Again the Copyright put at risk the permanence of film deliveries of Disney, now with Spider-Man and Doctor Strange.
The Marvel Cinematic World has proven its importance within this industry thanks to its appreciation by fans. In accordance with Statista, Marvel finds 5 different deliveries within the ranking of the films with the highest grossing at the box office worldwide, a merit that it managed to achieve with the films of:
- Avengers: Endgame with $ 2,797.5 million (second place)
- Avengers: Infinity War with 2,048.4 million dollars (fifth place)
- The Avengers – $ 1,518.8 million (8th place)
- Avengers: Age of Ultron – with 1,402.8 (11th place)
- Black Panther – 1,347.6 (12th place)
In addition to giving the world some of the highest-grossing films in history, it has also managed to position some of its superheroes as the world’s favorites, including Spider-man. A study conducted by Game, has shown that Peter Parker is the world’s favorite superhero, managing to lead the searches for this in 57 countries.
The new installments of the films of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange They are getting closer and closer, and with them the excitement on the part of the fans to know how phase 4 of Marvel will unfold. Despite the presence of these, future films of these characters could be in danger from new problems related to copyright.
Spider-Man and Dr. Strange in copyright trouble at Disney
There are potential new problems for Marvel (and Disney) fans, according to Variety, heirs of five authors of Marvel presented dozens of termination notices before the Office of Copyright If these are successful, they should be paid by Marvel. However, the comic book company does not sit idly by in the face of the probable millionaire losses that would affect the income of some of its star superheroes, such as Spider-man, Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Ant-Man and Doctor Strange.
Marvel presented last Friday five lawsuits to prevent said heirs of the comic creators from claiming their copyrights, however, they will be seen in a dispute with Marc Toberoff, a attorney veteran in Copyright who has filed cases of similar origin with the heirs of Jack Kirby, co-creator of several Marvel heroes, in addition to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the co-creators of Superman. The lawyer maintains that due to the authors, the company led to millionaire franchises, so they should share the wealth with their heirs.
According to the site, Tobweoff represents Larry Lieber (Stan Lee’s brother and co-creator of Thor, Iron Man, and Ant-Man), as does Steve Ditko’s (Spider-Man, Dr. Strange) estate, Don Heck (Iron Man, Hawkeye), Don Rico (Black Widow) and Gene Colan (Captain Marvel, Falcon).
In agreement with the attorney who will represent Marvel, Daniel Petrocelli, mentioned through a statement quoted by Variety:
“Since these were commissioned works and therefore the property of Marvel, we are filing these lawsuits to confirm that the termination notices are invalid and have no legal effect.”
Despite this, supposedly the characters would remain Marvel, while the heirs would receive a part of the profits, that is to say that for the moment we will not be without these superheroes.
History of trouble with Disney
It is not the first time that the copyright of characters of Marvel they are involved in legal disputes that have led to some complications for the making of new films. Such is the case of the purchase of the X-Men, whose rights belonged to Fox. In the same way the case was presented at that time about Spider-man, who belonged to Century Fox And it’s one of the reasons why there have been 3 different Peter Parkers in the last two decades.
In the same way, recently Disney was in complications before a lawsuit by Scarlett Johansson, in charge of playing Black Widow, sued Disney for launching the premiere of his film on streaming platforms, where the copyright law again became important.
The growth of Disney and the world of comics is being presented exponentially, and consequently, the appearance of complications within the medium are presented (this time with problems of Copyright), now it was the turn of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange.
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