Another Theater Mounts A Legal Battle Against Law Saying It Can't Serve Customers Beer And R-Rated Films At The Same Time

from the with-more-Deadpool-than-usual dept

In the US, you can be given a gun and a chance to catch bullets for your country at age 18. Three years after that, the US government will finally allow you to purchase your own alcohol. At 21, you can finally be the "adult" in "adult beverages." Except in some states. Some states tie booze purchases to morality. (I mean, even more so. It's subject everywhere to "sin taxes.")

As we covered here earlier, the state of Idaho says adults can drink booze and watch movies meant for mature audiences, but not always simultaneously. In Idaho, state police have been busting theaters for showing certain movies while serving alcohol, thanks to statutes that say it's illegal to serve up both booze and "simulated sexual acts."

In Idaho, theaters are trying to get the law ruled unconstitutional -- pointing out that the law is only selectively enforced (cops raid theaters showing "Fifty Shades of Gray" rather than "American Sniper," even though both contain depictions of sexual acts) and allows the state to use liquor statutes to regulate speech.

Over in Utah, the same problem exists. The theater targeted here -- Brewvies -- isn't taking the state to court. Yet. Instead, it's fighting to stay alive. It appears a bunch of cops went to see a movie they probably wanted to see anyway while on the clock and handed the theater an ultimatum.

Brewvies is facing a fine of up to $25,000 fine and could lose its liquor license after undercover officers attended a screening of Marvel's R-rated antihero film "Deadpool" in February.

The state says playing "Deadpool" while serving booze violates Utah law because the movie includes nudity and simulated sex, including a suggestive scene in the film's credits involving a cartoon unicorn. The obscenity law is generally used to regulate strip clubs, which are required to have dancers wear G-strings and pasties if the club serves liquor.

It also bans showing any film with sex acts or simulated sex acts, full-frontal nudity or the "caressing" of breasts or buttocks if at businesses with liquor licenses.

In addition to seeking funds to pay the threatened fine, the theater is hoping to raise enough to seek an injunction against the statute on the same grounds as the challenge in Idaho: that liquor laws are being abused to regulate First Amendment activity.

The theater is seeking $75,000 and Deadpool himself, Ryan Reynolds, has already pitched in.

The theater has since set up a gofundme page and has raised, at the time of writing, $17,352 out of its $75,000 goal. $5,000 of that came from Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds himself.

The underlying problem is the state's insistence on deciding what the right combination of booze and entertainment should be for a state full of adults who are legally allowed to do other things far more "adult" than having a beer while watching a movie that contains depictions of sexual activity. Why either activity is OK when enjoyed separately, but somehow a problem when combined, is something only the state pretends to comprehend. These are leftover laws meant to regulate sexually-oriented businesses like strip clubs and porn theaters, but they're being used to extract fees from theater owners who want to treat adults like adults. Like any other badly-written law, it's being enforced selectively with an eye on easy citations and excessive fines.

Filed Under: beer, deadpool, idaho, movies, ryan reynolds, utah
Companies: brewviews

Without Copyright Infringement, Deadpool Doesn't Get Made

from the killing-creativity,-eh? dept

Copyright infringement kills creativity. It's killing artists and depriving future generations of a variety of works that -- if they could even be made in this era of lawlessness -- should rightfully be withheld from the public until long after the future generation is dead and next generation fully grown. So. They. Say.

Kids, I'm sure you've heard about this "Deadpool," the fourth-wall-breaking, foul-mouthed "superhero" currently raking in $$$ at the megaplexes. For years, it was a pet project passed back and forth between interested shepherds and less-interested studios. Everyone loved the idea but no one wanted to put their money behind it.

For one thing, the licensing alone was a nightmare. While Deadpool belongs to the Marvel "universe," the licensing for Deadpool as a movie character belongs to 20th Century Fox. Nearly everything else belongs to entertainment megagiant Disney. The licensing situation alone should have been enough to keep Deadpool from making it to the big screen. Very few entities want to tangle with Disney's lawyers and put millions of production dollars on the line.

But the movie still made it out into the wild, even with this potentially litigious entanglement. In fact, this weird licensing fact plays into the movie's very self-aware take on the comic book movie genre, as Ars Technica's Sam Machkovech points out:

Should you arrive at a Deadpool screening with high hopes for X-Men or X-Force character cameos or other strides toward comics continuity, you've got another thing coming. 20th Century Fox is behind this film, though Marvel Studios/Disney own most of Marvel's intellectual property, and the result is a world seemingly disconnected from the greater Marvel universe.

