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.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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