New Roger Rabbit & Live-Action Jessica Rabbit Movies in Development
In a recent interview with ImNotBad.com, author Gary K. Wolf has revealed that he has reacquired the rights to Roger Rabbit and his other characters, telling the website, “I now have back the rights to all my characters, all my books. I can, basically, do my own Roger Rabbit projects”.
He was able to do this by going through a process known as the 35-Year Copyright Reversion Clause, which allows the original creators the ability to reclaim rights to their original work after a period of 35 years. Sometimes this process can be pretty complicated but the author went on to reveal that actually the process was pretty straightforward due to Disney not trying to stop the rights reversal from happening. “I expected that this would be a contentious process. Who knows what was going to happen? But, it was not. It was very civil, very courteous, very straightforward,” he said. “Disney was always top-notch for me. They treated me very well. They always accommodated me in whatever I wanted to do”.
According to Wolf, “a lot of people have asked why didn’t we do the first movie more closely to the Who Censored Roger Rabbit book, with the word balloons and those kinds of characters” before going on to reveal that hopefully a new adaptation would achieve that. He also told the website that a live action adaptation of his latest book, Jessica Rabbit: XERIOUS Business, is also in the works. “That was the first project that we took a look at and the first we started developing. It’s probably the one that’s furthest along right now.”
As it stands, no studios or production companies are known to be involved with Wolf’s Roger Rabbit Universe plans but Wolf did go on to acknowledge that he would love to work with Disney again. He stated “I’d love for Disney to participate in this. We could partner up on this. There’s a core group of people who were involved with the first movie, and I would love to work with those people again. Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy. I’d love to have Charles Fleischer come back and voice the rabbit again“.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, an adaptation of Wolf’s novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit, was released in 1988. It tells the story of Roger Rabbit (Charles Fleischer) being accused of murder after he suspects his wife of having an affair and hires a detective, Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins), to look into the case. The film also stars Christopher Lloyd as Judge Doom.
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