Today’s Venice Film Festival announcement included mention of a film called Repo Chick, directed by Alex Cox. The film is not listed on IMDb, but it would seem reasonable to assume that it’s a sequel to Cox’s 1984 cult classic Repo Man, no? As Cox writes on his blog, “It isn’t really; it’s a story of different characters in a different world” — but that hadn’t stopped Universal, the studio that owns the 1984 film, from issuing a cease and desist, claiming that Cox has made “an illegal sequel” to their property.
Cox had decided to ignore the filing and continue work on the movie — there is apparently significant effects work to finish up in the month left before its Venice premiere — until receiving news that Universal had their own Repo action up their sleeves. They’ve apparently taken a Jude Law film called The Repossession Mambo off their shelf, finished two years ago and left mysteriously in their vault ever since, and have announced plans to rush it into release under the title Repo Men (according to this story, it’s actually Repo Men!, jaunty exclamation point required). Cox is convinced this is an attempt to confuse audiences, distracting them from his non-sequel to Repo Man with a non-sequel of their own. He writes:
I still have a contract with these guys and - if they ever want to make a film based on my original work - they have to ask me to direct it. What fun that would be! … I’m sure [The Repossession Mambo] is an excellent film, which Universal accidentally forgot to distribute, and now are passing off, in their innocence, as the new Repo Man. Only a cynical person might see any attempt to catch the upward draft of Repo Chick, and give loft to a turkey.
What do we think: dasterdly intellectual property violation or unfortunate coincidence?
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SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth