isamu Posted January 18, 2021 Share Posted January 18, 2021 Since the other thread is locked I just wanted to ask what the current status is on the whole Harmony Gold owning Macross rights situation is? It feels like it's been a hundred years since there's been any discussion on this. I just don't understand what HG hopes to gain from this situation. I mean, it's been years and they're just sitting on the rights to a property they haven't done anything with for what seems like an eternity. Are they waiting for Big West/Studio Nue to approach them and offer them a gazillion dollars to buy back the rights to Macross or something? If so, I got a bridge I can sell them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Einherjar Posted January 18, 2021 Share Posted January 18, 2021 Robotech was doubling down on being reduced to a Macross 7 parody before that whole universe came to a screeching halt. That’s why you haven’t heard anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isamu Posted January 18, 2021 Author Share Posted January 18, 2021 I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Can you explain what you mean when you say they were "doubling down on being reduced to a Macross 7 parody" ? Can you be more specific? All I know is that they haven't made jack crap lately and it's confusing to me. Are they even producing *ANYTHING* these days? If not, why are they even still in business? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenius Posted January 18, 2021 Share Posted January 18, 2021 They are in business because they spend almost nothing on the license but make more than that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Einherjar Posted January 18, 2021 Share Posted January 18, 2021 17 minutes ago, isamu said: I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Can you explain what you mean when you say they were "doubling down on being reduced to a Macross 7 parody" ? Can you be more specific? All I know is that they haven't made jack crap lately and it's confusing to me. Are they even producing *ANYTHING* these days? If not, why are they even still in business? Google a comic book called Robotech Remix. Depending on how much Macross you’ve watch over the years, it will either be the funniest, humiliating thing HG has ever done or one epic chair-flipping moment after another. For added context, also read the Titan Comics series that was made prior to it. It might was well be the grand finale for what fans thought Robotech was supposed to be about. In the real world, I think the dream of Hollywood saving the franchise from all its problems is dead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seto Kaiba Posted January 18, 2021 Share Posted January 18, 2021 1 hour ago, isamu said: Since the other thread is locked I just wanted to ask what the current status is on the whole Harmony Gold owning Macross rights situation is? There have been no new or noteworthy developments since that thread was locked. Harmony Gold USA still holds (under license) the "rest-of-world" distribution and merchandising rights to Super Dimension Fortress Macross and "rest-of-world" merchandising rights to Macross: Do You Remember Love?, and is still using registered trademarks on the Macross title, logos, and key art in various markets in a bid to keep legitimate Macross licensing botted up so they won't have to compete with it. They've lost, or are in the process of losing, their trademarks in the United Kingdom, European Union, and People's Repubic of China, and Big West is in the process of releasing all of Macross in China. Unfortunately, because US Trademark law is written differently, Big West cannot challenge the trademarks which Harmony Gold registered in the US the same way so the licensing deadlock in the west will continue. (The loss of these trademarks isn't really much of a blow to Robotech or Harmony Gold, as their own disclosures in court while disputing Big West's applications to register Macross's trademarks in the European Union revealed the European market for Robotech is basically nonexistent.) In terms of news that isn't noteworthy, the only quasi-recent development is what @Einherjar has already acknowledged. Namely, that the sequel to Titan Comics' widely-panned loose adaptation of Robotech's Macross Saga - which bore the uninspiring title of Robotech Remix - has seemingly become the latest Robotech property to take on Robotech's traditional "not cancelled, honest!" status for prematurely cancelled works. Publication of the monthly series ended without any notice - even to Titan's distributor - after the release of its fourth issue in January 2020. Titan Comics kept silent about it until months later, when they attempted to lay blame for the "delay" on the UK's COVID-19 lockdown even though the book had missed the release dates for multiple issues before the lockdown began. Speculation about the book's actual fate has been minimal, with most fans assuming that it was cancelled due to low sales. Spoiler Robotech Remix's story continued where Titan's previous Robotech comic had left of... and built on the ending, which had revealed that all of Robotech's previous incarnatons as an animated series were various "bad future" alternate realities created by a quasi-stable time loop in which the SDF-3 travels back in time and crashes on Earth in 1999, being mistaken for an alien warship and subsequently rebuilt into the SDF-1 each time until the iteration in the comic successfully broke the time loop by preventing Earth from being reduced to a wasteland by the Zentradi. Remix picked up the story from there and turned it into a low-rent Macross fanfic that periodically threw shade at Robotech and Robotech fans while attempting to mix things up a bit. Most of the characters who "died" in the TV series don't, relationships changed, etc. There was a particularly amusing bit where the Dana Sterling of the penultimate iteration of the time loop has a "what an idiot" conversation about how stupid it'd be for anyone to prefer the Alpha fighter (MOSPEADA's Legioss) over the VF-4. The comic's story was setting up an invasion by the Robotech Masters from an alternate reality where they resemble the Mardook from Macross II and have a brainwashed/enslaved Rick Hunter instead of "Zor Prime", but ended before that plot could go anywhere. 1 hour ago, isamu said: It feels like it's been a hundred years since there's been any discussion on this. I just don't understand what HG hopes to gain from this situation. I mean, it's been years and they're just sitting on the rights to a property they haven't done anything with for what seems like an eternity. Are they waiting for Big West/Studio Nue to approach them and offer them a gazillion dollars to buy back the rights to Macross or something? If so, I got a bridge I can sell them. Basically, selling and reselling the streaming rights is pure profit... the production costs were amortized decades ago. It's not much, and it's definitely not honest work, but it is a tiny stream of supplementary income. The same deal with the ultra-low volume or print-on-demand collectibles that are about all the Robotech brand has left in terms of merchandising. Harmony Gold itself will claim that Robotech Academy is still under development (it isn't, according to the studio that did it) and that the live action movie is being fast-tracked (it isn't) to become a tentpole franchise for Sony Pictures (it isn't). Most fans suspect that Harmony Gold is holding out hope that Big West will want to distribute Macross in the US badly enough to either buy out their license for a king's ransom or pay them royalties for the use of the Macross name and logos that HG trademarked in the US. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isamu Posted January 18, 2021 Author Share Posted January 18, 2021 Thanks for the explanation. Wow. Pretty eye-opening stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
azrael Posted January 18, 2021 Share Posted January 18, 2021 No developments = no news = lock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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