Superman Worldwide Release Threatened by Lawsuit over International Rights
The worldwide rollout of James Gunn’s upcoming ‘Superman’ movies is threatened by a lawsuit aiming to block its release.
The estate of estate of Joseph Shuster, the co-creator of Superman, claims that Warner Bros. Discovery no longer has the international rights to the character and story but has continued to exploit them without permission or compensation.
The complaint was filed in a New York federal court, and seeks a share of the profits from all works that WBD has infringed on.
These films include Zack Snyder’s ‘Justice League’, 2022’s ‘Black Adam’ and 2019’s ‘Shazam!’ in several countries like Canada, UK, and Australia.
WBD said in a statement: “We fundamentally disagree with the merits of the lawsuit, and will vigorously defend our rights.”
It’s unclear what affect this move will have on the international rollout of the upcoming ‘Superman’ as WBD seeks to restart the DC franchise under James Gunn’s and Peter Safran’s leadership.
Rights issues has plagued Superman ever since his creation.
Created by writer Jerome Siegal and the graphic artist Shuster, they sold the rights to the character to DC in 1938 for $130.
In 1947, the duo sued to reclaim ownership of the character, and the pair settled with a $94,000 payout.
Almost 50 years later in 1992, Shuster’s brother and sister reached a deal with DC to terminate their right to claw back ownership of the character due to provisions under U.S. copyright law.
In exchange, the pair would get $25,000 per year, which was later upheld by a federal appeals court.
The Shuster estate now wants to use UK copyright law, which automatically terminates copyright assignments 25 years after an author’s death. The lawsuit claims that the Shuster estate reclaimed the rights to ‘Superman’ back in 2017, as the graphic artist died in 1992.
Another complication is that Shuster’s sister didn’t have full authoritiy to take the estate into the 1992 agreement. The court at the time did not decide on this issue, explaining that it was a “complex one.”
The lawsuit seeks to bar the release of the ‘Superman’ film in the countries where the character’s copyright is being exploited, which is stated as being in the UK, Australia and Canada.
