Roger Rabbit Copyright Reverts to Creator Gary K. Wolf: New Plans Ahead

It’s official! Ownership of Roger Rabbit is successfully back in the hands of creator Gary K. Wolf.

“I now have back the rights to all my characters, all my books. I can, basically, do my own Roger Rabbit projects.”

This information was shared exclusively with ImNotBad.com and Jessica Rabbit World in a recent interview. The ownership of Roger Rabbit and other beloved characters has successfully transferred back to its originator, author Gary K. Wolf.

A Roger Rabbit Sequel Is Sitting At Disney

Rumors and talk are back again. Will there ever be any new projects for Roger Rabbit? Talk of a sequel started right after the movie saw a successful release in 1988, with a target set for around the early 90's. Then, due to a possible feud between Roger Rabbit's co-owners (Disney's Michael Eisner and Amblin's Steven Spielberg) Roger almost vanished from the face of Disney entirely. It's not something that was ever fully explained. Here's a timeline to take a look back at all the talk, serious or rumor, about the Roger Rabbit sequel.

Disney Corporate Dosen't Like Jessica Rabbit

There is some very dismaying news coming out of The Telegraph in regards to the future of Roger Rabbit as a whole.

A few other websites (such as ComicBook.com) have picked up on quotes from the Who Framed Roger Rabbit director himself, Robert Zemeckis. He has revealed what he believes is the current feeling at Disney Corporate regarding Roger and Jessica Rabbit in addition to any other related projects:

“the current corporate Disney culture has no interest in Roger, and they certainly don’t like Jessica at all.”

This is extraordinarily sad, and also very obvious as Jessica Rabbit's pins have vanished and there has been so little news or merchandise to report on as the years have passed. Zemeckis did share what the idea would have been for Roger Rabbit 2 - moving out of 1940's film noir into a more 50's style movie and acting as a continuation rather than a sequel.

J.J. Abrams Almost Worked On A Roger Rabbit Sequel

Director of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, J.J. Abrams, happens to have a slight connection to Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Abrams recently worked with producer Kathleen Kennedy on the new episode of Star Wars, but she had known of him from many years before.

During the Nerdist Podcast, Abrams discusses how Kathleen Kennedy read about him in the LA Times during a film festival when he was only 16. She called to ask him about repairing 8mm films for Steven Spielberg that he made when he was a kid. He said yes and did the repairs. It would be years later that he eventually met Spielberg.

While the details are scant he does officially say from that point it was "a meeting about a Roger Rabbit sequel."

Roger Rabbit Sequel May Still Happen

Over at Showbiz411, they are reporting that during the premiere of his new movie, Flight, director Robert Zemeckis still has his eyes set on a Roger Rabbit sequel. According to the site, "Zemeckis told me last night that, although he’s sad about the retirement of Bob Hoskins, he has a “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” ready to go. The brilliant 1988 combination live action and animation film has been begging for a sequel forever. “I have a script at Disney, and we’re just waiting for all the executive changes to settle down there,” Zemeckis told me. If I know Alan Horn, that’s a project he’ll get moving quickly. What great news!"

Great news indeed. We keep hearing rumors now and then, and it's been a long time since one has popped up. It seems the director has not given up on the project - Stay Tooned!

BREAKING NEWS ! Roger Rabbit Producer Talks Sequel ! ! !

Over at MTV Movies Blog, some time in December, Roger Rabbit producer Frank Marshall told MTV News that he's still "open" to the possibility of another film. The much rumored sequel to Roger kept falling apart in the mid-90s because legal issues and high production costs.

"It came pretty close. We shot a test. We had a script. But unfortunately, we didn't have computer generated animation quite yet -it was just too expensive," Marshall explained of the untitled sequel project, "Roger Rabbit 2." "If you think about it, in the original movie there's really only 48 minutes of animation and in the new movie - or in that movie - he was in everything. So it went from 48 minutes of animation to over 100 minutes of animation."

"I remember we shot the test to try and see how much we could do with digital props - We weren't even into digital characters yet," Marshall continued. "The idea was to see what we could do with digital props as opposed to what we did in the original movie where everything was puppeted - all the props were puppeted by strings and wires and poles."

For the first time ever, Marshall also revealed details of the plot of "Roger Rabbit 2," and if you thought Toontown was a trip, you should have seen where they were sending Roger next.