This story has been going on a while but the verdict is the interesting part. Warner Bros. hand has just been forced on whether they make a new Superman movie or not . According to this new ruling they will lose the rights to the character completely in 2013 as they will revert back to the creators’ families. Siegel and Schuster were quite famously shafted by DC for the rights to the iconic superhero back in the day. There is more of this at the Variety page linked below. Frankly I’d like a different studio to have a bash at the Superman franchise. What do you think?
Warner Bros. and DC Comics have lost a little more control over the Man of Steel. In an ongoing Federal court battle over Superman, Judge Stephen Larson ruled Wednesday that the family of the superhero’s co-creator, Jerry Siegel, has “successfully recaptured” rights to additional works, including the first two weeks of the daily Superman newspaper comic-strips, as well as portions of early Action Comics and Superman comic-books.
The ruling is based on the court’s finding that these were not “works-made-for-hire” under the Copyright Act.
This means the Siegels — repped by Marc Toberoff of Toberoff & Associates — now control depictions of Superman’s origins from the planet Krypton, his parents Jor-El and Lora, Superman as the infant Kal-El, the launching of the infant Superman into space by his parents as Krypton explodes and his landing on Earth in a fiery crash.
The first Superman story was published in 1938 in Action Comics No. 1. For $130, Jerry Siegel and co-creator Joel Schuster signed a release in favor of DC’s predecessor, Detective Comics, and a 1974 court decision ruled they signed away their copyrights forever. [From Superman co-creator's family given rights - Entertainment News, Film News, Media - Variety]