On Decem(eleven days before the theatrical release of the De Laurentiis King Kong), Judge Manuel Real of the United States District Court for the Central District of California ruled in favor of what Merian C. This would not only complicate matters for all of the parties mentioned above, but end up costing RKO a lot of money. Central to the entire debate however is that just a few years prior to the 1976 film's release, the copyright for the novelization of the 1933 film had expired and as a result had fallen into the public domain.
A fracas began at this point as all of the companies involved tried to flex their legal muscles about their purported ownership of Kong.
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Produced by Dino De Laurentiis, this remake of the classic character spawned multiple lawsuits as Universal Pictures claimed to have had a "verbal agreement" with RKO to remake Kong while De Laurentiis himself had paid the company and secured a license to make his version of the movie. To that end, the 1976 King Kong remake should be credited with being the main ball that gets the entire thing rolling with regard to who owns what about the iconic movie monster. It also won't be the last time a studio does something shady with King Kong rights. It's both not a spoiler for this story and also not a surprise to say that RKO didn't go along with the deal Cooper made in the end. In addition to the feature film they were producing, Cooper would commission a novelization of the screenplay, to be released before the film to build up anticipation.
Cooper, Creator of King Kong, author Mark Cotta Vaz reveals that Cooper declined to take a salary for co-directing and co-producing the film, instead making a deal to retain the rights to King Kong as a property afterward. In his book, Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper would conceive of the idea for the movie King Kong in the late 1920s and early 1930s before eventually landing at the doorstep of one RKO Pictures, who agreed to produce the film after getting a glimpse of the creature models created by Willis O'Brien. To fully appreciate the complexities of the complicated rights situation to Kong, we have to go all the way back to before his creation when he was just a pie in the sky idea by one Merian C.