Argument over rights to horror film slashed
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Original “Friday the 13th” writer Victor Miller killed it in federal court Thursday, four decades after writing the screenplay for the horror franchise’s inaugural film, featuring a mentally unstable and once-drowned Jason Voorhees murdering everybody in sight at creepy Camp Crystal Lake.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Mr. Miller’s victory in a copyright termination battle that now gives him the domestic rights to the franchise, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which said the ruling should “frighten Hollywood,” as Mr. Miller “attempted to leverage the part of copyright law that allows authors to reclaim the rights to what they once created” after waiting a statutory time period.
“It’s not unlike what the heirs of comic book creators are now attempting to do against Disney, although there are important differences given the Marvel comic books at issue were published before copyright law was changed in the mid-1970s and Friday the 13th came afterward.”
But in alignment with Disney’s argument, defendant and Friday the 13th producer Sean Cunningham argued that Mr. Miller contributed his screenplay as a work made for hire and that it was ineligible for termination — which a federal judge ruled against in 2018.
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