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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6381682" data-attributes="member: 177">Next week (September 16th, to be precise) the case of who actually holds the movie rights to D&D goes to court.Interestingly, the case is a bit more interesting than just to fans.  It has the possibility of defining what qualifies as a "sequel", and whether development of a script before you own the rights qualifies as copyright infringement....Hasbro contends the TV films don't qualify as true sequels. The plaintiff points to the basic fact that the third D&D movie doesn't have characters and plots that flowed from the prior films. Plus, as one of the company's trial briefs put it, "It is unheard of for the producer to have the right to retroactively extend its theatrical motion production rights by starting production of a television motion picture."Sweetpea points to evidence supporting the theory that The Book of Vile Darkness is a sequel: the film's $2.5 million budget, more than a typical made-for-TV movie; that it was submitted to the MPAA for a rating in hopes of a theatrical release; that it originally contained TV-unfriendly nudity; that labor agreements classified it to be a "low budget theatrical" film; and most especially, that Hasbro had input and never brought forward its nonsequel argument during the project's production. As Sweetpea and Hasbro fight over how to interpret an ambiguous contract, Warners and Universal await word from their licensors about what they have the authority to do. But the case isn't merely about how to define a "sequel." It's also raised the cutting-edge legal issue about whether film projects in early development can amount to copyright infringement. This is something of interest to Hollywood at large. Universal, for example, is currently in court defending itself over Section 6, a film script about the early days of the U.K.'s spy agency MI-6. MGM and Danjaq, rights-holders of the lucrative James Bond franchise, are suing Universal for allegedly infringing the copyright to their famous spy character, while Universal demands an end to what it sees as a lawsuit over "hypothetical future infringement in works yet to be produced."From the Hollywood Reporter:  <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/dungeons-dragons-movie-fight-son-731444" target="_blank">http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/dungeons-dragons-movie-fight-son-731444</a></blockquote>

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