'Buck Rogers' Film In Early Stages Not Ripe for Court

However, District Judge Conti held that the production company, headed by Don Murphy, the producer of films such as Natural Born Killers, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the Transformers franchise, hadn't shown that it made significant enough progress in making the movie for there to be a viable legal controversy.

“Even when accepted as true and viewed favorably, these vague allegations fail to demonstrate that plaintiff has taken 'significant, concrete steps' toward producing and releasing its film,” Judge Conti wrote in her opinion. “Consequently, this dispute lacks the requisite 'immediacy' and 'reality' to warrant the issuance of a declaratory judgment.”

Team Angry Filmworks claimed Warner Brothers and Sony had expressed “firm interest” in funding the movie with a budget of around $100 million, after Team Angry announced its development of the film at San Diego Comic-Con 2015.

Additionally, according to Judge Conti, the screenplay is being co-written by a beneficiary of the trust, Robert Nichols Flint Dille. After the announcement and following publicity, the trust threatened to sue Murphy, Dille and the production company if they did not comply with a cease and desist notice demanding a halt to production. A subsequent writ of summons was filed against Dille in Lawrence County, PA, court in August.

In the production company's federal complaint, it asserted that: “By virtue of the cloud that now hangs over this motion picture project, exploitation proves virtually impossible, as virtually any commercial distribution of any motion picture requires securing of errors and omissions insurance,” and “defendant and [her] counsel are well aware that insurers may well refuse to issue a policy in the first place under these circumstances.”

The trust maintained that it was the sole owner of Nowlan's “Buck Rogers” rights. Team Angry retorted that the character had entered the public domain so those rights could not be infringed upon.

Judge Conti said the dispute lacked immediacy, one of the requirements for proving a controversy exists, because it provided no production or release dates for the film. The court explained: “A dispute 'lacks immediacy' where there are no allegations about 'when, if ever,' the product will be 'used in a manner that could potentially infringe' the intellectual property rights of another.”'Thus, the judge added: 'Without allegations about when film production could begin and when the film could be released, the court cannot conclude that plaintiff is 'immediately prepared' to engage in copyright-infringing activity, as required under the [Declaratory Judgment Act] and Article III [of the U.S. Constitution],' the district judge wrote.

Secondly, Team Angry Filmwork's had not established the reality of the dispute because of the tentative nature of the production. Judge Conti noted: “Plaintiff does not allege it hired or entered into preliminary agreements with the parties 'integral to the commencement of production' ' let alone the release ' of a 'major motion picture.' ' Those parties include 'key talent' such as, for example, directors, lead actors, cinematographers, and effects supervisors, in addition to the producers, screenwriters, and visualization supervisor pleaded by plaintiff.”

“The court 'simply [cannot] determine at this [nascent] stage' whether plaintiff's film, 'if completed, would infringe' on existing copyrights owned by defendant.'If the court granted plaintiff a declaratory judgment at this early stage, 'it'would simply be rendering an advisory opinion based solely upon [plaintiff's] assertion' that no matter what changes the film project undergoes in the future, the finished product will infringe [on] copyrighted material'from 'Armageddon' and the 'Buck Rogers' character.'

P.J. D'Annunzio is the Federal Courts Reporter for The Legal Intelligencer, the Philadelphia-based ALM sibling of Entertainment Law & Finance.