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Stan Lee to be Paid Millions for Spidey
Soldrinero writes "After a tough legal battle that began in 2002 (mentioned in a previous Slashdot story), Stan Lee will finally get his due. A recent court decision says that Marvel owes Lee 10% of their profits for works based on his creations. Since three recent Marvel-based movies are in the all-time top 100 for box-office gross, this will be a sizable chunk of change."
I thought there was no such thing as intellectual property according to 90% of the people here. So this is a bad thing right? Or is it only OK when you download Mp3s and movies?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Stan Lee: "You don't want a Batman toy. You want something more dignified. Like this big wad of money."
Boy: "Ahh, but only Batman can fit in my Batmobile."
Stan Lee: "This big wad of money can fit too."
(breaks the car by forcing in big wad of money.)
Stan Lee: "See? It's fitting already."
Boy: "Ahh, you broke my Batmobile."
Stan Lee: "Broke? Or made it better?"
He'd better invest in some auditing. You know the studios will cook the books with all sorts of extra "fees" for stuff that has no value, reducing the bottom line.
Just like record production companies hire all sorts of expensive behind the scenes "help", reducing the amount of profit that is applied against the artist's advance.
Never ask for points on the profits. No movie has ever made a profit.
Of course movies make profits. But where those profits are buried in the accountancy, nobody will fess up lightly. I hope Stan Lee has an ironclad judgement that can't be wiggled out with some fancy bookwork.
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But Marvel will appeal.
The whole point here is to try and run-out-the-clock on Stan Lee. The guys in his 80s. They're hoping he'll just go ahead and die before they have to pay. If he did die, does Marvel then owe Lee's children (does he have any?)
Insurance companies view this as a legit business practice. They'll often sit on someone's benefits, and make them jump through as many legal hoops as possible, if they know they have a terminal disease, or are otherwise close to death.
At any rate, we can all agree that Spiderman sucks.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
That's not the problem. The problem is story submissions take forever to make it through.
Slashdot needs a new system, quick. Stories should be moderated too, that way you don't need one of the editors to pass the submission. The slashdot subscribers can see the unmoderated submissions, and after a story gets good enough moderation than it could be read by unsubscribed users. Fark does something similar.
Which is why Stan Lee (former head of Marvel) would be breaking a child's batmobile.....
I am a big marvel comics fan. I grew up on Marvel. It turns my stomache that the greedy corporate *&*% would even consider doing such a thing to the creator of what is putting food on all their tables.
I say we start some kind of slashdot campaign to boycot all marvel movies and merchandise until Lee gets his due. And they better retract the appeal.
I dont know if I can sit through a movie and enjoy "heroics" when i know it had been produced by a most vile bunch of villains.
Then you are a fool. Anybody with a brain makes sure thier name is on the patent application. There have been a number of lawsuits over this and invariably the employees win.
Don't be a sucker. Corps have zero loyalty to you, so don't bother to have loyalty to them.
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"Their Land Sharks, Our Rights Protector?"
aka
"Their Terrorists, Our Freedom Fighters..."
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
well, of course their greedy: that's the whole point of this "free enterprise" thing that everyone seems to think is so neat.
what bugs me is the hypocrisy, though. if you rip off hollywood for the $4 cost of a rental by downloading ghost dad 2 from some p2p network, the mpaa will sue your ass... but they seem to have no compunction about taking liberties with mr. lee's intilectual property.
heck, i bet the producers even photocopied some spiderman comics without getting prior written consent.
2 1337 4 u!
it was in his contract, so I don't see how Marvel can appeal.
Marvel's argument has been that they made no money on the film. All the money made on the film was spent on production or marketing. All the profits were from merchandising, to which Stan Lee is not entitled a percentage. It is "creative" accounting on their part and hopefully the courts will continue to agree with Mr. Lee in this case.
Stephen King tried it and it was an utter success would be more like it. What he did was simply ask people to pay rather than require them to, and ended up raking in 70% of all the downloads as *payed*. This fell to 46% when he jacked the price to 2$.. a *chapter*.
I don't know about you, but if I put a PDF file online and say, "hey, I can't force you to, but I'm going to require you to put a buck in my hat for a download" and 70% of the people pay I consider it a roaring success.
And that was at a buck a chapter. The book (would've) went for like 10 bucks total.. for a PDF! And then he's got the gaul to say that it's a failure and that any smaller time writer wouldn't be able to make money. Gimmee a break!
You're reading Slashdot. Of course you like Linux and pc hardware
I don't know why parent is modded as Funny. It's actually insightful. The MPAA and RIAA have single-handedly destroyed copyright law in this country, impinged on fair-use, and hampered technological progress. I would venture to say the only lobbying group that has a bigger hold on the U.S. government is the military-industrial complex.
According to the article, he IS entitled to a cut of merchandise deals though?
"He filed the lawsuit in November 2002, pointing out a clause in his contract that entitled him to 10 percent of TV, movie and merchandising deals"
Even so, according to IMDB, total wordwide box office receipts for Spidey 1 & 2 (which are both in the top 15 grossers of all time) is approx 1.6 billion. Must take some kinda nerve to try and claim they made no profit on that.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
The MPAA and RIAA serve the vital purpose of distracting citizens from what the government is doing. That gives them an extremely high priority in DC.