Who owns the Fred Wolf Show?
 

Just curious, but who owns the distribution rights to Fred Wolf These days? it switches hands so often, not really sure who it is now.

I'm also assuming anyone who wants to release it also has to go through nick as well. which might be why we haven't seen it on pluto tv yet.

Cybercubed probably owns some stock in it.

How many times has it actually switched hands?

So far as I know, Lionsgate has always been the exclusive distributor of US-region DVDs and digital copies (YouTube, iTunes, AmazonPrime, VUDU/Fandango, etc), and they probably hold the rights to various other regions as well.

The original episodes are still the property of "Fred Wolf Films" (or whatever the company is called today).

I don't know if Viacom (or Mirage) ever received any royalties but I'm sure they at least have to credit the companies as the franchise IP holders so I'd expect at least some money changes hand, assuming it's not a legal necessity that is a hold-over from the Mirage/Fred Wolf agreement.

So, if anything where to happen with the FW show, one would have to contact someone at FWF, Lionsgate, and Nick. Say, hoping to get a sound track released.. or see if the show could be put on pluto tv...

I'm surprised by the lack of attention the 1987 show gets, I mean you'd think viacom would be interested in buying the rights to the cartoon that is the most popular incarnation of the franchise and that they currently make tons of money off of with merchandising. Maybe they don't see a lot of return of investment from streaming the show when compared to what it cost them but it'd still be a fraction of the price of all they make from it. Just being able to use those clips on their social media feeds should be make it worth it, which they avoid doing because they don't own the rights.

It's clear lions gate doesn't care about the show either, they never did much more than the half assed dvd releases from the 2000s and have only re-released those same releases over. No remaster, no better quality version, still the same bad quality 13 episodes per disc which lowered quality release. Look at all the releases transformers and even he-man has gotten over the years and the TMNT are just bigger franchises. It's a shame.

I agree, it doesn't make any sense that they wouldn't go after it and get everything whole sale. and what one would argue would be the biggest resellable part of the franchise.

In this particular case, I've been toying around with an idea for a few years now. To start A Kick starter to have Peter Reneday, Pat Fraley, Rob Paulsen, Barry Gorden and Jim Cummings all re record lines that they missed the first time, and have them in corporated back into the show.

For Peter, he'd need Donatello's Bad Time, and Mike Meets Bugman Again.
For Pat, Blast From the Past, CowaBunga ShreadHead, and Green With Jealousy.

For Barry, Ring of Fire. 20,000 Leaks Under the City, Leatherhead Terror of the Swamps, Four MuskerTurtles, and a few others.

For Rob, Turtle Terminator, a handful of other 1989s like Ninja Sword of Nowhere. all of the European Eps. all of 1996. Probably the most at 30 or so shows.

For Jim he missed one as Leatherhead in Night of the Rhouges, and he'd redub all of the ones james missed as shredder so they replacement was concurrent, maybe closer to 25 shows. 4 for 94-96. all 13 of 1993. and some from 1989.

I figure if all the participants where on board, and we got permission from lions gate and nick to go ahead with the experiment, we might be able to raise enough to make it work. especially with rewards being things like voice mails, or video messages or autographs.

I have in mind some people I'd bring aboard to help organize it, but this is something i've been thinking about for a while. with maybe a stretch goal being to dub turtles forever.

if we where successful in raising funds, it could prove to nick and lions gate that the interest is there.

But the first step is to figure out the proper parties to contact. the second step would be to see if everyone of the participants is on board. the third step would be to finalize a fund amount. but first the two hurdles before it needto be reached.

That's a neat project but it'll be very hard to ever get it made officially. It'd be easier to first get the exact amount of lines that they would need to dub, individually contact each VA with the amount of lines and how much they'd charge for that. Once you have a quote from all of them start a kickstarter campaign. Of course that means it'd be up to fans that would need to insert the audio files into the episodes and whatnot so it wouldn't be appealing but I see that as far more likely to happen than if trying to do it officially since it'd be so much work.

