Panellists on December 4 spoke of the need to scrutinise every possible creative ownership stake when preparing a remake.
“You need good lawyers to assess the fundamental rights chain,” said Alejandro Cacetta of Patagonik Film Group, speaking during a sesion moderated by FilmSharks chief Guido Rud.
Robert Darwell of US law firm Sheppard Mullin spoke about the time he did legal work on Adrian Lyne’s 1997 Lolita starring Jeremy Irons.
In that case, Darwell said, the legal team and producers had secured the rights to Vladimir Nabokov’s novel but not to Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 film and had to pay attention that no element of the earier adaption seeped into their fresh interpretation.
“Remakes for a long time have been an important part of the development process at the studios,” said Darwell.
“In the last five years we have seen more remakes coming from Latin America. The big change in the past several years has been much more remakes coming from TV out of Latin America.”
Turning to Quarantine, Screen Gems’ remake of Filmax’s Spanish-language horror hit [Rec], Darwell had this to say:
“What was important for Sony was we wanted to make sure they could also use any material from the [[Rec]] screenplays in subsequent sequels. We don’t want to have to go and get new rights for the following sequels. So there was a grant of rights for Rec 1 [sic] and any subsequent productions.”
Panellists included Jorge Stamadianos of Fox, Juan Vera of Patagonik Film Group, Max Saidel of Latido and Roma Business Street, David Castellanos of Spain’s Cinema Republic, Laurent Danielou from Rezo and Ivan Dias from Filmax.
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