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 character and talks about random stuff and the 1990 movie, last time was in 2023: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MwKncYwtec4

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kwanbix 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

So is Warren being an asshole here? I mean, we haven't seen a Dick Tracy movie since the 90s. I am out of the loop so trying to understand.

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2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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shadowgovt 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Perhaps, but he's also highlighting how fundamentally broken the copyright system is. I don't think that's his goal (he's mostly being petty; there's a reason there's a pop song about his vanity), but it is an interesting side-effect of his odd project.

	▲	Reubachi an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I think it's simpler than that. IE; not a vanity thing for his ego or pettyness for the sake of being petty, Entity owns an IP, Entity doesn't want another entity to own it for risk to the IP. (the other entity being a globally publicly owned historic aggregator of IPs for sake of short term profits) DIsney is doing the same in reverse with the Muppets/Henson Properties. Don't do anything with it beyond semi-annual short projects to retain the IP.

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chimeracoder an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> So is Warren being an asshole here? I mean, we haven't seen a Dick Tracy movie since the 90s. I am out of the loop so trying to understand.

Well the rights were held by Disney from 1988 until 2005, and then they were tied up in court (between Beatty and Tribune) until 2011, when Beatty won the rights. The movie you're referring to was released in 1990.

So Beatty has held the rights for only 14 of those 35 years. Although the first special he made was released in 2010, during that legal battle.

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999900000999 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's also a legendary Star wars merch rights agreement that only expired because the rights holder forgot to send Lucas a check while the franchise was inactive.

Billions of dollars gone because of an oversight.

Arguably they didn't know Lucas was going to bring it back.

https://equinoxbusinesslaw.com/blog/how-hasbro-almost-blew-a...

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HeinzStuckeIt 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

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mattmaroon 7 hours ago | parent [-]

You assume he has dementia because he’s old and retired?

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jrmg 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There seems to be a popular view nowadays that most old people grow to be senile (just look at any online discussion of old politicians for example). This is not the case!

	▲	Retric 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Old people do lose mental capacity just as they lose strength etc, dementia is a more extreme thing.

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HeinzStuckeIt 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

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mattmaroon 6 hours ago | parent [-]

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

	▲	HeinzStuckeIt 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		By the time the actors I mentioned were written about as having dementia, many film fans had already assumed they were dealing with dementia precisely because they were no longer being written about or seen in the media much. Such speculation about Jack Nicholson, for example, was rife on film forums well before those paparazzi images appeared.