New He-Man Netflix Series

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by neatoman

That's... Rather complicated and I have some trouble wrapping my head around it.
Some key questions here:

1. What does it mean to "use the characters as they appear there" exactly? Like are they barred from making an explicit sequel to those cartoons? Or are they barred from using certain ideas that originated in those cartoons? Or does it mean something else entirely?
2. Taking a look at the original She-Ra toy package, I can indeed see it's labelled as "Princess of Power" rather than "Masters of the Universe". I'm still a little confused here though, is it because it was officially a different toyline that it is considered a different license or were the characters created by Filmation rather than Mattel?
3. What exactly is going on between Dreamworks and Mattel, what is one allowed to do without the other and to what extent do they collaborate? Is Dreamworks allowed to do whatever they want with She-Ra or do they need Mattel's permission? Is Mattel allowed to make a She-Ra cartoon if it's nothing like the Filmation one? Hordak was in the 2018 She-Ra show, so is it a shared rights thing going on?

Part of the reason I'm confused is that it's generally not this complicated. Fred Wolf owns the rights to his TMNT show but clearly just the show itself, Hasbro bought all the rights to their Marvel collaborations and most DC cartoons are made by other branches of Time Warner meaning no fuzzy copyright crap at all.

It IS a bit more complicated than most properties. Also, keep in mind, I'm no expert in copyright or trademark law. BUT, there's a few people on the He-Man board who ARE (including some who've worked with Mattel directly at one point or another), and I've been able to glean some general info from their posts over the years. I'm not 100% on every single detail but I understand the gist of it.

So here's some things I DO know, as I understand them:

- With regard to "as they appeared", if you take a close look at a lot of MOTU/PoP characters, their appearance varies quite a bit between their toy designs and their cartoon designs. Mattel owns outright everything that was created for the MOTU/PoP toy division - including character likenesses - but the Filmation shows were developed by different people, merely "under supervision" from Mattel, and Mattel does not own those designs. Thus, they can't do toys or other merch based distinctly on the Filmation cartoons unless they come to agreements with DreamWorks.

Hordak would be a simple example. Action Figure Hordak (owned outright by Mattel) is gray; Filmation Hordak is blue. Or perhaps a better example would be She-Ra herself; her original toy looks almost NOTHING like her cartoon appearance. There are a lot of other examples.

- Mattel does, and has, reached agreements in certain circumstances when it's not too much hassle or inconvenience. For example, they recently did a blue "Filmation-inspired" Hordak figure as one of this year's PowerCon Exclusives. And apparently they recently reached agreements to do even more such figures in the future. But they don't own the cartoon designs outright.

- The problems all come from the fact that while MOTU was originally designed on its own, with only Mattel having any input, and then Filmation got involved later on and put their own spin on things such as character designs and story elements, She-Ra was a different case in that she was co-developed by Mattel AND Filmation with each side having some input. When He-Man was created, the cartoon show was nothing but wishful thinking; when She-Ra was created, the fact that she would have her own cartoon was a given, and as such Filmation had a lot of say in things regarding her. So Filmation had certain limited rights of ownership on the She-Ra side of things.

- When Filmation went out of business, their catalog of shows got shopped around and acquired by different parties. At some point, DreamWorks obtained both the He-Man and She-Ra Filmation cartoons, and all character likenesses and story elements specifically pertaining to them. So they get "first dibs" on anything that was uniquely Filmation-based.

- Things get REALLY complicated when you add sublicensing into things. To wit, when Mattel was doing their "MOTU Classics" action figure line, there were famously a lot of characters and designs that they either couldn't use at all, or didn't end up doing for a very long time, because their rights were tied up with the Filmation stuff. Meanwhile, when Mattel sublicensed MOTU to Super 7 to continue "Classics" (as well as their own 5.5-inch line and "Club Grayskull" collectors' series), Super 7's output was almost 100% Filmation-inspired as they specifically only wanted to use those versions of the characters, at least initially. For reasons I'm not 100% on, Super 7 had a much easier time getting the Filmation license than Mattel did.

- Legally, no, they cannot do a "true" sequel to either Filmation cartoon. DreamWorks theoretically can, if they want to.

- This also has a lot to do with why the MOTU movie that's been in development hell for decades never gets made. Since She-Ra is "supposed to be there" from the beginning, most of the scriptwriters who get hired to write the movie include some reference to her in the script... only to be told AFTER the fact by the suits, "We can't use She-Ra in the live-action movie, it's a separate set of rights we have to pay for and we don't want to." Then they have to start over. It's not the ONLY reason the movie isn't happening but it has been a commonly-recurring problem; multiple writers have claimed "They never told me we couldn't use She-Ra!" until it was too late.

Short version: Mattel owns (most of) the characters, but not all the cartoon-specific stuff. They can use the cartoon stuff sometimes, but they have to jump through hoops, and sometimes they'd rather not bother. She-Ra/PoP is considered a completely separate line (and license) than He-Man/MOTU, despite the fact that they're intertwined.

It is all very, VERY complicated. Sorry I'm not more help, but like I said, this is about as much as I can give since I'm just a layman at such things. Pretty sure I got MOST of it correct however.