Well, this isn’t good news. Who actually owns the rights to the Scream mask has come into play again. However, this time it threatens to delay a major motion picture and offset millions of dollars generating hype. This isn’t the first time Ghostface has been in court, and it likely won’t be the last.
To give you some background, before the mask appeared in films, it was a mass-produced Halloween mask. Fun World released what they called the “Peanut-Eyed Ghost” to the masses in the nineties. Wes Craven found one of these masks in a vacant house while scouting for locations to shoot the original Scream film.
Unfortunately, Fun World wanted too much money for licensing. Because of this, Craven had KNB EFX create several variations of the mask to use in his film. After intense negotiation, Fun World and Dimension came to a compromise. Years later, the “Peanut-Eyed Ghost” would become one of the most iconic symbols of horror ever created.
However, a new fighter has joined the match now that Alterian Ghost Factory has made the claim that their company created the mask before Fun World. After this assertion was made, it didn’t take long for the legal battles to ensue. This all comes to us from a report over at The Hollywood Reporter. You can read both parties’ assertions below.
The Complaints
“The rights to the iconic Ghostface mask has sparked a legal battle, with Spyglass and Paramount Pictures suing a Los Angeles-based special effects studio claiming ownership of the droopy-eyed horror visage. In a lawsuit filed on Friday in California federal, the companies say that the Alterian Ghost Factory is threatening copyright infringement litigation ahead of the release of the next installment to the Scream franchise. The suit seeks a court order, which would bar the special effects studio from suing, establishing that it’s on solid legal ground.”
Paramount and Spyglass state, “Alterian has never legally established that it owns the rights to the Ghostface mask, and it will not be able to prove it now in this litigation. And seeking to disrupt the release of a completed motion picture mere weeks before its release—the seventh installment of a franchise that Alterian watched grow in silence for three decades—is an outrageous attempt to shake down.”
“Fun World had no right to license the mask, saying that it created the underlying design first, which was later copied by Fun World, the suit says,” stated Alterian
That’s all the information we have at this time. Make sure to check back here for more details.
