Judge Rules That Paramount Owns The Copyright To Fellini’s La Dolce Vita

Back in 2010 we learned that Gucci had contributed a significant amount of money to Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, to aid in the restoration of Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard, and Federico Fellini’s classic, La Dolce Vita. As soon as we learned that a new restored version would be touring theatrically, we all crossed our fingers with the hope that a new Blu-ray would follow.

Unfortunately, things weren’t so easy. The following year Paramount and International Media Films went to court over who owned the copyright to distribute the film. We just learned this past week that the judge has ruled in favor of Paramount:

Each side presented a competing chain-of-title. In a ruling on Wednesday, Paramount’s is declared the winner by a California federal court.

Now that this has been settled, folks around the Internet have begun speculating as to what will happen with the home video rights. Will Paramount license this to Criterion? Will they try to release their own Blu-ray? Obviously we would all love to see this land in Criterion’s lap, allowing them to create the truly definitive and gorgeous package that a film of this stature deserves. We’ll just have to be patient a little longer to see what happens with a home video release, but if Criterion didn’t already have a spine 700 lined up, they might want to hold off and see if this will happen.

You can check out David Blakeslee’s For Criterion Consideration post for La Dolce Vita.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter