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".

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!

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?