New Dick Tracy Being Planned, Director’s Cut Of Last One Now Clear For Release

Warren Beatty has prevailed in a legal battle over the movie and TV rights to Chester Gould‘s Dick Tracy. The short version is this:

Beatty was given the rights in perpetuity as long as he kept making Dick Tracy projects.

He could at any time be put under a two year probation in order to start production of more, but if he made this deadline, the rights would remain his.

About give years ago, Beatty was put on the clock, so he started work on TV segment to feature the character.

By the terms of the contract, then, Beatty retained his entitlement to make more films in the series.

This has been dragged through the courts, but has now been wrapped up, some years on, in Beatty’s favour.

What does this mean? Well, first of all, the way is now totally clear for Disney to reissue the film, perhaps in Beatty’s 130 -minute director’s cut. It’s a beautifully well shot and photographed film, and it will look wonderful on Blu-ray.

Richard Sylbert, Milena Canonero and Vitorrio Storaro, the film’s production and art designers and cinematographer, did some incredible work. Their main principle was to keep the colour scheme strictly limited, just like in a four-colour newspaper strip, and I’ve never seen another film that looks like this at all. Every yellow is the same yellow, every blue is the same blue, and the images are striking and graphic and bold. Just look at the sample image at the head of the post.

Also of note were the makeup designs John Caglione Jr. which transformed some of Hollywood’s most suitably hammy (Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, William Forsythe) into Gould-style caricatures.

Beyond the reissuing of the 1990 movie, Beatty must be making plans for more. He’s only got two years to start something shooting, or else the entire courtroom battle will have been for nothing.But, speaking to The Wrap, Beatty’s lawyer has said:

Warren’s goal is to do another major Dick Tracy project.

Which sort of allows them to hedge their bets a little. “Project” is pretty vague.

I’m sure that Beatty will gun first for the silver screen, but there’s always TV to fall back on, and with the right resources, and good creatives, it could be a welcome addition to the schedules. With these huge, period-set fantasies, however, I’m always hopeful that a suitable budget will be brought into play, and so I’m wishing for something theatrical.