use Wicked Witch of the West, but if you plan on giving her green skin — a feature not included in the book — you might want to keep an eye out for Warner Bros' lawyers. Given that Raimi's Oz is meant to be more or less a prequel to the film and the book (somehow), this could be trouble. The studio apparently has no plans at the moment to go after the film, but the producers might want to tread carefully.
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Commentarium (16 Comments)
Why is James Franco starring in any sort of 'prequel' or remake? The guy is exploding with so much intelligence, insight, creativity and originality, that stooping to such depths seems a betrayal of his genius.
Go tell that to the apes.
Because he's kind of overrated?
I just want to watch him tell the apes.
james franco is mot overrated, he is a very diverse actor. From his movie James Dean to Pineapple express. me you dont know what your talking about.
So this isn't actually a story or anything. Just random speculation on the part of the author that WB might go after a film that's already been widely publicized. Awesome job! Way to go!
exactly, thank you. seems like a lot of 'trying to make stories out of nothing' going on at nerve recently. maybe wait until there's actual news or interesting stories next time?
Yeah, JBR fanned on this one. The ruling is limited to visual depictions of characters from the film. I doubt simply making the Witch green is covered -- if it were, Wicked, both the book and the musical, would have been in trouble. This is a non-story at this point.
A question for you, profrobert -- wouldn't, say, the book jacket of Wicked or the merchandise for the musical, both of which use iconography clearly taken from the 1939 film, be affected by this? Would only actual images taken from the film itself be affected? As a legal layman, I was basing my thoughts on the source's legal expert, but I'm legitimately curious about what does and does not fall under the reach of this ruling.
I'm sure anyone who visited this particular story, stumbled here bc of JBR's name drop...
Yes, if you made a derivative work -- say a drawing of Margaret Hamilton in her Witch get-up -- you'd run afoul of the copyright laws. But I take it that whatever Wicked did wasn't sufficiently derivative to raise Warner Brothers' hackles. What might or might not be in Franco's movie is too speculative to address at this point.
Can he get back in the closet please.
Interesting story about The Wizard of Oz but why is there a picture of Debbie Wasserman Schultz at the top of the page?
You know what, I'm very much icnlnied to agree.
I love reiadng these articles because they're short but informative.
A PREQUEL? There is a TON of material available in the books by Baum and they want to make a prequel! And then of course a prequel of a lame movie adaptation of a play adaptation of a brilliant book? Oh well, as long as Bruce Campbell plays the humbug Oz I'll watch it.