I'm not aware that any of these rights you mention can legally exist "in perpetuity". Pretty sure there is a statute of limitations on intellectual property, copyright, distribution, etc. The only way to extend those rights is to re-exercise them first when they expire 50 years from the original establishment date.
When I began having to deal with copyright, licensing, intellectual property, etc - the government literature I read on it limited it to 50 years, or 10 years after the death of the original rights holder (for the estate). It's possible that's changed in the last 25 years, but I still work in the field and have not seen anything come across that would seem to change those limitations.
The length did change a while ago. It's the life of the author plus 70 years, except for works of corporate authorship, where it's 120 years from creation or 95 years from publication. Basically, Star Wars as a copyrightable property, will outlive every person posting on this board even if George Lucas died right before I finished typing this sentence. So, I wouldn't look to the date that Star Wars falls into the public domain as some sort of workaround for this. Also, that time period can be extended. The current length comes from a change in the Copyright Act which was signed into law in 1998.
Most of that article makes sense, except for the part where Fox has an agreement not to release the OOT. That's likely just a rumor that whoever the Fox insider is once heard around the office. Legally speaking, it sounds like nonsense to me.
I agree. FOX may own it, but they won't be able to do anything with it with Disney having complete control of the other films.
The same thing happened with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit at Universal. Walt Disney created it, but Universal owned it. However, Universal couldn't do anything with it and just sold it to Disney.
I know the dollar amounts are far different. Most people don't even know who Oswald is. That is because he sat in the archives for years at Universal.
In most respects, I see Bryan's analysis as fairly reasonable. The thing's gotta be capable of making enough money for them to justify the outlay of cash necessary to recapture the rights. On its face, yeah, the OOT is kind of a niche product to potentially justify that expense. However, there may be other factors at work here that alter the calculus.
While it's true that physical home media is a dwindling market overall, it's still around, and the national broadband infrastructure isn't quite at a point where you can count on streaming getting to enough people. So, while I certainly see fewer digital media discs being pressed in the future, I don't think we're quite at a point where they're gonna die out entirely.
But both the streaming and physical media issues are also set against shifts in home media technology. There's a real question as to whether 4K TVs will take off. I think it could happen, but it may not happen quickly. All that said, the problem with the SEs -- and with the PT -- is that they are all native 1080p images. You simply cannot squeeze more resolution out of them. If 4K takes off, then there will likely be a demand for increases in resolution for media originally shot on film or originally shot in higher resolutions than 1080p. That won't be possible for the native-lower-res SEs...but it IS possible for the OOT. To my way of thinking, that's the "hidden" market with a 4K or higher resolution scan -- the future market. It's not about the blu-ray sales for a restored "Archival" edition. It's about what the hell happens to these films after Blu-ray is gone.
Now, the trouble with this is that if Disney can think of it....so can Fox. So if there's a value to it for Disney, Fox knows it. After 2020, in some ways, things favor Disney...but in others, they favor Fox. Fox can easily hurt Disney by refusing to license the distribution of ANH. And as a standalone film, ANH is way more marketable than the 6-minus-one set.
In a sense, that might be a reason for Disney to come to the table now, rather than 2020. From one perspective, you could argue that ANH becomes more "precious" after 2020. Right now, it's just one of a bunch of films. After 2020...it's the one damn thing you don't have that you need the most. So, maybe Fox would be willing to take a larger lump of cash right now, rather than hope it can put Disney over a barrel in 6 years. But if that's not how the parties are operating, then, yeah, I don't see this getting resolved before 2020.
