King Kong Live action show for Disney+

[Panda_Kahn_fan]

There making a new king kong on Skull Island live action show for Disney+;

https://www.ign.com/articles/king-kong-disney-plus-origin-story

This is being done by the Marion C Cooper estate (Kong's original creator), and has no connection to the Legendary Mosterverse. And before anyone complains about how 'unoriginal Hollywood is', this is based on the King Kong:Skull Island books the Cooper estate has put out in recent years, there is more to Kong than the 1930's RKO film. I love the Joe Divito-illustrated books and comics the estate puts out, and I'm really looking forward to this.

[neatoman]

Could someone clear up the copyright issues with King Kong?

[Panda_Kahn_fan]

Ok, long story short:

Marion C Cooper created King Kong, wrote the novel, and helped produce the film with RKO pictures. He approved RKO's sequel, Son of Kong, but believed he still owned all the rights to kong. Years later, RKO struck the deal with Toho to make the vs Godzilla movie, Cooper took RKO to court to prove his ownership of Kong, but lost the case due to losing the paperwork over the years. Cooper only was able to rertain rights to the novelization, but all other rights belonged to RKO.

By the 1970',s Dino Di Laurentius bought the rights to make a remake of the first film from RKO, while universal claimed they had a verbal agreement with RKO over the Remake. There was a court case over which studio could masker the film, and Cooper's son got involved. Looooong story short; court ruled RKO had no rights to kong at all, the ownership of the King Kong character and story belonged to Cooper's son, and the original book had not been renewed and was in the public domain. Cooper's son sold the movie and merchandise rights to universal, and kept the publishing rights to himself.

Ironically, Universal would then sue Nintendo claiming Donkey Kong was a rip-off of King Kong, but lost the case because the original novel had fallen into the public domain, and Universal had started the case acting in bad faith. Currently, the Mosterverse Kong was originally a universal/ Legendary project that got traded over to WB, so Kong could be part of the monsterverse, and this New Disney+ Show is based on the Cooper estate's Kong Skull Island books made by Joe Divito. Although the Kong original novel is now in the public domain.

[TigerClaw]

Could someone clear up the copyright issues with King Kong?
Basically King Kong is in the public domain, So anyone can make a King Kong movie using the book as the source material, The Monsterverse version is its own take while not using the source material as his origin is completely different.

This Disney+ show will be based more on the source material, Basically the books and the original movie from the 30s.

[Panda_Kahn_fan]

Basically King Kong is in the public domain, So anyone can make a King Kong movie using the book as the source material, The Monsterverse version is its own take while not using the source material as his origin is completely different.

This Disney+ show will be based more on the source material, Basically the books and the original movie from the 30s.

Actually, this is not entirely correct.

Yes, the original Kong novel is in the public domain, but every other version/innovation done with Kong over the years is owned by their respective copyright holders (RKO movies owned by Rko and Warner Bros, Toho owns their version of Kong, etc.) Which means any new version of Kong can't use elements from those versions, only stuff from the original novel along with whatever new they create for their new version.

This new Show is based on the King Kong Books written by Joe Dvito, who basically worked with the cooper estate to do a rewrite of the original novel and prequels/sequels to give them a version of Kong the estate can put back under copyright. This new TV series is made in conjunction with Devito and the cooper estate and is part of that Kong IP.