This past Sunday, legendary writer Clive Barker sued Park Avenue Entertainment in a LA federal court seeking a declaration to show that he terminated company’s rights for the Hellraiser film screenplay and the book it was based on, The Hellbound Heart.
A major portion of the Copyright Act of 1976 allows writers and artists termination rights 35 years after their work was published. This was put into place to allow the artists to renegotiate as the value of their work was not apparent at the time.
Now as we know from everything that went (and continues to go) down with the rights for Friday the 13th, things can get extremely messy. Victor Miller who wrote the screenplay for Friday the 13th and is credited with creating Jason and Pamela Voorhees is still battling against filmmaker Sean Cunningham who co-created and directed Friday the 13th for the rights to the franchise. All this equals out to why horror fans have not seen Jason on the big screen since 2009.
Hellraiser has been in the news quite a bit in 2020. Earlier this year we reported on a Hellraiser movie reboot being worked on with David Bruckner directing. Just a short while later we shared news of a TV series in the works at HBO.
According to actor-turned-lawyer Larry Zerner (Shelly in Friday the 13th Part 3) stated that: “Barker’s termination (if effective) would not take place until December 19, 2021,” he also added “If the producers can get a new movie out before then, they would be legally in the clear. Just nothing new after that date.”
For those of you who like the Friday the 13th lawsuit, now @RealCliveBarker has sued for a declaratory judgment that he can terminate his 1986 transfer and get back his rights to the "Hellraiser" franchise. https://t.co/W3TpNhGj2W pic.twitter.com/bfA2YQtQjJ
— Larry Zerner (@Zernerlaw) June 15, 2020
Stay tuned to Horror News Network for the latest developments on Clive Barker attempting to regain the rights to Hellraiser.
Click here for more on the Hellraiser franchise.
