Are you a fan of the Superman film series? After John Williams' departure after the first classic film, the scores for Superman II and Superman III --while making use of Williams' themes-- were lacking in depth, sound quality, and creativity. With Superman IV in 1987, however, came an injection of new material by Williams and Alexander Courage. To this day, however, no album has been released for Superman IV, and the rights to the music are currently locked. Information about a new online petition for the release of this score has been announced.

http://www.geocities.com/s4campaign/

Let's get the word out about this petition and get this thing released!

Jeron

Now Superman 4, was a film WB would rather forget, and had its fair share of legal headaches in the past...it all played out but I can just see the studio lawyers rolling their eyes and moving like slugs if faced with having to put together an insignificant (in the large scheme) deal.

I wonder what the re-use rights would be like. SUPERMAN IV was recorded in England, but with TWO different orchestras ... the National is the one I remember. Paying off BOTH orchestras might somehow prove prohibitive. I believe a similar thing happened on 13TH WARRIOR: some of the cues missing from the Varese album were picked up later in Hollywood, and no way could Varese afford to pay off the London re-use AND the more expensive Hollywood re-use. (I don't have the movie itself in front of me to check the back credits, but I do seem to remember a credit for a Los Angeles scoring stage as well as the credit for the London stage. Or is it THE MUMMY I'm thinking of? Same problem in either event, though. Well, perhaps not -- the cheaper London re-use is surely one of the main reasons THE MUMMY was able to have an ISO score on the DVD. Oh never mind, I'm getting off topic.)

So rights to SUPERMAN IV reverted to Warners, eh? Remember that it was produced and released by the CANNON organization, since demised. (Is that a word? I guess it is now. ) I do seem to remember something about Warner Tamerlane owning the music though; same thing happened on SUPERGIRL, which was released by Tri-Star (Warners took a pass on the completed movie.) Of course, since the company owns DC Comics, it only stands to reason that they could demand the publishing rights.

Am I mistaken? I haven't checked up in a few years on this, and I could be wrong, but I don't think I am....

Actually, I remember reading a VARIETY article in the late eighties that indicated London musicians were getting sufficiently pricey that they were losing a lot of work -- British movies and TV, and even Hollywood pictures -- to Munich and Budapest. Budapest no longer seems to be seriously in the running, and it seems to be mainly John Scott who likes Munich ...

My apologies for leading this one a little off topic....

1) Superman was made after Star Wars, and was quite a success.

2) Superman was composed by John Williams

These two ingredients combine for solid sales over the long run. Titles like "Korngold" will basically sell within the first few months of release, when devoted Korngold fans get wind of the release and purchase it, and will eventually dwindle to almost no sales!

Now, with Superman IV, we're talking "Superman," but not the original, and definitely not John Williams. You lose a lot of significant (relative word, significant in terms of a 4th sequel score in this case) sales over time because of these two factors. Because of this, who knows if Rhino would release it, if they had the chance. My guess is they would, as any re-use fees would be totally arbitrary at this point (considering how long ago the recording was made, and that multiple orchestras were used), and the major costs involved would be manufacturing (cheap) and distributing (not so cheap, but doable). Theorectically, they could make money off of 1,000 units if the license fee for the music itself was very favorable.

Peter