Fan film
Because fan films generally utilize characters and storylines copyrighted and trademarked by the original filmmakers, they are rarely distributed commercially for legal reasons.
They are exhibited by various other methods, including showings at comic book and science fiction conventions, and distribution as homemade videos, ranging from VHS videocassettes to CD-ROMs and DVDs.
In 2012, two Arizona-based teenagers, Jonason Pauley and Jesse Perrotta, made a live action shot for shot remake of the 1995 animated film, Toy Story, with the toy characters animated through stop motion, puppetry, and live actors for the human characters, while using audio from the film.
[citation needed] Indian-born American filmmaker Adi Shankar started producing a series of satire films based on popular franchises and comic book characters, before evolving into a full-fledged entertainment brand.
Filmmaker Sandy Collora gained much notoriety in the early 2000s for a series of fan films he produced featuring DC Comics heroes Batman and Superman.
Batman: Dead End premiered at the 2003 San Diego Comic-Con, while World's Finest was prevented from showing in 2004 due to copyright claims from Warner Bros.[2] Some fan film productions achieve significant quantity and or quality.
Dan Poole's stunt work in his fan film The Green Goblin's Last Stand garnered recognition and an endorsement from Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee.
[6] Iowa brothers Morgan and Mason McGrew spent eight years recreating the 2010 film Toy Story 3 in stop motion.
According to Screen Crush, Pixar's parent company Walt Disney Studios gave the McGrews permission to release the film online.
[9] Still, fan films often operate under the radar or IP owners turning a blind eye as long they are non-commercial activities.
[17] Unlike many American TV shows, the British series Doctor Who allowed its writers to retain the rights to characters and plot elements that they created - most famously with Terry Nation's Daleks.
[18] In 2008, a cease and desist letter was issued by Fox Studios to close production on a Max Payne fan short in development.
However, following the 2015 controversy surrounding the team behind Prelude to Axanar's attempts to profit from their unreleased feature film, Paramount tightened its stance on fan productions.
The project, conceived by filmmakers Timothy Schiefer and Greg Graves, was unsuccessful in meeting its initial crowdfunding goal of $25,000, receiving only $16,025 from 186 backers.
[28][29] In August 2018, it was announced that a fan-made short film, based on the 1990 two-episode television miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's 1986 epic supernatural horror novel It, was being produced under the name Georgie.
[32] Georgie premiered at the Boston Underground Film Festival on March 22, 2019 and was released online on June 10, 2019 on the Fangoria Facebook page.
[35] Similarly, Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig argued that for the first time in history, creativity by default is subject to regulation due to growing intellectual property rights like copyright and trademark.
This trend results in artists (like the fans mentioned in this article) needing the permission of the copyright owner to engage in mashups or acts of remixing.
