Warren Beatty Sued Over Dick Tracy

Warren Beatty

Warren Beatty played Dick Tracy in the Dick Tracy movie and later bought exclusive rights to the character Dick Tracy. Warren hasn’t done much with the character of Dick Tracy and because of this the Tribune Media Services has filed a lawsuit against this Academy-Award winning director/actor for ‘wrongly claiming’ he has exclusive motion picture and television rights to this Dick Tracy character.

After the motion picture of Dick Tracy back in 1990, which starred Warren Beatty himself as Dick Tracy, as well as Madonna, Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino, not much productive use has come out of this character. This is the reason for the Tribune Media Services filing the lawsuit. Tribune says that Warren has “made no productive use” of the rights to this character in over ten years which should then return all rights of this character to the Tribune.

Due to debts and advertising declines the Tribune filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy back in December of 2008. Tribune states that the economic benefits of the rights to this character were likely worth millions to its creditors as well as the Tribune.

Warren claims he has started to work on a Dick Tracy tv show and has filed a suit against Tribune Media Services stating his claim to full rights of the Dick Tracy character in hopes that this will allow him to continue with exclusive rights to the Dick Tracy character. However, Tribune is disputing this as well, this will not benefit anyone. Tribune also believes that Warren has not started shooting this tv show as it is specified in the agreeement.