‘Bad Boys’ copyrights dispute: Columbia Pictures issues new lawsuit in response

Columbia Pictures on Friday, June 23rd, 2023, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court as part of a dispute over rights to the original Bad Boys movie, reported Deadline.

The movie, which was first released in April 1995, starred Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. The film spurred two sequels, Bad Boys II in 2003 and Bad Boys for Life in January 2020.

The lawsuit, which has been filed as a breach-of-contract, was in response to the copyright termination notices filed in 2020 by George Gallo, who co-wrote the story on which the first film was based, and Robert Israel.

The studio argued that Gallo’s story, written in 1985 and called Bulletproof Hearts, was a work for hire via his company Sweet Revenge. Works for hire “are not subject to termination under Section 203 of the Copyright Act.”

“The contract regarding the 1995 film explicitly states, complete with full personal representations and warranties from Mr. Gallo, that the story – which was transformed by many other writers into what became the original film — was written as a work-for-hire,” Columbia said in a statement on Friday.

“By law, such rights cannot be terminated. Entirely confident in its rights, the studio has sought declaratory relief confirming them and potential damages from interference with those rights and breach of contract.”

Whereas, Gallo claims that the story was not work for hire and that any rights Columbia had to make derivative works of his story ended on June 27, 2022.

Earlier this year, Smith and Lawrence announced that they were reuniting for the fourth instalment of the movie.

According to Variety, Sony Pictures confirmed that the untitled sequel is in early pre-production with Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah returning to direct from a script by Chris Bremner.

The filmmakers also directed 2020’s Bad Boys for Life, which reunited Smith and Lawrence as Miami-Dade detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett, 25 years after the first Bad Boys film was released.