By Andrew Dalton, Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --Miramax filed a lawsuit Tuesday against director Quentin Tarantino over the director's plans to create and auction off a series of NFTs based on his work on "Pulp Fiction."
The entertainment company alleges that Tarantino's planned offerings violate the copyrights it holds to the director's 1994 film, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Los Angeles.
Tarantino recently announced plans to sell seven NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, which are digital works rendered unique and attached to a specific owner through cryptocurrency technology.
The NFTs to go on sale next month include scanned digital copies of handwritten script pages for uncut versions of scenes from the film, with audio commentary and other elements. Each will also include "secret" aspects accessible only to the owner.
"Tarantino's conduct has forced Miramax to bring this lawsuit against a valued collaborator in order to enforce, preserve, and protect its contractual and intellectual property rights relating to one of Miramax's most iconic and valuable film properties," the company said in the lawsuit. "Left unchecked, Tarantino's conduct could mislead others into believing Miramax is involved in his venture. And it could also mislead others into believing they have the rights to pursue similar deals."
An email seeking comment sent to a representative for Tarantino was not immediately returned.
According to the lawsuit, Tarantino's attorneys responded to cease-and-desist letters from Miramax by saying the sales fall under the partial rights Tarantino held from the production, including the rights to screenplay publication.
The lawsuit asks a judge to forbid sale of the NFTs and any similar violation of Miramax copyrights, and asks for Tarantino to pay its legal fees and any related costs.
"Pulp Fiction," the 1994 film starring Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman and John Travolta, took Tarantino from touted indie director to major filmmaking star.
It was one of several films he made with Miramax, which was then helmed by brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein.
More than 67 million people watched Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debate. That’s way up from June
An estimated 67.1 million people watched the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a sharp increase from the June debate that eventually led to President Joe Biden dropping out of the race.
The debate was run by ABC News but shown on 17 different networks, the Nielsen company said. The Trump-Biden debate in June was seen by 51.3 million people.
Tuesday's count was short of the record viewership for a presidential debate, when 84 million people saw Trump's and Hillary Clinton's first faceoff in 2016. The first debate between Biden and Trump in 2020 reached 73.1 million people.
With Harris widely perceived to have outperformed Trump on Tuesday night, the former president and his supporters are sharply criticizing ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis. The journalists waded into on-the-fly fact checks during the debate, correcting four statements by Trump.
No other debates are currently scheduled between the two presidential candidates, although there's been some talk about it and Fox News Channel has publicly offered alternatives. CBS will host a vice presidential debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance.
Tuesday's debate stakes were high to begin with, not only because of the impending election itself but because the last presidential debate uncorked a series of events that ended several weeks later with Biden's withdrawal from the race after his performance was widely panned.
Opinions on how ABC handled the latest debate Tuesday were, in a large sense, a Rorschach test on how supporters of both sides felt about how it went. MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes sent a message on X that the ABC moderators were doing an "excellent" job — only to be answered by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who said,... Read More