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The Studios’ Next Ticking Timebomb

In this era of skyrocketing I.P. value, a quirk of copyright law is suddenly a massive business, giving creatives (and their heirs) behind properties like Robocop a surprising weapon to take power back from studios.

mike hopkins
Photo by Angela Weiss/Getty
Matthew Belloni
April 15, 2022

If I’m Mike Hopkins, senior V.P. of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, and I’m starting to look under the hood at MGM, the studio for which I just spent $8.5 billion, I might be asking a few questions. Like what, exactly, has Mark Burnett, the much-hyped TV impresario, actually created while being paid millions of dollars? Oh, and if Licorice Pizza cost $40 million to make, and MGM then spent tens of millions on a platform release and an awards campaign, and it grossed just $32 million worldwide… why is it now being dubbed internally as a hit? And, one more: I bought this great film and TV library, but what rights, exactly, did I actually buy?