Quentin Tarantino Is Blowing Off The Pulp Fiction Lawsuit And Making Big Money, Trouble Ahead?
Quentin Tarantino is doing what he wants!
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Legendary Pulp Fiction director Quentin Tarantino appears to be moving full steam ahead on his debated NFT plans. The first of his announced non-fungible tokens based around the screenplay for his 1994 film Pulp Fiction has sold for $1.1 million, as announced on Monday by SCRT Labs. This is part of what the director is calling Tarantino NFTs. That project almost immediately ran into legal difficulty when Miramax Pictures, the studio who produced Pulp Fiction, filed a lawsuit against Tarantino, claiming intellectual property rights over the ability to produce NFTs. Now that one has actually been produced and sold, it is certain that the legal battle will only get fiercer.
For some context, Quentin Tarantino has long been one of the more distinct creative voices in Hollywood and an outspoken defendant of authors’ rights. During the 1990s and 200s, Miramax was one of the most notable producers and distributors of films in the world. After beginning as an independent studio founded by brothers Bob and Harvey Weinsten, it was bought by Disney.
Around that time, it was responsible for breakout films like Pulp Fiction, Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Kevin Smith’s Clerks and many other influential films of the era. However, in 2017, Harvey Weinstein was accused of alleged sexual abuse and eventually convicted on rape charges. That set in motion a series of events that decimated the once powerful company and apparently alienated them from Tarantino, once one of their most prized filmmakers.
Since the surge in popularity of NFTs, the rights to intellectual property of all kinds have had to make massive legal adjustments on the fly. Given that film IP is often notoriously murky in its legalities, it is no surprise that cases like the feud between Quentin Tarantino and Miramax have come up. For his part, Tarantino has claimed the right to produce these NFTs under a Reserved Rights Clause in his contract.
The NFTs that are to be produced are reportedly a collection of never before seen scenes from Pulp Fiction, accompanied by handwritten notes and commentary from the director himself. And for their part, legal defense from Miramax has claimed that whatever rights Tarantino holds via his contract do not extend to the production of NFTs. Given that NFTs did not functionally exist at the time Tarantino and Miramax went into business together to produce films, it is anyone’s guess how the legal aspect of this will shake out.
It appears that Quentin Tarantino is not going to wait around to see. The other announced Pulp Fiction NFTs are titled “Foot Massage,” “Pumpkin and Honey Bunny,”“Check Out the Big Brain on Brett,” “Captain Koons Monologue – The Gold Watch,” “Bring Out the Gimp” and “Last Scene: Coffee Shop – Ezekiel 25:17.” Tarantino is also hotly rumored to be involved with a new Star Trek TV series soon, and is continuing to produce more extant books based on his most recent film Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood. The only thing certain now is that this legal battle is going to continue.
