Hollywood Reporter: Julie Taymor's lawsuit against producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark might be a much bigger deal than most people realize. The initial media coverage of the suit Tuesday presents Taymor's claims as a dispute over owed royalties -- which is certainly part of what the director is seeking, but not all of it. In fact, as strange as it sounds, Taymor's million dollar claims are obscuring the potentially billion dollar ones.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Can Julie Taymor Shut Down 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark'?
Hollywood Reporter: Julie Taymor's lawsuit against producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark might be a much bigger deal than most people realize. The initial media coverage of the suit Tuesday presents Taymor's claims as a dispute over owed royalties -- which is certainly part of what the director is seeking, but not all of it. In fact, as strange as it sounds, Taymor's million dollar claims are obscuring the potentially billion dollar ones.
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I can see that the examples Taymor provide are extremely similar with minor changes, but I'm sure that other parts of the script are much different. I personally haven't seen the show since Taymor was out of the picture, so I'm not sure how vast the changes were. I know that last week there was a lot of murmuring about the eligibility of Taymor as Best Director, but I can see where Taymor being a writer can get muddy.
I am curious about how settling with Taymor would affect the production financially. If they are currently going to be out of the hole in four years, how much of a wrench would this amount throw into that prediction.
It is funny (but not surprising) to see that Julie Taymor's injunction includes a clause that looks to expressly give her right to veto licensing and future productions. Last week we were discussing Taymor's intellectual property as the director of the production, but this article is giving us some more tangible evidence of her work on the show and how inseparable (she would argue) she is from it. I'd be very surprised if Cohl doesn't settle with Taymor, if simply to get her off his back a little bit.
To Ariel's point about the cost of settlement, the show's merchandising and ticket sales already cover the operational cost each week and let's remember that by settling, the rights are freed up for the licensed productions to start. In the short term, the money would be a hit, but probably not an operational issue, but the long-term potential of preparing the rights for release would, I think, outweigh the costs.
Julie Taymor.
Shut up.
Seriously, she is like a winey kid on the playground where another kid stole her ball. Granted she does seem to have some grounds in the lawsuit. But from a totally biased opinion I am just sick of her. The product she created sucked and the new one was better so she should just get out of this and stop being a pain in the ass. I imagine that without the lawsuit she would still get royalties from the proposed productions so she should just put a sock in it.
Julie Taymor was brought off the job for a reason. Her production sucked. It stayed in previews for months. People almost fell off the rigging and got seriously injured. Not saying that the rigging was directly Taymor's fault, but as a director she should have addressed it with the people who were hired to design and install it. Yes, okay, she does have some royalty grounds in this lawsuit. But still, she is making such a big issue out of it that it is transforming from something private and possibly respectable to a public spectacle - and it's always hard to take that kind of legal situation seriously. Well, I guess she just likes making scenes (how punny.) It's a messy situation which is only being worsened by the need to be in the public eye by those who are involved.
I am so torn by this argument and I do agree with those posts before mine. Julie Taymor is being a bit of a 13 year old girl. I'm sure she realizes there was a reason she was fired from her production and she needs to accept that. On the other hand, I do feel she does have the right to feel protective over her material and to not want to be forgotten for all that she did contribute to the show as it is now. This argument walks on such a thin line I feel it will never fully come to an answer. we shall see...
Even if Julie Taymore was being winy and her show was not very good and was costing tons of money, this article does make her look as though the rights of this book do belong to her. The examples they give are pretty much word for word the same. I think that she has legitimate claim over the work that is being produced. Does that mean that she should sue for it? Probably not, she did screw up the show and made it spend billions over what it was supposed to. But I am a very firm believer in the fact that artist should have claim to their work and that even if you are not involved in the project you should be credited if it has not been changed.
Why does this matter? Are there artistic, copyright, and liabilities or is this the Entertainment Tonight news of the Green Page?
I think it's a little bit of both but maybe there's too much train wreck here to see the real issue.
If you build something from the scratch, (mostly) you don't get to finish it because you loose your job, your name is still attached, you haven't gotten paid for what you thought all parties agreed upon, and then someone else finishes it for you and might reproduce it again and again. I can understand why you'd want legal and financial action to project your input. I still question as to why we care? If this wasn't Spider-man and Julia Taymor would it be an issue? Would the producers be threatened by Taymor's stack in her project? Or are they even threatened by it at all?
I wonder if what is really going on behind the scenes of Spider-man is the public's interest in it. Would Kim Kardashian's divorce be a big deal if the hype leading up to her wedding was a big deal? The asnwer is no, neither of them were big deals but broadcast media programs our consumer minds to think so. Spider-man got one additional step of exposure: the twitterverse and blogosphere. I'd say the required amount of hype was put behind Spider-man to market it. It just happened to be a disaster so we all leaned in for a closer look and then expressed all of our opinions about it.
What's unfortunate about all this is that I believe Taymor has a point. And if the show is looking to be big enough for that to matter is that she should speak-up. But since we are now all so interested in the disaster the show has become it now becomes a bigger issue than it should be. I'm sure there's creative copyright issues about other shows, arts, and performances, why don't we care about them?
It doesn't matter if her show wasn't successful because it was still her show. And if it was so unsuccessful, after she stepped down the show could have started from scratch, just as she started from scratch when she created it. But it didn't; instead, it chose to include much of her original work. Does it matter that people are irritated that she is complaining? No. She put in a lot of work into a show, and if any part of that work is going to get credit or money or anything, she should receive a part of that.
It really depends on the contract, and this article compels me to learn more about the contract that the producer makes with the director and playwright. It seems her only leverage here is the book, not her previous role as director, since the producer buys the rights to the book, and the director, less a small piece of the pot, is doing work for hire. It seems very risky for a producer to offer any individual a contract that gives him or her the ability to put the stop on the producer's work. Hopefully as they battle over this more details will come to light, but as somebody else mentioned they will probably settle and that'll be that. Remarkable that Spiderman is still running, eh?
My biggest concern here is not for Taymor, but who it would be affected were the show to be closed down. Actors, technicians, musicians, etc. will lose their jobs. While I understand Taymor's claim to artisitc copyrights, is being compensated for her intellectual property worth many, many people losing their jobs? Sure most of the cast and crew could possibly find new jobs, but how do you tell someone that you're taking away their current paycheck--what they are using to support themselves and their families, because you feel that you deserve compensation. Taymor's claim isn't unfounded, but is it worth it?
I think Matt nailed it. this is probably not as much of an exact science as we may see and its such a spectacle that the truth is prolly really hard to find with all the hype around this. the reason why she is suing may be very different than what we are getting from many of the titles of these articles. either way and either side there are some questions here over how much a director owns of the work they do on a project and the result of this suit may be something we reference back to years down the road. that type of point is something i feel many of these articles are missing.
I am annoyed about this. This is a prime example of the manipulation of art for profit. No one that goes to see this show anymore will go to watch the art, rather they will be seeing the show and appreciating the budget and money for entertainment... not the art. Julie Taymor is making a ridiculous process out of something that did not need to be blown up to this caliber.....Spiderman the musical is now Spiderman the profit production. sucks
If the suit goes through then it looks like she's got quite a grip over the current and possible future productions. I wonder just how far we will see it go. Taymor seems to be after enough of a ruling that would shut everything down if she's not given what she wants, both now and in the future. Giving her control of the licensing seems like it would be rather extreme since the production is in itself licensing a lot of the content. Where would her claims run into the claims of the comic book and movie creators? Eventually she'll be asking for something that the rest of the show doesn't have to give her.
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