Comix Friday: A battle for the future of Superman(‘s profits)

Ever since I started following the ComicBook411 Twitter feed, I've been significantly more up-to-date on my comix news (and particularly movies-based-on-comix news). But I had to laugh at this headline that appeared on my Twitter homepage yesterday: "Judge Ruled Warner Bros. Must Make New 'Superman' Movie By 2011."

Not knowing much about this case, I instantly had the image of a judge (possibly in a white powdered wig) looking down at two quavering defendants, slamming his gavel against the bench and shouting "I must have a sequel to 'Superman Returns'!  I must know who is the father of Lois Lane's son!*"

The real story, though, is a little less amusing but no less interesting. It seems that the heirs of Jerry Siegel, the nice Jewish boy who created the Superman character with his buddy Joe Shuster, were suing Warner Bros., Time Warner and DC Comics for profits from 2006's "Superman Returns" and the TV show "Smallville." Although the Siegel and Shuster estates don't own the rights to the character (yet - I'll get to that in a second), they do get paid a percentage of the profits from whatever DC Comics makes off the character. That's DC Comics only, not Warner Bros.

The Siegels, however, claimed they were owed additional profits stemming from a "sweetheart" deal between DC and WB, in which DC undercharged WB to license the character, thus lowering the amount that they would have to pay the Siegel and Shuster estates.

The whole thing is way too complicated to really go into here - suffice it to say that the Siegels and Shusters have been getting screwed since the beginning of time (of course), and it's got a lot to do with extensions of copyright protection (ever wonder why Superman isn't in the public domain yet?) and quite a bit of legal machinations on both ends.

The court's official finding is available here, and it's actually a fascinating, though complicated (at least to my non-juris-doctor mind), read.  I particularly like the part comparing the film agreements for different movie franchises (Tarzan, Conan, Iron Man). Kinda Hollywood-through-the-years.

To summarize, Judge Stephen G. Larson ruled that they weren't due the extra profits - however, in a compromise, they WILL be free to sue again if a new Superman movie doesn't start production by 2011. That's two years before the rights to the Superman franchise revert back to the Siegel and Shuster estates in 2013.

DC/WB is a bit upset about this, because according to testimony by WB chairman Allan Horn, there is currently nothing in production for a sequel to "Superman Returns" - no director or script, and "Returns" star Brandon Routh's contract to play Superman has expired because a sequel wasn't made immediately.

All this means that the studio probably will be putting a rush order on the next Superman movie - and that doesn't bode well.

This has been a source of great disagreement in my house in the three years since it came out, so I'll say that IN MY OPINION, the last Superman movie was a piece of crap. Just when I had managed to put most of its awfulness out of my mind (although I'll never forget the Pomeranian scene - eeeewwwww), I turned on the TV the other day and it was on. Suppressssss!

Anyway, considering that "Superman Returns" was in development for a decade and it was STILL that bad, I wouldn't have high hopes for a movie that needs to start filming within two years...or else.

(Photo of Blind Justice by mafleen from Flickr...Man of Steel logo added by me.)

* I think this may have been definitively addressed by the end of the movie, but I had lost interest so long ago that I was probably counting the number of tiles in the theater ceiling.

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Comix Friday is published in the Art Scene blog every Friday, and focuses on Jewish comic artists and Jewish-themed comix. If you know of anything I should be blogging about in Comix Friday, let me know!

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