> This is a nightmare scenario for a creator: you make a piece of work that turns out to be incredibly popular, but you've licensed it to a kind of absentee landlord who owns the rights but refuses to exercise them.

This nightmare scenario involves selling the rights to your character to a company that has the ability to produce, advertise and cast a movie with talented actors.

I'm certain I never would have heard of Roger rabbit had it not been sold.

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noelwelsh 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You quoted one of the key sentences from the piece, and yet missed the point. It's the "you've licensed it to a kind of absentee landlord who owns the rights but refuses to exercise them." part that is important. In the case of Roger Rabbit, the problem is the Disney has not made any new Roger Rabbit movies or other media in 35 years, despite the first movie being very successful. No doubt other concept, that could be successful, never even get to that point. See stories of "stuck in develompent hell".

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dmurray 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This seems like one of those scenarios where you find out Disney did make a Roger Rabbit sequel, but they never marketed it, or it had a limited release in 12 California cinemas, and it only existed as a pro forma device to show they still controlled the character and would have the option to make sequels for another 35 years.

Bonus if it randomly starred or was directed by someone who later became famous, or if there are blog posts calling it an unknown masterpiece.

Nice to hear that didn't happen in this case and the author gets a second chance!

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parineum 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No, I got that point. I just find it funny that the article completely glosses over the reason why artists license their work in the first place. Because the company they license it to is far more capable of making money off of their work and, in most cases, the artist will make far more money by licensing their work than they would by trying to make an indie film on a shoe string budget with their own resources. That was an option for Wolf, yet he thought licensing his work was his best option, why did he do that?

	▲	noelwelsh 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The article does touch on that (monopsony) but it is largely irrelevant to the main point of the article.

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eastbound 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> 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, but sometimes they make losses. Sounds like they worked for it, and building the initial character is like 0.0…1% of the talent involved.

Unionist gets: A nice story about how it’s always multibillion dollars companies that have all the money.

Maybe ideas are free and implementation is everything?

	▲	elondaits 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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 fully cooked, ready to wear, tried and tested ideas. As a second point, many good Hollywood pitches remain in development hell, unable to get a satisfying script, or a “second act that works”.