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Warren Beatty just received an early birthday gift. (He turns 74 next week.) A federal judge in Los Angeles has stopped Tribune Co from reclaiming the television and movie rights to comic-strip detective Dick Tracy from Warren Beatty. U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson granted summary judgment in the producer/director/actor’s favor yesterday, ruling that the fact Beatty had begun work on a half-hour TV special, which had Warren dressed as the Dick Tracy character answering questions from film critic Leonard Maltin, satisfied a use-it-or-lose-it clause in an agreement with Tribune to produce a Dick Tracy movie or TV show or lose the rights to the character. Now, what Warren wants to do with the Dick Tracy character whose rights he acquired from Tribune Media Services in 1985 going forward I can’t imagine.
The expensive 1990 movie he produced, directed and starred in for Disney’s Touchstone pictures was no blockbuster despite a stellar cast that included Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and even a well-hyped romance between Madonna and himself. But it did collect seven Academy Award nominations, winning Oscars for Best Original Song, Best Makeup, and Best Art Direction. As for that TV special which featured Beatty discussing how Dick Tracy has been portrayed on film over the years, it only ran on Turner Classic Movies in July 2009. Beatty only made it to keep his rights intact. It’s hard to imagine today’s younger audiences caring about the detective, yet Tribune Co has said in bankruptcy filings that unfettered rights to Dick Tracy are potentially worth millions” to the company and its creditors.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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On a tangent: Al Capp ridiculed Chester Gould via the Fearless Fosdick comic within a comic of L’il Abner, suggesting, I think, that Gould was a bit of a hack. Go back and look at that cover shown above on the right. “Exciting” is missing its “c.” Or maybe they are exiting stories. Daring tales of the offramp.
Gould had nothing to do with that comic book cover. Capp was entitled to his opinion but Gould was no hack. He had a loose understanding of anatomy but he was quite a good storyteller with the strip.
It is clear what he wants to do with it, he has even said so in an interview. MO CAP Tracy with him still in the lead.
Warren,
Please stop with the kids, phone, and politics. Your wife seems to be pretty good at holding down motherhood and acting.
Do a movie-act, direct, produce-but enough showing up on your wife”s shoulder at every award show. Clint has made a few not a lot great movies as he aged. The time and attention you take to detail in making your movies I say you got ONE left. Shit even an HBO movie would be great. You must have a great story to tell. Get that epifany like you did in Bugsy in the desert. I was there next to the car, it was so much fun to watch. re
This is exactly the same reason that the really, really bad Fantastic Four movie from the early ’90′s got made. The then-rights-holder was about to lose the rights, so they did a Corman-level crapfest, and then never commercially released it.
At least Warren Beatty went a more creative route and made the equivalent of a DVD Special Feature. Disney has thrown Dick Tracy and a lot of its other catalog (pre-DVD) titles out there with no special features whatsoever, so that little thing would make a great selling point for the next time the movie gets released on Blu-Ray.
Warren Beatty is an enigma. “Reds” was a great movie, and honestly, “Dick Tracy” was a lot of fun to watch. All the great movies he starred in as well is amazing. But to dig in on the DT rights for all those years? And what about his Howard Hughes thing? The guy strikes me as Obsessive Compulsive. Or maybe suing the hell out of people and mesmerizing himself over a dead billionaire provides himself a good excuse as to why he hasn’t done any film work of significance for decades. Come on, Warren, get back in the saddle! Write, produce and direct something a la Mallick. Bring the poetry back into American cinema.
interesting Warren went through all this legal trouble to keep rights to a character whose hey day has long passed. and will now proably try and do a sequel to the film or proably nothing just because he has the rights now. though can not believe a judge decided because Warren was dressed as the character for a talk about dick tracy that means he still has the rights.
What technology is Dick Tracy going to use now that’s cooler than what we already have? A two-way text radio? An atomic-powered iPad 2? Don’t bring back Dick Tracy. Figure out how to bring back Bulworth.
Warren has always been the laziest movie star, he could have done so much more with his career but he takes forever to make up his mind. He’s a beautiful flower who only blooms once every seven years or so. He should have run for governor too late now. He’s always been better at talking about doing things than actually doing them. He could have made twice as many films as he did. At this point he’s officially retired. I can’t see him getting financing to make another movie anywhere not after Town and Country which he wasted 90 million on it made a total of 10 million worldwide. 80 million dollars gone poof. At least it was New Line’s money and not his own. If he’s ever given another green light he should be forced to put up half the budget or even 75% of it himself. Then you’d see him be a conscientious producer/director. Don’t ever give him another blank check because he doesn’t know how to make up his mind and he’ll waste the entire budget on his petty indulgences.
Does anyone under 70 even know who Dick Tracy is?
The Dick Tracy name has entered the language as a synonym for ‘detective’ and that gives the property enormous brand value, regardless of whether it’s faithfully shackled to the strip or the character.
You can’t imagine what he’ll do with the rights because it’s hard to imagine younger audiences caring… riiiight… because Dick Tracy was a major cultural phenomenon in 1990. How the world has moved on. Then again, entertainment journalists are still cynical, so perhaps things aren’t so different in the world of tomorrow after all.
In all seriousness, I’m thrilled the issues have been resolved. I have no stake in which party gets them, but the character is a labor of love for Beatty so at least he’s in good hands. And now at last we can finally get an excellent DVD release of the film!
Bravo for Warren! He did a great job on his movie “Dick Tracy” and now he can start reading the NEW team the Chicago Tribune assembled to jumpstart the COMIC STRIP…yes, it’s run for a week now with new writers and artists that seem to have captured the flavor of Gould with top shelf artistic talent! This next decade will be Dick Tracys latest and greatest stuff! C’mon Beatty- get it going!
Warren Betty: aka, the movie star time forget. A reputation of being such a dickhead that no A list director ever wanted to work with him. That’s why most of his film are forgettable.
Why is there so much hate on Beatty’s Dick Tracy? That movie was great- for it’s time- and the tech that DT had in the old comic strips is something we have only begun to catch up with? Perhaps Beatty has more info on to what Tribune actually wants to do with the character and disagrees or he sees the franchise as a last ditch effort to make some cash before he kicks the bucket.
If Warren Beatty wants to do another Dick Tracy film, get some better actors than the ones in that film. I thought Al Pacino hammed it up as Big Boy (who was nothing at all like the character in the comic strip) and the actor who played Shoulders was horribly miscast (they should’ve gotten Richard Kiel instead, who was more physically appropriate for the role).
I didn’t read all the comments so I’m not sure if anyone pointed this out yet, but did anyone see that they misspelled “Exciting” at the top of the comic book. It read, “Full of Exiting new stories.”
Maybe Warren is hanging onto the rights so his kids will have income. Maybe he just wanted to have something to do while not making movies, not running for office, or not using his talents. Whatever, I love this. I love that someone finally managed to screw Tribune the way Tribune screwed so many artists and other people over the years. I also recall that his “Dick Tracy” movie, profitable or not, was one of the most perfect renditions of a comic strip ever made up to that time and doubtless gave other filmmakers the courage to open today’s floodgates.
And, no, please no animated “Dick Tracy” series! We had one of those, or has the world mercifully forgotten about “Joe Jitsu”?
Actually, Beatty could do another DICK TRACY movie. If it were CGI or hand animated, his age would not be an issue. Could you image an animated film of one of Chester Gould’s long classic sequence with motion capture and an A-list voice cast? I’d see it. Gritty action in the Gould style with the Sunday comics color palate Beatty used in his first movie would be a blast! I noticed a creative team change on the newspaper strip with a tat less panel repetition and static close ups. Now would be the time for Beatty to strike.