Author Archives: Rameez

When a film stu­dent (capt_wink_martindale on red­dit) tried to make a movie based on Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot around the time the Will Smith-starrer of the same name came out:

Part of the project was to make posters, trail­ers, and a web­site for the film. We even went so far as to cre­ate our own pro­duc­tion com­pany, as to look pro­fes­sional. Some­how the legal team from the stu­dio found out about a stu­dent project, in a small pri­vate col­lege in the Mid­west, with no bud­get, being shot in a ware­house base­ment, and decided to issue a cease and desist order. Basi­cally, what that means, is that the studio’s lawyers said to us, “You’re using our prop­erty. Stop, or we’ll sue you into the stone age.” I responded by send­ing them the con­sent form from the Asi­mov estate, and explained that it was a stu­dent project, not a com­mer­cial ven­ture worth lit­i­gat­ing. I turned over our script, our shoot­ing notes, our shot list, copies of our tapes and even the con­cept art drawings.

Instead of the let­ter rec­og­niz­ing our valiant efforts as stu­dents that I expected, I found myself on the tail end of a phone call that changed my life. I was con­tacted directly by the lead of the studio’s legal team, who explained my sit­u­a­tion to me very clearly. He told me that I was tech­ni­cally in my legal right to use Isaac Asimov’s mate­r­ial. How­ever, if I chose to pro­ceed, they would file mul­ti­ple law­suits total­ing over 2 mil­lion dol­lars against me. In the end, I might win, but it would take hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in legal fees just to fight it, but would cost them noth­ing more than the salaries they already pay their lawyers. It would be 10 years before any type of ver­dict could be levied, and by then it wouldn’t mat­ter what the out­come was, since their film would be long since released.

This is how cre­ativ­ity is encour­aged. This is what hap­pens to aspir­ing small-time film-makers whose paths cross with the big studios.

/via @nimbupani