Incredibly, Warner/Chappel music continues to collect royalties on the use of “Happy Birthday,” despite many people pointing out that it should be considered public domain (not to mention common sense screaming the same thing). Even the copyright itself says it’s more than 100 years old. Finally, a new lawsuit is challenging Happy Birthday’s protected status, saying it should’ve been public domain long ago. And the people filing the suit should know, they’re working on a documentary about it.

The proposed class action is brought by a film company that is working on a documentary about the “Happy Birthday” song. During the making, the producers were informed that they would need to pay a $1,500 synchronization license fee to use the song in the documentary. The producers paid for fear of being liable for up to $150,000 in penalties for copyright infringement.

But now, Good Morning to You Productions Corp. has filed a lawsuit on behalf of all those in film, television and elsewhere who are paying for rights to “Happy Birthday.” The plaintiff aims to force Warner/Chappell Music to return millions of dollars collected over the years for what the lawsuit calls “the world’s most popular song.”

When the Hill sisters first composed the song in 1893, it was called “Good Morning to All.” Somewhere along the line the tune evolved into the version that is currently popular. The song has traditionally been regarded as copyrighted because the lyrics appeared in a songbook in 1924 and a piano arrangement was published in 1935. As such, it would neatly fit into changes in copyright law that conferred a lengthy 95 years of protection for works created after 1923. Had the songbook been published any earlier, there wouldn’t be any question  as to whether a license fee was needed when, for example, Marilyn Monroe sang it to John F. Kennedy in 1962.

Now, the documentary film company says it has “irrefutable documentary evidence, some dating back to 1893, [which] shows that the copyright to ‘Happy Birthday,’ if there ever was a valid copyright to any part of the song, expired no later than 1921 and that if defendant Warner/Chappell owns any rights to ‘Happy Birthday,’ those rights are limited to the extremely narrow right to reproduce and distribute specific piano arrangements for the song published in 1935.”

As evidence, the lawsuit cites a January 1901 edition of an Indiana school journal that described children singing the words “happy birthday to you.” And then, in what the plaintiffs might hope will become a smoking gun, there’s citation to a copy of a 1911 work published by the Board of Sunday Schools of the Methodist Episcopal Church. [THR]

It’s truly amazing that people have been able to collect licensing fees for “Happy Birthday” all these years. Anyone trying to argue that it isn’t public domain should get laughed out of court. Actually, after they’re done paying off all the people they squeezed money from, they should have to learn the words to every chain restaurant’s crappy happy birthday knock-off song that they had to invent to avoid paying royalties, and sing them all to the plaintiffs every year on their birthdays.

Today we’re honored to have as our FilmDrunk Live Discussion guest comedian Eric André, host and creator of The Eric Andre Show on Adult Swim – he also had a recurring character in Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23 and a small part in The Internship, if those things are important to you. I don’t think I’d be out of line or even unique in calling The Eric Andre perhaps the weirdest show on television, which he initially started shooting himself in a “semi-abandoned” bodega in Brooklyn. Should be fun, right?

The F-U-N starts at  1PM PT/4PM ET right here and should last for about an hour. Begin your questions with @Eric to keep things organized, and feel free to ask anything you want, just don’t embarrass me. Click on “See All Responses” or Eric’s name in the right side module to easily access all his answers. Please remember to spay and neuter your pets, unless you plan to breed them, which is a great way to make some extra dough on the side.

Click here to view all of Eric’s responses

Sony recently announced that in addition to The Amazing Spider-Man 2 hitting theaters in May 2014, we can expect to see The Amazing Spider-Man 3 June 10, 2016 and The Amazing Spider-Man 4 May 4, 2018, a few months shy of star Andrew Garfield’s 35th birthday (Tobey Maguire was 32 when Spider-Man 3 was released). The plans sound a bit optimistic on Sony’s part, but then again, if that last boring retread couldn’t kill the franchise, I don’t know what will. I imagine the fourth (seventh) Spider-Man movie will involve a lot of long takes culminating in Scarfield breaking the fourth wall, asking the viewer “Dude, are we still doing this? Is this really what you want? …I just… I just wanna go home.”

