I'm in the early stages of writing a novel about a boy in the late 1930s whose hero is Tintin. When the war breaks out and the publication of Le Petit Vingtième stops (and as a result the Tintin adventures as well), the boy goes on a trip to find Hergé and find out how the story ends. I need to know if I can just write and publish this without any problems with Moulinsart/the people who own Tintin, as I believe they are very strict. Does anyone know about this?
Hello people,
So, these two bodies/companies have near exclusive rights to the works of their respective writer. Meaning : they decide what can be published, who can do it, they handle the rights and copyrights related to what Tolkien or Hergé wrote. In summary, they have a kind of monopoly on their opi, and you can't do anything Tolkien or Tintin/Hergé related without their approval (may it be movies, books, t-shirts, mugs, toys etcs...).
I don't know for the Tolkien Estate, but Moulinsart is particularly aggressive in that regard. For example, an artist called Un faux graphiste ("a fake graphic designer"), who was posting on Facebook, had to shut down his page because his work consisted mostly of Tintin's strips and pages, in which he had modified the texts in the speech bubbles. His work was humourous, absurd reinterpretation of what happened in the strip or page. He made no money from it, got no profit. But Moulinsart did "attack" him legally, and he had to delete everything.
So, does your country has something similar? Is there a major writer/literary work that is "protected" by a company/legal body that has a monopoly on it and controls what can or can't be done with it?
