The Mess of "Who owns Dragon Ball?"

[VejituhTheWarriorGuy]

Even though we all know that FUNimation owning the US dubbing and licensing rights to the series, it's been a mess to figure out exactly who owns the main rights to the Dragon Ball series. Is it Toei? Bird Studio and Shueisha? Or does each company own there own part of the franchise and pay a share of their profits to Shueisha? I'd like to know

[VegettoEX]

Shueisha is the ultimate rights-holder, with Dragon Ball being originally created for any published through them. Everything is dished out from there (Toei for animation, Bandai for merchandise, etc.).

Near as we can tell, Toriyama / Bird Studio does not outright own the series in any way; the best explanation I can give is that it's like a "work-for-hire" kind of thing. Toriyama is certainly given the respect he deserves as the original author and is clearly given free reign to do anything he wants with it, but Shueisha can also do whatever THEY want with it, with or without his permission.

[VejituhTheWarriorGuy]

Shueisha is the ultimate rights-holder, with Dragon Ball being originally created for any published through them. Everything is dished out from there (Toei for animation, Bandai for merchandise, etc.).

Near as we can tell, Toriyama / Bird Studio does not outright own the series in any way; the best explanation I can give is that it's like a "work-for-hire" kind of thing. Toriyama is certainly given the respect he deserves as the original author and is clearly given free reign to do anything he wants with it, but Shueisha can also do whatever THEY want with it, with or without his permission.

So, Shueisha owns it but other companies own their own parts of it and have to pay Shueisha a part of their profits?

[VegettoEX]

That's traditionally how it works, but I can't proclaim to know the ins-and-outs of their contracts with each other.

It can go lots of levels deep, too. Like:

WebFoot developed Legacy of Goku for Infogrames/Atari (who worked in conjunction with FUNimation), who was sublicensed the rights to make the series from Bandai, who was sublicensed the rights to merchandise from Toei and/or Shueisha.

[dbgtFO]

For now 20th Century Fox has the movie license and it would have run out, if it hadn't been for BoG, kinda like why Sony has to keep on producing a certain amount of Spiderman movies within a certain timeframe or else they lose the license and it goes back to Marvel(which Marvel Studios is very keen on happening).
Am I getting that right?

[Hellspawn28]

Shueisha is the license holder for the series. If you want to make a DB movie or series outside of Japan, or use any of the characters then you would go to them. Toriyama is the creator of the series, but he does not have control over the creative license. It would be like that if you want to make a Spider-Man movie or show, you would go to Marvel and not Stan Lee.

For now 20th Century Fox has the movie license and it would have run out, if it hadn't been for BoG, kinda like why Sony has to keep on producing a certain amount of Spiderman movies within a certain timeframe or else they lose the license and it goes back to Marvel(which Marvel Studios is very keen on happening).
Am I getting that right?

Toei most likely had Fox hold on to the DB license longer to release the movies overseas since they wanted to release BOG across the world. So far with Super airing, I don't think we will get another movie for a while. I doubt Fox would want to do another DB live action movie going how that movie did poorly both critically and financially. Fox will likely just let the rights die and let them go back to Shueisha similar what happen to Sony and Godzilla where Sony let the rights to Godzilla die when the rights went back to Toho in 2003. Besides Fox treats their franchises like crap that is not Alien/Predator, X-Men or Planet of the Apes. Even those took a while to be good again. The new F4 movie is horrible and they made that movie because they didn't want the rights to go back to Disney/Marvel. The new Hitman movie was likely made to keep on the license longer and the movie looks just as bad as the last one from 2007. They put no effort into Die Hard 5 since they hire a bad director and writer for that film.

Fox having the rights to Dragon Ball was always a bad idea. If Fox does another live action movie now, it will still fail. Give the rights to Legendary Pictures, they might put more effort and faithful into the franchise then Fox would have done.

[VejituhTheWarriorGuy]

That's traditionally how it works, but I can't proclaim to know the ins-and-outs of their contracts with each other.

It can go lots of levels deep, too. Like:

WebFoot developed Legacy of Goku for Infogrames/Atari (who worked in conjunction with FUNimation), who was sublicensed the rights to make the series from Bandai, who was sublicensed the rights to merchandise from Toei and/or Shueisha.

I wonder if Toei gets the profits and splits them with Shueisha

[VejituhTheWarriorGuy]

For now 20th Century Fox has the movie license and it would have run out, if it hadn't been for BoG, kinda like why Sony has to keep on producing a certain amount of Spiderman movies within a certain timeframe or else they lose the license and it goes back to Marvel(which Marvel Studios is very keen on happening).
Am I getting that right?

I think it's true yeah. The thing is though, Fox was just a sub distributor for F which means they basically bankrolled the movie by doing the television marketing and billboard type ads on websites, co-financed FUNi's distribution of the movie (which basically means they just gave them the rest of the money they needed to buy screens and showtimes) and had their name there because they have the rights to make Dragon Ball movies so even though FUNi produced the dub, they legally have to Fox's name on it and have them do some sort of distrubution for theatrical releases of future DBZ movies whilst FUNi actually distributed the movie to theaters, did trailers, YouTube videos that advertised the movie on their channel and others like the Mega64 video and had meetings with theaters to buy screens and showtimes for the movie. Meanwhile, Gods distribution was handled strictly by Fox with FUNi doing the dub and trailers and YouTube videos for it.