Warner Bros. once again is facing lawsuits regarding their massive box office success The Conjuring series. The main contention revolves around who the rights to the Warrens’ story, which the story is based on. Author Gerald Brittle claims the Warrens signed away their rights back in 1978 to him and his novel The Demonologist, which is based on the Warrens’ story.
This isn’t the first time The Demonologist has gone after Warner Bros. He’s suing the company once again, in addition to parent company Time Warner, director James Wan, screenwriters Chad Hayes and Carey Hayes, New Line Productions, among others, claiming copyright infringement and more. You can read the 355-page filing here, where Brittle doesn’t claim a specific number, though he is trying to get his hands on the nearly $900 million dollars the franchise has made.
The major problem here involves two things. The first is that Brittle, and other skeptics, believe that the Warrens’ case files of supernatural activity are fake. But Warner Bros. and their team have used the defense the movies are based on “historical facts” and had nothing to do with Brittle. This means, possibly, that Warner Bros. might need to prove the Warrens’ ghosts are real.
In the filing, Brittle claims to have exclusive rights to “create derivative works based on the Warrens’ cases.”
“[W]hen Lorraine Warren granted the Defendants the right to use the Warren Case Files, which the Defendants themselves repeatedly state their movies are based on, she could not have done so because she had years earlier contractually granted that exclusive right to use those same Warren cases, Warren Case Files and related materials to the Plaintiff,” writes attorney Patrick C. Henry II. “Lorraine Warren had nothing to convey.”
Henry also added: “This is a pattern of deceit that is part of a scheme that the Warrens have perpetuated for years … There are no historical facts of a witch ever existing at the Perron farmhouse, a witch hanging herself, possession, Satanic worship or child sacrifice.”
So Warner Bros. either needs to prove those supernatural activities took place—i.e. that their historical facts—or they had no prior knowledge of Brittle’s The Demonologist.
Here’s the problem:
https://twitter.com/creepypuppet/status/141761191566508032
Warners told Deadline they have not yet been served and have no comment on the matter.
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