You can contact some members here for example the JL x TMNT fanproject game had 1987 April do some voice over to get more info on how they did it to get an idea.

but a few lines versus a whole shows worth of lines would vary the cost alot. and do you pay them per show, or per project? if anyone from nick 2012 is reading this and might be able to fill in details, most appreciated. it'd be a good place to get started.

We already know how many shows each of them would have to do. Barry, Peter, and Pat the least. Rob and Jim the most. and the latter two would probably be the higher cost being the more frequent current workers.

the project would obviously have a flexible schedule, if it ever got to goal reaching. so time wouldn't be an issue. it would be an 'as had' type.

Rob Paulsen missed two Season 3 episodes, 13 European Vacation episodes, and 8 Season 10 episodes.

So altogether he missed 26 episodes of the OT, that's basically a full season worth of episodes. There's no way Rob Paulsen is doing lines for 26 episodes on a fan budget. He gets paid millions to do a 26 episode season. (think of one full season of the 2012 show as Donatello)

Yeah, I love Rob but there's no way he pulls millions of dollars per season of a show.

yeah. I bet it's alot, but millions is more chris pratt type money. In my bet, it's probably more thousands. however, would it be say ten thousand a season, or a 1,000 per episode? How would one budget a fan project like this?

that's why I think that if we can find the right people to contact at nick and lion's gate that would give us their support, budget finding would be the next hurdle.

I meant a million per season. He's been in the VA industry since...the 80's, right? Obviously a long-term veteran like himself gets paid a lot more than newcomers to voice acting.

Seems like decades since this show has even aired in reruns in the U.S. That's crazy.

Is it common to air reruns of 25 years old cartoons?

I mean, it's definitely not UNcommon.

re-runs? we live in the digital age, people stream now only old people watch old regular tv anymore. I literally haven't done it in over 15 years. Even most grandparents and older generations stream now.

Even if the landscape of how we consume video had not changed no one would've watched reruns of the OT in 2020, it's not HD, not widescreen and looks old. When I was a kid in the 90s it was a chore to watch re-runs of anything from the 80s or older with a few exceptions of course. Even if it was only a few years away back then the cartoons and everything felt different. New generations want new stuff not reruns of the old stuff.

Let's face it: the 1987 series is trash now.

What I'm a little worried about is what happens to it after Fred Wolf, the guy himself, dies. I seriously doubt his estate cares about keeping the rights to those shows he made and might just sell them off to some holding company, like how Dreamworks bought one of those holding companies that just ate up the Filmation, WEP and Harvey Libraries. Whatever holding company ends up getting that show will likely "grow fat and juicy" to attract an actual production company to buy them out. Now what has me worried here is that I know there was some kind of loophole attached to the Masters of the Universe cartoons made by Filmation, which lead to Hasbro and Dreamworks having some weird independence in creating new iterations of the franchise.

I doubt such a loophole is attached to the Fred Wolf TMNT cartoon, considering character rights does not appear to have been a problem for either Nickelodeon or IDW. And while I would not get upset if such a loophole was found and it turned out that, let's say, Nickelodeon could not use the Technodrome or Dimension X again if WB or Disney got the rights to it, there might be other unforseen consequences.

And Viacom gets it... Ugh, we've already seen them be obnoxious in pretending they own the rights to it, I don't want to see what they would do if they actually did. In a weird way, I wish that the rights to the TMNT franchise itself and the rights to the Fred Wolf show will never ever be under the same umbrella.

As in the quality of the show itself is low or that it is poison to the future of the franchise? Because I can make a solid argument for both.

Let's face it: your opinion is trash now and forever.

Ouch! Why so salty, pal? I know a lot of you here love the old cartoon but there's no reason to take it so personal. When I say that show is trash now I mean it money wise. There are more people interested in products BASED on the show than the show itself. That show is not generating any money now and no company is interested in remastering it.
Maybe a sequel would push people to go back to it and make them want to rewatch it.