Seems like this is breach of contract. What’s preventing the authors from selling the creative works to Netflix? If Disney tries to pull them into court, they can’t really show a contract where they’ve kept up their obligation to the creator.
Disney is relying on the fact these people don’t have resources to handle legal threats. The person who raised the alarm first had to reach out to writer guild type organizations, because he needed his money to pay for his cancer treatment.
Also, many of these authors are writing under existing franchises. (The kickoff incident is a bestselling author of Star Wars novels.) They couldn’t sell their work elsewhere even if they wanted to, because the franchise they wrote for is still owned by Disney and the organization that would buy that work would need to negotiate for some kind of licensing agreement.
The entire creative industry is full of this stuff, and generally folks know they aren't going to get fair treatment. And it has been a problem for decades.
I mostly know this stuff because I looked. I had dreams of doing animation or something like that as a child/teen. That was back in the 90s, and the stories about bad treatment have continued to current times. Don't get me wrong, at the same time there are folks out there working on this stuff that are living their dream despite it all, but it definitely deterred me. I can do art without it making money with it, after all.
One important detail: the works in question where written using Disney (Lucas Films,Marvel, ...) characters, so even if the original contract is void, the authors can never own the full rights to sell it to Netflix.
"Breach of contract" by one party doesn't mean a court will allow the other party gets to do whatever they want. But more practically, if the creator sells the work to Netflix, they're going to get sued, and they would then be on the hook (legally, financially and reputational) for proving in court 1) contract was breached, and 2) that gives them ownership of the work product that allows them to sell to another party. Against Disney's warchest.
Comments
Seems like this is breach of contract. What’s preventing the authors from selling the creative works to Netflix? If Disney tries to pull them into court, they can’t really show a contract where they’ve kept up their obligation to the creator.
Disney is relying on the fact these people don’t have resources to handle legal threats. The person who raised the alarm first had to reach out to writer guild type organizations, because he needed his money to pay for his cancer treatment.
Also, many of these authors are writing under existing franchises. (The kickoff incident is a bestselling author of Star Wars novels.) They couldn’t sell their work elsewhere even if they wanted to, because the franchise they wrote for is still owned by Disney and the organization that would buy that work would need to negotiate for some kind of licensing agreement.
Also, Netflix probably don’t want to give its own authors any ideas of expectic fair treatment.
The entire creative industry is full of this stuff, and generally folks know they aren't going to get fair treatment. And it has been a problem for decades.
I mostly know this stuff because I looked. I had dreams of doing animation or something like that as a child/teen. That was back in the 90s, and the stories about bad treatment have continued to current times. Don't get me wrong, at the same time there are folks out there working on this stuff that are living their dream despite it all, but it definitely deterred me. I can do art without it making money with it, after all.
That seems like rather a baseless assumption without supporting proof.
One important detail: the works in question where written using Disney (Lucas Films,Marvel, ...) characters, so even if the original contract is void, the authors can never own the full rights to sell it to Netflix.
"Breach of contract" by one party doesn't mean a court will allow the other party gets to do whatever they want. But more practically, if the creator sells the work to Netflix, they're going to get sued, and they would then be on the hook (legally, financially and reputational) for proving in court 1) contract was breached, and 2) that gives them ownership of the work product that allows them to sell to another party. Against Disney's warchest.