legal Buck Rogers remake in the works.

Apparently, Legendary Pictures wants to make a Buck Rogers TV series with George Clooney, but the Nowlan Family Trust, which owns or used to own the copyright, doesn't want the studio to do so. The issue is if the character is in the public domain. It first appeared in a short story in 1928, and that story is now in the public domain. But the character then was "Anthony Rogers", and he didn't become "Buck Rogers" until about 1929 or 1930. If so, then, from what I understand, the nickname, "Buck Rogers" will not enter the public domain until 2024 or 95 years after the first appearance.

So Legendary Pictures only has to wait a few years, which should be no problem, because a major production would take years to complete anyway. It's just a question of waiting.
 
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Yesterday, I suddenly started writing a treatment for Buck Rogers, and I couldn't stop. I'll continue writing and see where it goes. Even if my version doesn't get picked up by the studios, I can always revise it into an original story and hope it gets picked up - George Lucas couldn't get the rights to Flash Gordon, so he started Star Wars.

I'm a fan of the 1970's series with Gil Gerard and Erin Gray.
 
There'll be no Twikki in my reboot.

I just wrote a scene straight out of Bladerunner. Buck, having just come into the 25th Century, from the 21st, is on either a starbase (ie DS 9) or a moonbase, and he sees what the local economy was like - cramped and stuffy.

In the space station/moon base, the habitable area was congested, as it had to be, because carving out wide open spaces was prohibitively expensive. The market area was little more than lanes where, on both sides, were food stalls. One stall had a man doing stir fry on a wok, as steam rose from the meat and vegetables, another had a woman stirring a large pot of soup, carefully adding spices as she did so, and yet another had several teenagers, male and female, cutting meat and vegetables. All had customers sitting at the front, waiting for their meals. The fragrance of food hung over the mall, which even the artificial ventilators could not sweep away.

By the way, in that Twikki scene, I'm not sure if the robots had the capability to do what Buck said not to ask about.
 
As I've said previously, writing is an emotional experience for me, as opposed to other creative works. Anyway, I started writing and couldn't stop, and, this weekend, I started a different story line. I'll see where this goes. Thanks, everyone, for your encouragement.

INDIETALK! I presume there are no restrictions about my writing projects? I still hope to adapt them to film or TV, but, as of now, they're just dots on MS Word.
 
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