New Licensees Chance Of Happening

[MRP]

Madcap; just my opinions based upon your list and some things that Paul Clarke has stated both here and on the Mego ambassador's FB page...


Dungeon's & Dragons - are we speaking of the hit cartoon series from the 1980s? If so, would depend upon naming rights from TSR and whoever owns the rights now to the images.
...
Conan (More than FTC has) - does Marvel still own the rights to publish, or has that passed back to Robert E. Howard's estate?

D&D is owned by Wizards of the Coast (the same people who make Magic: The Gathering) which was acquired by Hasbro about a decade ago, so it's Hasbro too.

Conan has always been the REH estate. Marvel licensed the character from the 70's to the 90's. Dark Horse had it from 2002 until this year. Marvel will begin publishing again in the US in 2019. In Europe, the original Howard stories are in the public domain and French and Italian publishers are doing Conan comics (Glenat in France) but they cannot sell them in the US market because of our different IP laws concerning public domain and trademarks (completely different from copyrights) held in US markets by Paradox (who owns the REH estate now). Paradox is more interested in marketing the Arnie movies than the Howard stories (hence licensing movie toys to Funko for Pops and their Savage Worlds line). McFarlane toys did some Conan figures a while back based on the REH stories. None of this encompasses Red Sonja, which is owned by an entirely different company (Red Sonja llc) because while having her name based on an REH character (Red Sonya, who appeared in a Howard historical fiction tale set in Eastern Europe/western Asia not in a Conan tale) was deemed an original character and not owned by the Howard estate, and since it was created separate from Marvel properties in a licensed book and Marvel had different contracts for licensed work rather than standard work-for-hire contracts used for their other books that granted them owner-ship of all characters created in the works, it was not owned by Marvel either. So doing Red Sonja as part of a Conan line would require two separate licenses. Sonja is currently being published by Dynamite comics and cannot be used in Conan comics and vice versa unless a special arrangement is made (such as the recent Conan/Red Sonja mini-series co-published by Dynamite and Dark Horse just before Dark Horse lost the Conan license). The Red Sonja license does allow for the use of some Hyborian locales though if I understand it correctly, but the whole license tangle for Conan and Sonja is a mess that requires a lot of IP lawyers to untangle in most instances.

-M

[SWCWorld]

D&D is owned by Wizards of the Coast (the same people who make Magic: The Gathering) which was acquired by Hasbro about a decade ago, so it's Hasbro too.

Conan has always been the REH estate. Marvel licensed the character from the 70's to the 90's. Dark Horse had it from 2002 until this year. Marvel will begin publishing again in the US in 2019. In Europe, the original Howard stories are in the public domain and French and Italian publishers are doing Conan comics (Glenat in France) but they cannot sell them in the US market because of our different IP laws concerning public domain and trademarks (completely different from copyrights) held in US markets by Paradox (who owns the REH estate now). Paradox is more interested in marketing the Arnie movies than the Howard stories (hence licensing movie toys to Funko for Pops and their Savage Worlds line). McFarlane toys did some Conan figures a while back based on the REH stories. None of this encompasses Red Sonja, which is owned by an entirely different company (Red Sonja llc) because while having her name based on an REH character (Red Sonya, who appeared in a Howard historical fiction tale set in Eastern Europe/western Asia not in a Conan tale) was deemed an original character and not owned by the Howard estate, and since it was created separate from Marvel properties in a licensed book and Marvel had different contracts for licensed work rather than standard work-for-hire contracts used for their other books that granted them owner-ship of all characters created in the works, it was not owned by Marvel either. So doing Red Sonja as part of a Conan line would require two separate licenses. Sonja is currently being published by Dynamite comics and cannot be used in Conan comics and vice versa unless a special arrangement is made (such as the recent Conan/Red Sonja mini-series co-published by Dynamite and Dark Horse just before Dark Horse lost the Conan license). The Red Sonja license does allow for the use of some Hyborian locales though if I understand it correctly, but the whole license tangle for Conan and Sonja is a mess that requires a lot of IP lawyers to untangle in most instances.

-M

Thanks for the wonderful input, MPR! From this, it looks like a Conan license would be a semi-moot point. I was not aware of the D&D license currently; really good information! I did know that in the past, the D&D license had been a pain; i.e. when Mattel Electronics created the AD&D games for their Intellivision in the early 1980s, due to copyrights/licensing with TSR, they had to use the complete "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" moniker in front of the actual name of the game. When Intellivision Lives (the Blue Sky Rangers) released the Intellivision Flashback (and other software on their site) in the past few years, they dropped the licensing fees, etc. to the two AD&D games by changing the names:

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1st title) has become Crown of Kings
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Treasure of Tarmin has become Minotaur

(Just as an example)