While Disney faces their fare share of legal troubles in America, they now face an additional court battle across the pond in the form of a lawsuit alleging that the company did not have permission to use the likeness of late actor Peter Cushing in Rogue One.
Filed in 2023 by noted film producer – and one of Cushing’s oldest friends – Kevin Francis through his own Tyburn Film Productions, the lawsuit claims that the late actor, as per a recap provided by UK news outlet The Times, “agreed not to grant permission for an for anyone to reproduce his appearance through special effects without his authorisation.”
According to Francis’ legal team, Cushing signed said agreement in 1993 ahead of his filming of the ultimately-uncompleted TV film A Heritage of Horror.
As seen in the aforementioned Star Wars film, 22 years after Cushing passed away from cancer, the House of Mouse made heavy use of special effects technology to digitally revive the actor and have him reprise his iconic role as Imperial officer Grand Moff Tarkin for a brief cameo (of course, the quality of their end result remains a matter of fan debate).
In their initial response to Francis’ lawsuit, Disney claimed that due to both the terms of his original A New Hope contract and their assumption that the nature of the special effects used did not technically violate Cushing’s request, they originally believed they did not need to receive any sort of special permission to have him appear in Rogue One.
Further, the company asserts that after learning of the late actor’s stipulation, they agreed to pay his estate roughly £28,000 to make sure everything was above the books.
Not only that, but they also defended their use of his likeness on the grounds that they were a “bona fide purchaser for value” of the rights to Cushing’s image.
However, last December, Master Francesca Kaye rejected Disney’s arguments, in doing so ordering that the case be sent to trial.
And though the company attempted to appeal this ruling, on September 9th, Judge Tom Mitcheson officially stood by his colleague’s ruling.
Noting that he was admittedly “far from persuaded” that Francis’ efforts would end in victory, Judge Mitcheson also declared that he was “not persuaded that the case is unarguable to the standard required to give summary judgment or to strike it out.”
“In an area of developing law it is very difficult to decide where the boundaries might lie in the absence of a full factual enquiry.”
As of writing, Disney and Francis’ court case has yet to receive an official trial date.