007 Dis(Gold)members Austin Powers

gpinzone writes, "MGM and Danjaq, the British company that controls the Bond film license, have obtained a cease-and-desist order against New Line Cinema that prohibits New Line from calling the latest installment of Mike Myers' shagadelic spy series Austin Powers in Goldmember . The full article is available from E!-Online."

Comments

Jesus Christ!

[Big Dogs Cock]

Has nobody got a sense of humour any more? (Well, I know Mastercard haven't.)

Soon it wont be possible to satirise anything without getting a nastygram?

Goldmember with Star Ballz?

[bogusbrainbonus]

I wonder if New Line Cinema can take any lessons from Star Ballz? If they can get away with a PORN parody it seems like a weak reference like "Goldmember" should be allowed too. Especially when New Line Cinema (with all that cash) is backing it...

Re:Not to flamebait... but... THANK GOD!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

As a long time Bond fan, I don't really think that any of the older Bond flicks can be called "timeless classics". They featured pretty terrible acting (Usually not from Bond or the main cast, but from the supporting cast), cliche drenched plotlines, and often implausible uses of technology. (Anyone remember the one where Bond went into Outer space? They had a HUGE laser fight there, somehow some 70s version of Bill Gates had built a space station up there without anyone knowing. Fah I say!).

All that said, I've always enjoyed the many Bond movies, though the newer more than the older ones. I guess because the newer ones have a better view of the technology that they use, and have more plausible storylines.

Somebody out there really dislikes Mike Myers

[systemapex]

I have a feeling this latest court battle has its roots further back. Mike Myers went through a terrible time when the plans for the movie based on his SNL character Dieter, fell through. Universal Studios and Mike Myers were involved in a fierce lawsuit-counterlawsuit battle. It got to the point where Mike Myers hid out in Toronto (his "home" city), and resorted to wearing disguises when going about his business. The reason for this was that Universal had hired some private detectives to essentially make Myers' life horrible to live.

The suit ended in a settlement in which Myers agreed to make a movie for Universal and Dreamworks would get a cut of the profit. Dreamworks entered the picture becase Spielberg and Katzenberg helped broker the deal between Myers and Universal. Today, we have MGM issuing a cease & desist to Goldmember. Well, MGM and Universal have had close ties before and have often collaborated in projects. I wouldn't be surprised if some people at Universal are still quite upset with Myers and are trying to make every thing he does quite difficult.

Re:Everyone will hate me for this, but

[Metrol]

Is it a copyright issue? Might it be a trademark issue if they registered the movie title? Are we even talking US law or British? The article doesn't seem to address any of this.

If this is in fact copyright, then MGM is in the wrong as parody is fair use in US law from what I understand of it. As an earlier poster mentioned, there's a ton of porn movies that take advantage of this. You can make fun of an original work all you like. If this is British law, who knows?

If we're talking a trademark issue, different rules apply. Again, I don't see how MGM has a legal leg to stand on as this obviously isn't going to create any more confusion in the market place then the last Austin Powers flick.

There's a stack of unanswered questions this article raises but doesn't address. Anybody know where more information on this might be located?

And already the recalled poster are on ebay

[Cyberllama]

And approaching 100 dollars each in the bids!

Re:Of course, parody is protected by fair use...

[yatest5]

This is quite clearly bullshit

... not like that matters to Big Media. They have ways of getting around anything that interrupts their cash flow.

Er, this isn't big media versus some small guy. It's big media versus big media. So its one taking from the other, so it isn't increasing big medias cash flow at all.