A class action seeks money because a movie compendium whose promotional literature described it as containing “All of the Bond films gathered for the first time in this one-of-a-kind box set” lacked the 1967 David Niven spoof version of Casino Royale and 1983’s Never Say Never Again. The latter is sometimes denied canonical status by Bond-film buffs even though it stars Sean Connery, having been made by a screenwriter who had worked with Ian Fleming “to create the Thunderball story and was given the green light by a London court to make his own film after claiming co-authorship of the characters and elements.” MGM responds that a reasonable consumer would not have been misled because the box set package and its promotion list the films it includes. [Ashley Cullins, Hollywood Reporter]
6 Comments
If this sort of class-action is allowed to proceed, there may be an opportunity for Prenda Law, if they get bored with trolling worthless porn films on the Internet. They could produce $10,000 knockoffs in likely-to-be collected film series.
Good lord. Don’t people have anything better to do than file stupid lawsuits because they didn’t bother to read the description of the product they were buying? Does MGM even own the rights to the two “missing” films? Would the box set then be recalled if another Bond film comes out since it would be post facto inaccurate? Are we no longer allowed to use the word “all” in the English language because there might be an exception to the all that we thought we were describing?
Yes, MGM is the distributor for both the “missing” films as well so they didn’t include them in the set as a matter of choice. They probably figured (mostly correctly) that the people buying the set had no interest in the “non canon” Bonds. As an owner of the set I wouldn’t mind if they were in there, but I probably wouldn’t watch them.
I own this set “celebrating five decades of James Bond.” MGM is right. The packaging has no words to the effect that it’s supposed to have all the Bond films released up through that point, and it clearly lists all the films included. The top review comment on Amazon — the first one shown — says that NSNA isn’t included.
Great!
I am starting a suit against the New York Times. Why?
I don’t believe they publish “All the News That’s Fit to Print”!
There is a canonical difference between Bond Films and films with the character James Bond. In addition to the 1967 Casino Royale, you could consider the 1558(?) television version of Casino Royale, and perhaps even the Young James Bond animated series.
The Bond Films would be the MGM-released, Broccoli Group produced films, which would pretty clearly exclude the Niven Casino Royale and Never Say Never Again, which were produced under different rights arrangements.