After more than three decades at Disney, Roger Rabbit has officially returned to his original creator. Author Gary K. Wolf has regained ownership of the Roger Rabbit IP and its entire cast of characters through the 35-Year Copyright Reversion Clause, a legal provision that allows creators to reclaim their work decades after selling it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI now have back the rights to all my characters, all my books. I can, basically, do my own Roger Rabbit projects,\u201d Wolf confirmed in an interview with ImNotBadTV.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The rights quietly reverted about a year ago, giving Wolf full creative control over the beloved characters from his 1981 novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit? and its 1988 film adaptation. With the transfer complete, he\u2019s already mapping out the next chapter for Toontown and its off-the-wall inhabitants.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny sequels that we do have to at least match the quality of the original [1988] movie,\u201d he said, setting an astronomically high bar. \u201cIn production value, in tone, in script content, in empathy, in character development. It has to be as good, or better than, what we did before. That\u2019s what the fans want, and I have promised the fans that\u2019s what I\u2019m going to give them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wolf discovered he might be eligible to reclaim his rights while developing a noir-style TV series, Hairy Wolf, set in a gritty Toontown jazz club. When questions arose about who owned the Toontown concept, he dug into copyright law.<\/p>\n
\u201c35 years after you have sold the rights to a book or [song], you could petition the Library of Congress and get those rights back,\u201d Wolf explained. \u201c[An attorney] said to me, \u2018You could get your rights back from Disney.\u2019 I said, \u2018There\u2019s no way that\u2019s possible.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
To his surprise, the process was straightforward. \u201cI expected that this would be a contentious process. Who knows what was going to happen? But, it was not. It was very civil, very courteous, very straightforward,\u201d he said. \u201cDisney was always top-notch for me. They treated me very well. They always accommodated me in whatever I wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
With ownership restored, Wolf and his team are developing several new projects, including a live-action Jessica Rabbit movie.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe one that is most prominent \u2026 is a live-action Jessica Rabbit movie based on the book Jessica Rabbit: XERIOUS Business,\u201d Wolf said. \u201cThat was the first project that we took a look at and the first we started developing. It\u2019s probably the one that\u2019s furthest along right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the interview, Wolf added that other films based on his novels are being considered. \u201cA lot of people have asked why didn\u2019t we do the first movie more closely to the Who Censored Roger Rabbit book, with the word balloons and those kinds of characters. Well, that\u2019s on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite now holding the reins, Wolf said he hopes to reunite with some of the same surviving creative minds who brought Roger Rabbit to life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would love to work with Disney again,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019d love for Disney to participate in this. We could partner up on this. There\u2019s a core group of people who were involved with the first movie, and I would love to work with those people again.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the long term, Wolf summed it up his ambitions simply, saying, \u201cI\u2019m looking to have fun with this and give the fans what they have been wanting now for 35 years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After more than three decades at Disney, Roger Rabbit has officially returned to his original creator. Author Gary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-278583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}