The use of Peter Cushing in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has led to a legal case, that’s now been cleared for high court trial.
Spoilers lie ahead for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Now this is interesting. 2016’s terrific Rogue One: A Star Wars Story also managed to ignite a bit of debate, one that remains relevant following this summer’s season of blockbusters too.
Namely: if an actor has passed, should they be digitally resurrected to continue playing a role on screen? One major franchise – with permission – did this a year or two back with a moment I don’t want to spoil – even used such an approach for the ending of its movie.
In the case of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, audiences were surprised to see the late Peter Cushing reprising the role of Grand Moff Tarkin, over two decades after the actor had passed away. Eight years on, Disney and Lucasfilm’s decision to use Cushing’s likeness is heading to trial.
The Shropshire Star – yay for local newspapers -has a good summation of what’s happened.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was produced by a specially-set up company called Lunak Heavy Industries (UK) Ltd. Studios do this to insulate themselves from a movie bombing: if each film is made by an individual company, it stops a failure from being able to take the whole metaphorical ship down.
Legal action has been taken against Lunak though by Tyburn Film Productions. Tyburn for its part has argued that it had an agreement with Cushing that was made prior to his passing, one that guarded against his image being used without Tyburn’s consent.
The legal case was launched in 2019, with Tyburn arguing that Lunak (and by extension, Disney and Lucasfilm), received “unjust unrichment” from the use of Cushing’s image. For its part, Lucasfilm and Lunak are arguing that the contract Peter Cushing signed for his original appearance in Star Wars: A New Hope covered using his image as the character after his death. It also inked a deal with the executors of Cushing’s estate that it believes covers them.
As such, Lunak and Lucasfilm had attempted to get the case dismissed before it got to trial. However, as of this very week, that tactic has failed. A deputy High Court judge here in the UK has now said that the case needs to go to a full trial. That he was “far from persuaded” that Tyburn was going to win the case, but that it warranted a “full factual inquiry”.
There’s no date set for the trial, but it’s hard not to think that its outcome is going to have some ramifications. Probably not on major corporations re-using the likeness of deceased actors, but certainly on how watertight the contracts are for franchise movies going forward.
We’ll keep you posted.
