Back in January of 2012, it was announced that Adam Sandler would produce and star in “an operatic, ‘King Lear’-like” Candy Land movie from Columbia Pictures and Hasbro. Naturally we all took this to be a sign of the impending apocalypse and calmly awaited our fates. Luckily the world didn’t end—and even better, the movie might be in trouble now if the copyright owners of the popular board game’s characters have anything to say about it.
While the game itself has been around since the mid ’40s, Landmark Entertainment Group reportedly created the 1984 “revamped” version that first introduced characters like King Kandy and Lord Licorice, and then licensed the rights to Milton Bradley (which was later acquired by Hasbro) for $50,000 and future royalties. When Landmark heard about this upcoming film, it called Hasbro out for all the ways the company’s allegedly been stiffing them by using Candy Land characters without accounting for sales.
In response, Hasbro reportedly “took the position that Hasbro owned the subject Works as works made-for-hire, and refused to provide a complete and accurate accounting, pay royalties due, or confirm its obligation to seek Landmark’s authorization to create a feature film based upon Landmark’s copyrighted Works,” the official complaint reads.
Landmark is now seeking a declaratory judgement that it is the true owner of the Candy Land characters and that Hasbro is not to create anything other than toys—and that ‘anything other’ includes “animated or live action films, handheld electronic games, or DVD-based video games.”
Neither Hasbro nor Sony, the company behind Columbia pictures, have commented on the matter. However, it stands to reason that if they’re not too deep in production, they can always just rewrite all the to create new characters for the Candyland movie. Until we hear otherwise, we can valiantly hope that such a horror will not come to pass.
(via The Hollywood Reporter, image via John Morgan)
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- “We envision it as Lord of The Rings, but set in a world of candy”
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