BBC is making a Victorian-era War of the Worlds

[Australian Dawn]

I'll be happy if the producers and writers:

a) have actually read the novel

hehehehe. If you are lucky they will watch the Tom Cruise movie, and make something similar with Penny-Farthing Bicycles and corsetry.

If you are very lucky they will get the people who did Downton to do it.

If you are exceedingly fortunate they will get Andrew Davies to do it, in which case the Martians will suddenly be quite attractive and the Narrator will end up marrying one of them.

and 'Themes'? why, you can expect the following themes

'Soldiers are helpless wee lambs and their officers stupid and evil'
'Racism is baaad m'kay?'
'Women are just as capable of being plucky fighters against oppression as men are'
'War (of the worlds) huh good god why'all, what is it good for (of the worlds) absolutely nuthin'
'Martians are humans too and just like us.'

As I once famously and much too loudly said at a family gathering. 'Alison, you MUST give me the recipe for this, so I don't make it by mistake!'

It's scary how much your description sounds like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen take on the Martian invasion. They should get Alan Moore to do it.

[Australian Dawn]

This work is in the public domain right?
So what's with the whole "it was difficult to get the rights from Paramount" BS?
This isn't even going to be a film but a TV series, so it's not even the same medium.

I was wrong about being different mediums, I thought they were referring to the last movie, but I think they were talking about the old US/Canadian "sequel" series.
I don't think they were even Martians in that series!
Were they really held up by legal trouble getting the rights to use the name (which I presume was the problem, Do all the Sherlock Holmes or Peter Pan adaptions out there have these issues? ) of a public domain 19th century science fiction?

Surely they could have just called it H.G Wells' War of the Worlds or something and gotten around any problems.

[An Absent Humphrey]

HG Wells' work will not be copyright free.
Being as successful as he was the rights to his work will have been owned by his estate. In the UK copyright exists until 75 years after the author's death (that certainly used to be the case, though it may have changed) unless copyright ownership is applied for again. Which, in case of well known writers, is often done by their estate. The rights may well have been sold (e.g. didn't Michael Jackson buy the rights to the Beatles' songs?), and Paramount may well have bought them.
May.
I don't know and don't care enough to Google it. But the name 'H.G. Wells' and 'War of the Worlds' will most certainly NOT be public domain. And yes, the same will go for Sherlock Holmes and Peter Pan (when the local theatre does a Peter Pan panto at Christmas time they will have had to apply for a licence to perform the play - just like ALL plays - from whoever owns the rights to it). The cost of getting the rights for whatever production will vary depending on who is doing it, where they are doing it, for how long, and the expected audience numbers. Therefore, the local village hall putting on a production can expect a very low charge whilst a international film-making corporation can expect a whopping great big charge.
I used to work in the theatre.

[kawasaki]

What Humph said.

I know that Arthur Conan Doyle's estate is fiercely protective of his 'brands'

http://conandoyleestate.com/brand
http://conandoyleestate.com/licensing

and not shy about their own merchandising.

http://conandoyleestate.com/products

Never assume that because someone's intellectual property is old it's out of copyright. If it was/is popular chances are someone, somewhere will still own it.

[Australian Dawn]

I think the rules have changed and aren't retroactive and so don't apply to Wells, or else a lot of books and games and comics are in deep shit.
You can certainly read his work on Project Gutenberg and he is specifically mentioned here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain
Disney's really pushed for extension to IP laws and mainly got their way from what I've read and heard (just look up Steamboat Willie on Wikipedia), but even Popeye came out of copyright in the EU some time ago.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4017 ... nuary.html

[kawasaki]

http://www.hgwellsusa.50megs.com/UK/hgwcopy.html

http://charlesrkeller.blogspot.co.uk/20 ... xpire.html

It looks like Well's works left copyright last year. Unless someone renewed them.

[Australian Dawn]

The problem with a War of the Worlds series would presumably be the name has been trademarked, a nice little way for Big businesses to screw the public, trademark the name or image of something out of copyright like any other trade name or logo, and use laws meant to protect people from having shady businesses pass off their goods as someone else's to prevent people from using things in public domain with threats of endless legal proceedings.

[kawasaki]

I haven't seen an explosion of Martian tripod miniatures hitting the market in the first months of this year...

[Australian Dawn]

People have been making them for years, do you foresee a sudden surge of interest now? I hope so.
A bit more influence from proper science fiction in VSF gaming would help balance out all the just-stick-gears/rivets-on-it steampunk (although I like a bit of that too ).

[kawasaki]

I've been looking to build WotW armies for HotT*** for ages. There's nothing I've found that matches Wells' vision. Yet.


***Holy Acronyms, Batman!