There are even disconnects with the Deadpool comics themselves, much to the movie's detriment. Ajax, for example, is a much more toothless supervillain than the one who brutalized the comic version of Wade Wilson, which negatively affects that entire portion of Deadpool's origin tale by opening up gaping plot and logic holes. In fact, the entire "how Wade turned into Deadpool" portion of the movie drags in both length and pacing so much that it borders on the edge of satire in practice.

Whether or not it's "satire in practice" or just the burden of dumping exposition on newcomers to better serve the franchise, Deadpool is still somewhat tangled up in licensing limitations. Crossover appeal is likely limited. And actual crossovers likely next to impossible. If only 20th Century Fox could have been as bold as those who somehow brought this film -- one that had been pronounced DOA repeatedly over the past several years -- to life.

What put this in motion is the same sort of behavior the MPAA works endlessly to prevent: the leaking of footage.

Ben Kuchera at Polygon notes that someone realized the best way to get this project underway was to show its potential audience how they (the actor, writers and director) would handle the subject matter. Fans have wanted a dark, sarcastic, fully-nihilistic Deadpool movie for a long, long time. Some test footage shot three years ago could have languished unseen on some shelf/hard drive somewhere in Hollywood and the unmade project would still be cruising from rejection to rejection. But one of these people decided to perform an action no studio would ever condone.

"I've been trying to get it made for 11 years, which is crazy," star Ryan Reynolds said in an interview with Jimmy Fallon. "We developed the script six years ago, wrote this fantastic script, it leaked online, Deadpool fans went nuts for it, so the studio granted us a small amount of money to make test footage. This test footage that we shot then sat on the shelf for four years, as it does, they didn't do anything with it, then just a little under two years ago it leaked, accidentally, onto the internet."

We, like just about every other outlet concerned with pop culture, ran the story. Everyone loved the footage, and the film went into full production.

"Here's the thing, the fans freaked out and overwhelmed Fox, and Fox basically had to greenlight the movie," Reynolds said. "The problem is the footage was owned by Fox so it was kind of illegal ... I know that one of us did it."

While no one will admit to leaking the footage, everyone involved couldn't be happier this act of copyright infringement has resulted in an actual Deadpool film.

"Oh my god, we were absolutely thrilled," Paul Wernick, one of the film's writers, told Variety. "If you go back and look at our emails after the test footage was made in 2012, we had said back and forth, 'How do we leak this? How do we get the groundswell support from our fans?' When it finally leaked in 2014 and got the reaction we hoped for, we were like, 'Here it goes!' This is confirmation we are not crazy to be passionate about this. There’s a whole fanbase of people clamoring for this movie."

That leak was, in fact, crucial. It was the film's last chance to be made.

"Had it not gotten that reaction, it would have been a disaster and the project would have been dead," Wernick continued. "We knew it in our bones this would be the reaction. We were thrilled and still to this day don’t know who did it. There is a very short list of suspects."

One of the entities who's likely happy the footage was leaked is the studio behind the film. Deadpool wasn't given much of a budget ($58 million) but it's already well on its way to turning a good-sized profit.*

*Non-Hollywood accounting methods only.

According to industry estimates this morning, 20th Century Fox’s Marvel pic, Deadpool whipped Fifty Shades’ Friday figure by 57% with a projected daily haul of $47.5M (that includes $12.7M in Thursday previews) on its way to a mindblowing 3-day opening of $118.4M-$123M and a 4-day between $129.6M-$136M.

Sure, leaking test footage isn't like leaking an entire film, but without that happening, nothing else does. The movie is never made and Fox doesn't have almost three times the budget grossed within the first four days of ticket sales. But because this leak happened, the studio is likely in control of a promising franchise, provided it can keep the lightning bottled and push forward without discarding everything that makes Deadpool Deadpool. And everyone involved can thank the unnamed person they won't rat out for shrugging off the insular "power" of copyright and mobilizing a fan base that is now making good on its promise to support the movie.

Filed Under: copyright, deadpool, leak, licensing, movies
Companies: 20th century fox, disney, marvel