The estate of Superman co-creator Joseph Schuster is suing Warner Bros. Discovery and DC Comics.
Superman opens in United States theaters this coming July. Directed by James Gunn, the DCU superhero movie stars David Corenswet as Clark Kent and Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane.
Per Deadline, plaintiff Mark Warren Peary, who is the executor of Schuster’s estate, filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. Discovery and DC Comics in Federal Court in the Southern District of New York on Friday, January 31, 2025.
Why is the Superman creator’s estate suing Warner Bros. over the DCU movie?
The lawsuit is seeking “damages and injunctive relief for Defendants’ ongoing infringement in Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia, as well as declaratory relief establishing the Shuster Estate’s ownership rights across relevant jurisdictions.”
This means that Schuster’s estate is claiming that the DCU movie “lacks the rights to release the upcoming summer tentpole in a handful of key territories.”
A Warner Bros. Discovery spokesman said in response to the lawsuit, “We fundamentally disagree with the merits of the lawsuit, and will vigorously defend our rights.”
Deadline’s article further explains, “At issue are foreign copyrights to the original Superman character and story, coauthored by Jerome Siegel and Shuster. Though Siegel and Shuster assigned worldwide Superman rights to DC’s predecessor in 1938 ‘for a mere $130 ($65 each), the copyright laws of countries with the British legal tradition—including Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia—contain provisions automatically terminating such assignments 25 years after an author’s death, vesting in the Shuster Estate the co-author’s undivided copyright interest in such countries,’ the suit said.”
The lawsuit continues, “Shuster died in 1992 and Siegel in 1996. By operation of law, Shuster’s foreign copyrights automatically reverted to his estate in 2017 in most of these territories (and in 2021 in Canada). Yet Defendants continue to exploit Superman across these jurisdictions without the Shuster Estate’s authorization—including in motion pictures, television series, and merchandise—in direct contravention of these countries’ copyright laws, which require the consent of all joint copyright owners to do so.”
Originally reported by Brandon Schreur on SuperHeroHype.
