Is discarded material from movies still copyrighted?
08-14-21 | 04:30 PM
#1
Thread Starter
DVD Talk Special Edition
Is discarded material from movies still copyrighted?
I know studios hold copyright on deleted scenes they retain in their archives, but what about footage that was cut and tossed into the trash? I would imagine that this is an unlikely practice today because of the home video market, but this was common place in the past where cut material was simply disposed of, never to be seen again.
As an example, say someone unearthed a usable print of the discarded material from Event Horizon. Since the studio scrapped it, could they still claim copyright on it?
https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/9-g...-lost-forever/
As an example, say someone unearthed a usable print of the discarded material from Event Horizon. Since the studio scrapped it, could they still claim copyright on it?
https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/9-g...-lost-forever/
One of the stories surrounding Paul WS Anderson’s cult space horror Event Horizon is that, when it was cut down from a 130-minute rough edit to a lean 95 minutes, the removed footage was thrown out by a studio that thoroughly disliked the film. A story later went around the internet that the footage had been poorly stored in a salt mine in Transylvania, and that it was degraded beyond rescue. Whether this fittingly gothic end for Event Horizon‘s deleted scenes is true or not, it still means we’ll likely never see the film restored to its former glory; Anderson has said in later interviews that Event Horizon would benefit from having about 10 minutes of gore and backstory put back in, but unless the original footage resurfaces, that’ll never happen.
08-14-21 | 05:48 PM
#2
DVD Talk Hero
Re: Is discarded material from movies still copyrighted?
In such an event, I'm fairly certain that, yes, the material would still be under copyright.
