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.
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timeasmymeasure
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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.