Expert: Justin Case - 6/25/2009

Question
When a movie is made about Superman, Batman, Spiderman, X-Men, etc., do the writers of the movie have to get permission from the writers of these characters?

How does it work, for example, can they make any movie they want, or do the writers have to 'ok' it? Do the writers help the movie to be written? Thanks.

Answer
Hi John -

Superman and Batman are owned 'franchises' where the writers/creators sold most of the rights they had to DC comics, meaning DC can pretty much do whatever they want with the properties.

Several years ago there was a lawsuit by the families of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (creators of Superman) because the two creators died relatively poor without having reaped a great deal of reward from their creation.  As part of the settlement all products bearing the Superman name have to feature a "Superman created by...." tag somewhere.

Typically the larger firms like Marvel and DC enter into deals with the creators of any of their works that declare the companies the sole owners of any and all properties.

This is actually a hotly debated fact of life in the comics industry and, in fact, Image Comics was started by a number of former employees of Marvel in an attempt to allow creators to have ownership of their works and a percentage of the profits from the sales of movies, T-Shirts, action figures etc.

So, if a movie was being made of Superman the individuals writing the script (probably their studio actually) would enter into a contract with DC comics wherein the details of the activity, compensation and all the deal points regarding the studio's use of DC's "intellectual property" would be spelled out well before hand.

Most of the time the original creators of the character aren't involved at all (or in the case of Superman) are deceased.  Generally the involvement of the comic company as far as giving their approval is spelled out in the contract.

Sometimes the comic company has to 'ok' certain aspects of the production, but generally the studio doesn't want comic writers telling them how to make a movie so their involvement can be extremely limited.

So, the process is very long and complicated and makes lawyers and corporate consultants tons of money.  Well before the 'property' makes it to the big screen several dozen trees have sacrificed their lives to make the paper where the 'deal' is spelled out to the letter!

Pretty boring hunh?

D. -