Are some Looney Tunes shorts cheaper in royalties than others?

Factual Questions
1

Ok, so I didn’t exactly know how phrase the question. You clicked on it, so here is the expanded question;

I have seen certain Looney Tunes shorts more often than others, and in fact, have more copies of them than others. Are these “cheaper” to obtain a license for to copy and distribute? Are they perhaps less legit than others, or completely bootleg/ created against permision etc?

Falling Hare and Fresh Hare are two that come to mind right off the bat. A refresher for you, because I am certain you have seen one or the other;

Falling Hare: Bugs Bunny is on an Air Force base with a ‘gremlin’ and the two fight for the controls of a crashing plane. One scene has bugs droping down on a trap door in a coin-esque fashion, the gremlin then says “Going Down”. The plane spins out of control, and has the “camera” spinning the plane in wild circles.

Fresh Hare: Bugs and and a real old, off model Elmer Fudd type character star, and bugs is wanted Dead or Alive (Preferably dead)… The typical chase ensues, among which Fudd hits a pine tree, which turns into a decorated Christmas tree, and Fudd has snow over him that disguise him as Santa. The same short has Fudd Aresting Bugs, reading the chargees, with bugs ripping off his uniform piece by piece.

Again, what allows for these (and I am sure others) shorts more “common” than others?

2

It’s entirely possible that the copyright has expired or was allowed to lapse on many of them. I know that one of the reasons we get innundated with It’s a Wonderful Life showings around Christmas time is that the film is now public domain, thus nobody has to pay any royalties on it at all. I know that many of the black and white cartoons produced by Warner Brothers and other companies are public domain, so it’s possible that some of the color ones are now public domain as well.

3

FWIW, WB is no longer licensing the original Looney Tunes shorts to anyone, since they’ve restarted the franchise with a couple movies and released some DVDs. (Which are very good, BTW). You can still catch the ones released under the Merry Melodies label on TV, though.

4

IaWL is no longer in the public domain. While the film went PD, there is music in it that never did and that was used to restore a copyright on it. Note that IaWL does not appear nearly as often on TV as it used to. And hopefully someday it won’t appear at all!

5

:eek: :eek: :eek:

:: quickly exits thread before imminent pile-on::