Starting January 1, Hollywood (or any other entertainment multinational) will be able to freely exploit two of the most popular comic figures of the 20th century in the United States: Tintin and Popeye. That means that if Steven Spielberg had waited a few years, he could have made his famous adaptation of ‘The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn’ (2011) for a few million dollars less.
The director of ‘ET’ had bought the rights in 1983 and, after many legal complications and negotiations with its creator, the Belgian artist, Hergé, had to acquire them a second time in order to materialize his project.
Both the famous boy reporter and Popeye, the bold and strong sailor, were born in 1929. The first, in a supplement to the Belgian newspaper ‘Le Vingtième Siècle’ and, the second, created by EC Segar, in the newspaper strip ‘Thimble Theater ‘. The first words of this big man of the sea, with a lot of sarcasm, were the following question: “Do I look like a cowboy?”
The United States has had to wait a quarter of a century longer than the European Union to be able to use these two characters without permission or payment to the copyright holders. The reason is that here these rights expire 70 years after the first publication, while in the United States they do so after 95 years from the first copyright.
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