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Originally Posted by stray
Probably wouldn't even have a Japanese track. Not to mention the cost of either going to court with HG, or licensing the Macross TM. Hopefully Bandai Ent. will take HG to the house for Frontier, but considering whats been going on with BV USA, who knows. But then I have the M7 R2 remaster set, so whatever's clever.
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That will depend on how big a hit MF is in Japan and possibly by how many overseas orders of the first Bluray Discs there are as indicators of its popularity here. The sticking point is the name. HG successfully TM'd the name in early 2003 after about 4 years of a mexican stand off with BW at the trademarks office. The 25th anniversary merchandise sales to foreign markets may play a large role in future TM challenges as well. With the internet downloads of MF giving the franchise sufficient exposure, it may prompt BW to challenge the TM as IP rights holders. The best test bed for this would be in the Canadian Trademarks Tribunal who generally favor the IP rights holder over all others. This would provide a satellite office the ability to distribute to the North American market if a US court challenge is either too expensive or unsuccessful.
The impression I tend to get from BW is that it is afraid of loosing and thus either incurring an expensive long term lawsuit or loosing what grey area rights they have in the North American market. In the age of successful IP rights challenges this seems a bit irrational, but then again so is fear...
Quote:
Originally Posted by stray
I'd like to think that between Macross Frontier and the Robotech live action movie we're going to see things squared away no matter what within the next few years as far as Macross rights. If nothing else I can't really see Tobey Maguire being complacent about ignoring the Macross saga altogether, but you never know. I can still see the RT movie end up in the same limbo as the Halo movie.
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If WB and Maguire are set on using Macross as the basis for the movie then they will have to deal directly with BW and most likely HG will NOT be allowed in the negotiations or directly profit from the Macross property. Had they stayed quietly on the fence during Japanese the court battle BW might be willing to deal with them, but since they sided with Tatsunoko, they are considered a common enemy.
A month or so after the movie announcement a poster on the Robotech.com boards said that an insider told him that the movie was "facing" litigation, which could only mean that BW made their ownership known to WB.
It is not uncommon for a studio to shelve a project for years. So long as they continue to pay Frank Agrama for the option of making a movie he won't push it either. If WB is determined to make the film based on Macross they will have to gain the option from BW themselves and despite what a lot of Americans think, a truck load of money won't be enough. This is about saving face and honor to the Japanese and that can't be bought.
I am hopeful a resolution can be made, but unless someone ponies up the money to challenge HG's TM, we may only be able to hope to see, at best, subtitled releases from BV Japan on Bluray Disc.