I've previously written about the
40th anniversary of Michael Ende's famous book-turned-film(s), The Neverending Story. The magical story also came with neverending (posthumous) headaches for the German children's author and his estate:
It is one of the great works of German children’s and youth literature. According to the publisher, Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story, issued 40 years ago, has sold millions of copies. But who owns it?
More specifically, who owns the merchandising rights? This question is the focus of a trial at the Munich Higher Regional Court. Ende’s estate administrator is contesting the son of a lawyer who once secured the film rights and contracted as a co-producer of the successful 1984 movie.
Ende’s great children’s novel came on the market in 1979. It’s about the adventures of Bastian Balthasar Bux, who escapes from reality where he is teased by his classmates into the “never-ending story.” He is drawn into a fantasy world in which the young hero Atreyu tries to save the fairy-tale kingdom Fantasia and its Empress. The land is being devoured by an eerie nothingness. Bastian meets luckdragons, rock biters and many other mythical creatures.
Five years after the book, star director Wolfgang Petersen and producer Bernd Eichinger made the movie adaptation. It was no secret that Ende (1929-1995) disapproved of the cinematic version of his story. He publicly called the film a “gigantic melodrama of kitsch, commerce, plush and plastic.” Falkor, the white luckdragon, is still one of the best-known and most popular props at the 100-year-old Bavaria Filmstadt just outside Munich, where the adventure film was shot.
Ende’s heirs battle for the film rights.
According to the court, the background of the litigations before the Higher Regional Court are various contracts for the rights to merchandise – the oldest of which is a “screen adaptation contract” dating from 1980. It granted the father of the plaintiff the screen adaptation and merchandising rights.
Since 2005, the film rights, which after a certain time automatically revert to the author or his publisher, are again the property of Michael Ende’s heirs. In the view of the plaintiff and his father, this does not affect the merchandising rights to The Neverending Story because at the time they were guaranteed for an indefinite period.
The other side sees it completely different. “It was always only about the right to utilize the film production,” emphasizes the Hamburg media lawyer Ralph Oliver Graef, who dealt with The Neverending Story for the first time about ten years ago due to a planned musical in Hamburg. “No merchandising rights to the book were granted. In the case of film productions, exploitation rights are always granted only to a specific production.”
He quotes from the contract of 1980, which reads, “The rights resulting from the produced film may be used only with the consent of the publisher for the distribution of action figures, T-shirts, etc.”
Last May, Munich I District Court had decided in favour of Ende’s estate administrator and dismissed the lawsuit as unfounded. It decided that neither the plaintiff nor his father is entitled to the rights to the work – in particular merchandising rights to future film productions or to the literary work itself. It was about rights regarding the specific feature film project. Attorney Graef says, “The never-ending story about merchandising rights will now come to an end – an end in favour of Michael Ende.”
(dpa, 28 February 2019)
On 20 March, the Munich court once and for all decided in favour of Ende’s heirs, without further recourse, finally ending this never-ending story. Film and merchandise rights are back with Michael Ende’s estate — including rights to potential future film versions.
photo by
Wickedprops - own work, CC BY-SA 4.0: Actor Noah Hathaway ("Atreyu" in Wolfgang Petersen's 1984 film) hands prop collector Wesley Cannon The Neverending Story book used in the film.
