Movies
‘Children of the Corn’ Rights Battle Begins
While this isn’t exactly the same as the ongoing battle for Friday the 13th, the Weinstein Company is now fighting to retain the rights to Children of the Corn.
Variety reported last night that Producer Donald Borchers filed a federal copyright suit on Thursday, alleging that he and not The Weinstein Company owns the sequel rights to Children of the Corn.
Borchers produced the original 1984 film, based on the Stephen King short story about a cult of murderous children. He also wrote and directed a 2009 TV adaptation.
A bit of history as Miramax acquired rights to the franchise in 1994 and produced several sequels under the Dimension Films label, many of them went straight to video, beginning with Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering in 1996, all the way through the eighth installment in 2011.
Borchers has also been seeking to reboot the franchise since about 2004. In the lawsuit, Borchers says he initially approached Miramax with the idea of remaking the original film. At the time, he says he was told that Miramax had lost interest in the franchise because it no longer performed theatrically and the video business was slowing down. According to Borchers, Miramax liked the idea of a remake, but quickly discovered that it had failed to secure the remake rights to the original film. So, without telling Borchers, the company acquired those rights from Park Avenue Entertainment, the lawsuit states.
In 2016, Borchers wrote a spec script for a film “spinoff” of Children of the Corn, and tried to license those rights from Dimension, now a subsidiary of The Weinstein Company. Dimension did not confirm whether it held those rights, and Borchers alleges he later determined that Park Avenue had in fact reserved them. Borchers says he has recently acquired the spinoff rights once held by Park Avenue, and informed Dimension of this. Dimension contests Borchers’ claim, according to the suit.
Borchers is now suing to confirm that he holds the rights.
“Absent this Court’s declaration of Borchers’ rights, and a resolution of legal uncertainties, he cannot submit any production, including a spinoff, for Copyright registration without concern for engaging in a potentially unlawful use or facing criminal liability,” the suit states. “And, if Borchers is able to produce, because the Defendants have denied, or refused to acknowledge, his rights, Borchers faces a potential infringement action by the Defendants.”
The article is a bit confusing as it both states Borchers is battling for sequel and spinoff rights, and I’m sure the shelved sequel Children of the Corn: Runaway has something to do with this breaking news.
Movies
‘Desperation’ – Sam Raimi and ‘Final Destination Bloodlines’ Directors Teaming for Stephen King Movie
Stephen King’s 1996 novel Desperation is headed back to the screen, with Jeff Sneider breaking the news on The InSneider that Sam Raimi, Stephen King, and Final Destination Bloodlines directors Adam B. Stein and Zach Lipovsky are coming together for the film.
Sam Raimi will produce the upcoming Desperation movie, while Stein and Lipovsky are on board to direct. Searchlight Pictures is the studio attached to the feature film project.
Published in 1996, Stephen King’s novel Desperation was previously turned into a made-for-TV movie starring Ron Perlman, Tom Skerritt and Steven Weber back in 2006.
Wikipedia reminds, “Desperation is a story about several people who, while traveling along the desolated Highway 50 in Nevada, get abducted by Collie Entragian, the deputy of the fictional mining town of Desperation. Entragian uses various pretexts for the abductions, from an arrest for drug possession to ‘rescuing’ a family from a nonexistent gunman. It becomes clear to the captives that Entragian has been possessed by an evil being named Tak, who has control over the surrounding desert wildlife and must change hosts to keep itself alive.
“They begin to fight for their freedom, sanity and lives before realizing that if they are ever to escape Desperation, they must trap Tak in the place from which he came.”
Desperation was published at the same time as Stephen King’s own “mirror novel” titled The Regulators, which shares characters but takes place in an alternate universe.
The union of Sam Raimi and Stephen King is an exciting one for fans of both Raimi and King, and there’s a nice bit of full circle history there too. As you may recall, it was Stephen King’s review of The Evil Dead that Raimi credits for saving and legitimizing his indie debut feature.
And the rest is history! Stay tuned for more on this developing story.
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