Disney Preparing Its Own Take On King Kong

Disney unexpectedly announced this week they are developing a live-action TV show about King Kong for the Disney+ streaming service. The series will reportedly explore the origins of Kong (why is he so big anyway?) and be produced by James Wan’s production company. Stephany Folsom (Paper Girls) will be head writer.

But wait a minute….isn’t Kong currently being used by Warner Bros for a series of big monster movies? How can Disney produce something with Kong in it at the same time? Is Kong public domain, or what? The answer is yes….and no.

Comicbook.com looked into it and found a tangled mess. The character of King Kong was created by Merian C. Cooper, who published a novelization of the basic story prior to the release of the RKO movie in 1933. As part of a deal that became difficult to prove, RKO would get the rights to the movie while Cooper would retain the rights to the Kong IP. It was eventually ruled MANY years later (after Cooper’s death) that this deal was valid, but that the book and its ideas had fallen into public domain. It’s this public domain status that allowed Nintendo to block a 1983 lawsuit from Universal over the claim that they owned KK. The Donkey Kong character was clearly different from any movie they’d ever made and the word “Kong” was free for anyone.

Even still, most projects that have based their King Kong on the PD version have cleared permission with the Cooper estate, including what Disney is doing. Based on the information available, it doesn’t seem like this is necessary, but there might be a few more legal snarls we don’t know about.

At this point, multiple movie studios have produced their own takes on King Kong and 100% own the content of those films, whether that’s Universal in 2005, WB more recently or Disney in the near future. Paramount also owns a Kong film, the 1976 remake, due to the rights eventually passing to them. Basically, if Kong isn’t public domain, he might as well be. The 1933 film will itself become copyright-free in 2029, but little will change about the current situation.