CULVER CITY, Calif., June 17, 2013 – With Sony Pictures Entertainment now in production in New York on The Amazing Spider-Man™ 2, slated for release on May 2, 2014, the studio is planting its flag on two future release dates for one of the most successful franchises in studio history, it was announced today by Jeff Blake, Chairman, Worldwide Marketing and Distribution for Sony Pictures. The next two films in the story of Peter Parker will be released on June 10, 2016, and on May 4, 2018, respectively.

Commenting on the announcement, Blake said, “Spider-Man is our most important, most successful, and most beloved franchise, so we’re thrilled that we are in a position to lock in these prime release dates over the next five years.”

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is directed by Marc Webb from a screenplay by Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci & Jeff Pinkner, with a previous draft by James Vanderbilt. [press release via SlashFilm]

Jeff Blake went on to add, “Since 2018 will inevitably be many years after I’m fired, let me just say in advance, ‘F*ck you, f*ck you, you’re cool, f*ck you, PEACE! I’m out! Thanks for the free stationary, hosers.’”

It’s hard not to read this press release with an air of melancholy. I can’t imagine anyone likes to think of themselves five years from now, trying to reimagine a franchise that felt stale five years ago. But Sony makes so much money on these movies and God knows how much more on merchandizing, they have no choice but to do everything they can to give their investors confidence in the relative permanence of that revenue stream. Chevy makes cars, Sony makes Spider-Man. It’s just like Tyler Durden said, bro, “The toys you make end up toying you.”

20th Century Fox is planning a sequel to Prometheus, which I thought seemed redundant given that Prometheus was already a prequel to Alien, and thus Prometheus already had three sequels. But then I checked the continuity, and realized Ridley Scott already denied the whole prequel aspect of it, saying “By the end of the third act [of Prometheus] you start to realize there’s a DNA of the very first alien, but none of the subsequent aliens.”

So, uh… that clears that up. Anyway, someone’s writing Prometheus 2, and it’s not Damon Lindelof.

20th Century Fox and Scott Free are turning to relative newcomer Jack Paglen (“Transcendence”) to write the highly-anticipated sequel “Prometheus 2,” TheWrap has learned

CM Partners represents Paglen, whose script for “Transcendence” drew the attention of Christopher Nolan’s longtime cinematographer Wally Pfister, who will direct in his debut. [TheWrap]

If you don’t remember (I didn’t, but Wikipedia never forgets), SPOILER ALERT, Prometheus ends with Noomi Rapace’s character flying off to the Engineers’ home world to find out why they wanted to destroy humanity, while in the life pod, an alien bursts out of an Engineer’s chest. There are a lot of ways you could go with that for the sequel, but I’m hoping for two hours of the Engineers lifting weights and playing space polo with her head. That way it’d at least answer the biggest unanswered question from Prometheus, “How’d they get so jacked?”

Prometheus 2: Brometheus, Do You Even Lift? In space, no one can hear you chug.

I’m a little bit torn about Martin Scorsese’s new film The Wolf of Wall Street. I can’t deny that it looks entertaining as hell, and any time you get Matthew McConaughey chewing scenery with a silly haircut it would take at least a strapping bouncer or two to keep me out of that theater. The book the film’s based on sounds pretty entertaining too:

By day he made thousands of dollars a minute. By night he spent it as fast as he could, on drugs, sex, and international globe-trotting. From the binge that sank a 170-foot motor yacht, crashed a Gulfstream jet, and ran up a $700,000 hotel tab, to the wife and kids who waited for him at home, and the fast-talking, hard-partying young stockbrokers who called him king and did his bidding, here, in his own inimitable words, is the story of the ill-fated genius they called… (The Wolf of Wall Street). [Amazon]

The problem is, the book was written by the subject himself, Jordan Belfort, and I have a hard time listening to a story narrating to anyone who refers to himself as “an ill-fated genius.” Not to mention, giving this guy even more money to self-mythologize and tell me about how awesome it was when he screwed a bunch of people out of money leaves a bad taste in my mouth, no matter how much I want to hear about those chimps on rollerblades.

But as some of my astute commenters pointed out, Belfort actually financed a handful of movies himself in the mid 90s. While we may not be able to buy his memoir guilt-free, one thing we can do is to explore some of the crappy movies this self-described genius executive produced. For instance, did you know he bankrolled two separate films directed by the guy who did A Talking Cat?! It’s true. And it appears as if he discovered, like so many before him, that financing movies isn’t the easiest way to make money.

But first, Leo would like this dance:

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