Ever since a judge ruled last year that Friday the 13th screenwriter Victor Miller is the sole owner of the original screenplay (in the US, at least), Friday director Sean Cunningham has been working to have the decision reversed. The argument continues to be that Miller wrote the screenplay as a “work-for-hire,” and therefore never should’ve been able to gain rights to the screenplay in the first place. While the trial judge had ruled that the rights go to Miller after all these years under the Copyright Act’s termination right, which allows authors to regain rights to work they signed over to a company, Cunningham and Horror Inc. are hoping that the Second Circuit Court of Appeals will reverse that decision in the coming months.
Copyright lawyer/Friday the 13th Part III star Larry Zerner provides us with the latest update on the legal mess this week, suggesting a *potential* resolution in mid-2020.
Zerner tweets, “The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has proposed oral arguments for the week of February 10th, 2020. This means there will probably be a decision by June 2020.”
The Second Circuit will be deciding if Miller will keep the rights to the Friday screenplay, as decided last year, or if they’ll revert back to Cunningham/Horror Inc. Mind you, there’ll still be a whole lot to be worked through before Jason can return to the screen, no matter the decision, but this is one massive legal hurdle that *needs* to be resolved first and foremost.
Needless to say, new movies cannot and will not be made until everything is figured out. And the legal issues have been impacting everything from video games to toys as well.
For all the latest updates, be sure to follow @Zernerlaw and @LarryZerner on Twitter.
Update in Horror, Inc. v. Miller (#Fridaythe13th case). The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has proposed oral arguments for the week of February 10th, 2020.
This means there will probably be a decision by June 2020.
— Larry Zerner (@Zernerlaw) November 22, 2019
