As ‘Scream 7’ Arrives, Its Studios Fight to Own Ghostface’s… Uh, Face

Scream 7 hits theaters at the end of this month, and the promo game is gradually building up. While Sidney Prescott fights another Ghostface or two, franchise owners Paramount and Spyglass are in a legal fight for the rights to the villain’s iconic mask.

Per the Hollywood Reporter, the two companies are taking SFX studio Alterian Ghost Factory to court before it can threaten copyright infringement. With this suit, Paramount and Spyglass hope to file a court order to prevent Alterian’s suit, claiming the company “intentionally slept on its purported rights in the iconic ‘Ghostface’ mask used throughout the Scream franchise for 30 years.”

The Ghostface mask was developed for Halloween in the early ’90s by Fun World and later discovered by Scream producer Marianne Maddalena. It was later licensed for the movie and featured throughout the franchise and its different sequels, with the one exception being the MTV show. Alterian’s arguing that since it created the underlying design first, Fun World was in the legal wrong when it licensed out the final version to Paramount. Conversely, Paramount believes Fun World deserves Alterian’s ire and that Alterian lost any right to call ownership of Ghostface after spending decades without taking any legal action.

“[It] has never legally established that it owns the rights to the Ghostface mask, and it will not be able to prove it now in this litigation,” reads Paramount’s complaint. “And seeking to disrupt the release of a completed motion picture mere weeks before its release—the seventh installment of a franchise that Alterian watched grow in silence for three decades—is an outrageous attempt to shake down [Paramount and Spyglass].”

Scream 7 is in theaters on February 27, and the legal fight for Ghostface may continue beyond that date.

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