Okay, Since The Spielberg Post Blew Up, I Need To Clear Up Something Because I Can See In The Notes That

Okay, since the Spielberg post blew up, I need to clear up something because I can see in the notes that pple think that Spielberg owns the rights to MLK speeches and I don't want to spread any misinformation. This is what the Vice article says:

vice.com

The Bizarre Reason You Rarely Hear Martin Luther King Quotes in Movies

Steven Spielberg has received criticism for buying the film rights to MLK's speeches, and further controversy stems from King's estate.

In 2009, Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks company paid the estate for film rights to King's words, along with his life rights, which allow a person or company to make content based on an individual's story. DreamWorks has yet to produce or direct Spielberg's planned King biopic, but the rights have caused complications for numerous filmmakers. (Neither Spielberg's literary agent nor King's estate returned Broadly's request for comment.)

This means that while the MLK estate still owns the original copyright for the speeches, Spielberg actually bought and now owns the film rights to MLK's speeches. However, this doesn't erase how problematic it it is since this means that Spielberg is the only filmmaker legally allowed to use MLK's speeches word for word in his films. A White filmmaker is essentially holding onto the film rights, at the expense of Black filmmakers. The article talks about how Ava Duvernay had to write original speeches from scratch for Selma.

King has received only one major biopic, 2014's Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay [...] Instead of using King's speeches, DuVernay wrote original monologues that sounded like soliloquies the civil rights leader could have given. [...] When asked about the changes in 2014, DuVernay told the Washington Post, "We knew those rights are already gone. They're with Spielberg."

The article also mentioned that Spielberg bought life rights and according to this Forbes article, this means that Spielberg also bought the rights to MLK's life.

By paying the Estate for the film rights to Dr. King's speeches along with life rights, Spielberg obtained unprecedented filmmaking access to Dr. King’s life — supported by Dr. King’s extraordinary intellectual property (the right to use Dr. King’s actual words.)

Hope this clarifies everything!

- mod sodapop