I worked at WotC when some of these issues were being hashed out. I never received any official explanation of what was going on, but I did receive a fair amount of unofficial information.
As it was explained to me (after hours, away from work), when WotC bought TSR, TSR had no record of having sold the movie rights. As far as WotC knew, they had full rights. So, of course, imagine their surprise when they hear someone is making a D&D movie. I suspect the lawsuit was their first reaction.
But then, it turned out he did have the rights to a movie D&D. Only, nothing other than the name was specifically called out in the rights. could he use beholders? Mind flayers? Who knew. Forgotten Realms was definitely not covered, but there was no explanation of exactly what was included.
There, my fuzzy data ends. I have no idea what "settlement" was reached. I do -know- that management at WotC knew it wasn't in their best interest for the D&D movie to be a flop. I believe if there had been anything reasonable they could have done to make it a better movie, they would have. But as I understand the move was in production before WotC got involved, so they certainly weren't controlling what script was used. And I strongly doubt they, for example, insisted one character have metallic blue lips for no good reason.
At least now I know to avoid American Haunting. In addition to the wretched D&D movie (which I avoided seeing) he's also the person responsible for both the wretchedness that was Traveller 4th edition and most of the authors not getting paid more than half of their contract. He's inept bottom-feeding scum.
He used to run Imperium Games. As far as anyone can tell, not paying authors seemed to be one of his money-saving measures (it's truly pathetic that I know of at least one other company that put out lots of product that also did this). I talked to him on the phone once and he was clearly a total weasel. In the end, everyone got paid 50% of their contract, when Marc Miller found out what was going on and pulled the license and the whole ignominious house of cards came falling down. Imperium games was also noted for dreadful editing, terrible rules, impressively horrid formatting screw-up, laughably bad b&w art (the Chris Foss color art had nothing to do with the setting and was stuck in seemingly at random, but was at least attractive). By far the worst edition of Traveller ever, and dishonesty too. Definitely someone to avoid.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2006-05-06 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-06 03:37 pm (UTC)Besides, how many directors do you know who would say they made a poopy film?
no subject
Date: 2006-05-06 05:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-07 04:26 am (UTC)I worked at WotC when some of these issues were being hashed out. I never received any official explanation of what was going on, but I did receive a fair amount of unofficial information.
As it was explained to me (after hours, away from work), when WotC bought TSR, TSR had no record of having sold the movie rights. As far as WotC knew, they had full rights. So, of course, imagine their surprise when they hear someone is making a D&D movie. I suspect the lawsuit was their first reaction.
But then, it turned out he did have the rights to a movie D&D. Only, nothing other than the name was specifically called out in the rights. could he use beholders? Mind flayers? Who knew. Forgotten Realms was definitely not covered, but there was no explanation of exactly what was included.
There, my fuzzy data ends. I have no idea what "settlement" was reached. I do -know- that management at WotC knew it wasn't in their best interest for the D&D movie to be a flop. I believe if there had been anything reasonable they could have done to make it a better movie, they would have. But as I understand the move was in production before WotC got involved, so they certainly weren't controlling what script was used. And I strongly doubt they, for example, insisted one character have metallic blue lips for no good reason.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-06 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-07 01:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-08 04:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-08 04:35 am (UTC)