Friday the 13th screenwriter Victor Miller will reclaim the domestic rights to the iconic horror franchise after scoring a major legal victory.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals announced on Thursday that Miller had won the copyright termination battle for Friday the 13th. As a result, the domestic rights would be handed over to Miller from the film's producer and director Sean S. Cunningham, who will retain the foreign rights as well as IP derived from its sequels.
Cunningham reportedly argued that Miller contributed his screenplay for the landmark horror film, released in 1980, as a work "made for hire," and therefore shouldn't have been able to gain rights to the screenplay. However, in September 2018, a federal judge ruled that Miller's work wasn't made for hire and that he should therefore be entitled to authorship rights.
Reporter Eriq Gardner shared the ruling on Twitter, underscoring the decision. The text explains that if Miller had been an employee of the film production company Manny, Inc. when he penned the screenplay, then it would be considered a "work made for hire" and Manny, not Miller, would own the screenplay and the domestic rights to the franchise going forward.
However, if Miller was an independent contractor at the time of writing the screenplay, then he, as the author, would be entitled to terminate Manny's and its successors' rights to reclaim them for himself, so long as certain other conditions were met in the process. After further investigation, it was deemed under copyright law that Miller wasn't Manny's employee.
It's important to note, however, that Cunningham retains the international rights to the Friday the 13th franchise, together with the intellectual property rights for the sequels, including "maybe the monstrous Jason [Voorhees] character" due to the fact that the adult version of the hockey mask-wearing killer did not appear until the sequels.
This case is part of a legal trend, rooting back to when some major franchises were finding their footing. As THR previously explained, Congress amended intellectual copyright law in the late 1970s to allow creators to grab the IP back from studios after a few decades. After 35 years, termination notices can be served up to their controlling parties.
It's also not too dissimilar to what is happening with Marvel and Disney right now, as the heirs of comic book legend Steve Ditko seek to terminate Marvel's copyrights over such characters as Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, and many more. However, Marvel is fighting back by claiming that these characters were created under contract as "works for hire."
Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.