Beatty, Tribune Vie for Dick Tracy
Dick Tracy is on his way to the center of a major tug-of-war match.
Warren Beatty, who directed and starred in the 1990 film Dick Tracy, has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Chicago-based company Tribune Media Services, claiming he still owns the rights to the character and has a second movie on the drawing board.
Tribune, on the other hand, claims it owns the rights to the character and has plans for a new television series featuring an updated version of the detective.
According to his court documents, Beatty is seeking a ruling awarding him film and other rights to the Dick Tracy character, as well as $30 million in damages, a number presumably based on the profits he could expect to reap on the sequel. The original film took in more than $100 million domestically.
Tribune originally assigned the Dick Tracy television, film and other rights to Beatty in a complex agreement back in 1985.
The assignment included a detailed, multistep reversion process that Tribune would be required to follow if it wanted to take back the rights from Beatty, including a two-year notification process.
While shooting Dick Tracy in 1990, Beatty assigned most of his rights to the character to Disney. His suit claims that Tribune informally asked Disney to give up the rights in 2002.
In 2004, Tribune allegedly announced that the rights had reverted without ever notifying Beatty, which according to the lawsuit, did not meet the requirements of the reversion process.
Disney rejected Tribune's claims and last month reassigned its rights to Beatty, according to the actor's lawyer, Bertram Fields.
As of now, Beatty's plans for a sequel are on hold pending the outcome of his lawsuit.
Meanwhile, Tribune claims it met the requirements of the original agreement in order to reclaim the rights. The company has started work on its own plans for reviving the Dick Tracy character.
Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Outlaw Productions partners Bobby Newmyer and Scott Strauss have teamed with Tribune to bring the character to the small screen in a contemporary television series.
Though it's still unclear which party will wind up with the rights to the character, the producers plan to attach a writer to the TV series over the next month and to pitch the show to networks this summer.
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