For a few years now, Paramount has been in a legal battle with International Media Films over the rights to Federico Fellini‘s La Dolce Vita (1960). On Wednesday, Judge James Otero decided in favor of Paramount who had planned a 2010, 50th Anniversary Blu-ray release of the film when they first received cease-and-desist letters from IMF. Maybe now that Blu-ray will see the light of day? Or maybe they’ll hand it over to Criterion, which I think most all of us Fellini fans would prefer.
Here is how Matthew Belloni and Eriq Gardner at THR described Paramount’s side of the story back in 2011:
The original producers assigned rights to a sales agent called Cinemat, which in 1962 granted U.S. distribution rights to Astor Pictures, which helped get the film released in America. Astor transferred rights to another entity in 1966, then another, which sold rights to Los Angeles-based Republic Entertainment.
By the late ’80s, the original film had fallen into the public domain, as many foreign works had, but a change in U.S. law allowed former owners to “restore” copyrights for works that still enjoyed protection overseas. Republic is said to have filed a “restoration of copyright” for the original film and a renewal of rights for the English-language dubbed and subtitled versions sometime before selling its library to Paramount in 2000.
Interestingly enough, in the process of trying to figure out who owns it, at one point judge John G. Koeltl suggested the film might belong to no one. “In fact, it is possible for the Fellini film to be in the public domain.” Well, Paramount can breathe a little easier now.
Otero’s ruling stated IMF had not “submitted admissible evidence authenticating the documents” and failed to disclose to Paramount witnesses who declared the validity of the Cinemat-Hor Transfer.
THR’s Gardner has done a good job going over all the legal mumbo-jumbo right here, I just want to know when I can replace my [amazon asin=”B00005JKGO” text=”Koch International”] 2-Disc DVD edition for a shiny, restored Blu-ray version. Just talking about it makes me want to watch it again.
