The lawsuit claiming Warner Bros. has lost foreign rights to the Superman character could affect much more than this summer’s planned relaunch of the franchise. Of course, most of the headlines about the case have centered on the ramifications for James Gunn’s anticipated July 11 tentpole, Superman, which is intended to jumpstart the studio’s revamped DC universe. But Friday’s complaint, filed by longtime Warners nemesis Marc Toberoff, could be legal kryptonite for other studios, too. If Toberoff prevails, the estate of Superman co-creator Joseph Shuster won’t be the only one to take advantage of the fact that—in territories including the U.K., Canada, and Australia—25 years after an author’s death, copyrights revert to their estate.
Say Toberoff wins: Could Paramount be forced to reassess its overseas control of Star Trek, given that creator Gene Roddenberry’s death, in 1991, is far outside the 25-year window? What about Disney’s global grip on Planet of the Apes, whose creator, Pierre Boulle, died in 1994? Meanwhile, Universal faces a ticking clock of its own: The 25th anniversary of Bourne Identity creator Robert Ludlum’s death is March 12, 2026.
Legal observers are also overlooking how this new Superman suit could threaten the international distribution of older movies and TV shows. In the U.S., when an author, or their estate, invokes copyright law’s termination provision to reclaim rights to their works, the studio is allowed to continue to distribute previously produced movies and properties based on those works—this is known as the “derivative works exception.” However, it’s not clear the same principle is recognized elsewhere—meaning, for example, that if Toberoff reclaims Superman rights for his client, Warner Bros. C.E.O. David Zaslav could run into trouble distributing the company’s entire Superman library internationally—everything from the Christopher Reeve classics to the Smallville TV series to Dwayne Johnson’s Superman-adjacent Black Adam movie.
Toberoff, as entertainment lawyers know, has made something of a career out of trying to wrest Superman rights away from Warners. More than a decade ago, an appellate court appeared to end his quest, but one should never count out a highly persistent foe. He also has a broader history with Warner Bros.: Two decades ago, he persuaded a California judge to halt the release of a Dukes of Hazzard movie, resulting in Warners forking over a $14 million settlement to his client, a producer on the ’70s film upon which the original TV show was based. More recently, he got himself a producer credit on Warners’ Beetlejuice Beetlejuice after sending a copyright termination notice and negotiating a deal. He’s now looking to add to those successes.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of Toberoff’s latest gambit is that it’s all so novel. You’d expect someone to have tried this before, but there doesn’t seem to be much precedent on how movie rights square with the so-called “Dickens provision”—the automatic 25-year authorial rights reversion inspired by a penniless-when-he-died Charles Dickens, which is now written into copyright law everywhere from Ireland to South Africa. While there may be reasons—e.g., Canada only recently extended its copyright term from 50 to 70 years, altering the cost-benefit analysis of pursuing reversionary rights—the unprecedented nature of the situation indicates that this probably won’t be an easy or straightforward case. Frankly, that’d be so even if the Superman rights didn’t already have a complicated legal backstory.
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