THE LEGEND OF KING KONG / Bo Goldman 1975 Unproduced Screenplay Movie Script

  
The Legend of King Kong. Script Dated: December 10, 1975. This is an Original 1975 movie script titled, THE LEGEND OF KING KONG. It is written by Bo Goldman. This film was NEVER Produced and it has been left unmade.

It has the original, Universal Studios, production cover. This script is 132 pages long.

Please view all of the pictures above carefully. Unproduced scripts like this that are from major movie studios are cool because we will never know how good this movie would have been, since it was never made.

The Legend of King Kong is an unmade 1976 remake of King Kong that was to be produced by Universal Pictures. In 1975, Universal became interested in remaking the original 1933 King Kong, due to the character's recent surge in popularity. They also viewed it as a strong follow-up to the projected success of their film Jaws, which was currently in the final stages of production. Although there was no written contract, Universal was confident that they received verbal approval from RKO. However, they would soon learn that RKO also signed a deal with Dino De Laurentiis and Paramount Pictures to produce a remake of the film with a tentative release date of 1976.

Universal proceeded to sue both Paramount and RKO for the rights to King Kong, claiming that they had a previous oral agreement with RKO to produce their own remake; however, RKO denied such a deal. Counting on this claim to go through, Universal announced they would start filming The Legend of King Kong on January 5, 1976, using the novel as a template and aiming to release the film in the fall.

By getting the film into production so quickly, Universal hoped that it would pressure Paramount and De Laurentiis to give up production on their film. Universal hired Academy Award-winning screenwriter Bo Goldman to write the screenplay for the film, and hired the relatively unknown but acclaimed Joseph Sargent to direct. Special effects artist Jim Danforth offered to produce the effects for the film using stop-motion animation like in the original film, but Universal worried that it would be far too expensive and planned to have Kong be portrayed by a man in a suit, like he was in King Kong vs. Godzilla and King Kong Escapes.

They also intended to very closely follow the 1933 film, using the same characters, creatures, and general plot of the original film, even keeping it set in 1933. The court found that Universal could make a movie based on King Kong as long as it did not infringe on the copyrightable scenes of the 1933 movie. " This was shortly followed a month later by a second federal ruling in the Cooper estate's favor against RKO, determining that "Merian Cooper's agreement with RKO had given RKO the right only to produce the 1933 movie and the'Son of Kong' sequel.

" In this final judgement, referred to as the "Cooper Judgement, " the court determined that "as between RKO and Cooper, Cooper possessed all rights in the name, character and story of King Kong other than the rights in the 1933 movie and the sequel'Son of Kong. The court also found that RKO's license with Dino De Laurentiis for the remake of King Kong, and its licenses with certain toy manufacturers, had breached RKO's original limited assignment from Merian Cooper. Therefore, RKO owed Richard Cooper the profits accrued from these breaches. The court consistently noted, however, that its determination of Richard Cooper's cross-claim did not affect any other person and did not affect its finding that the King Kong story was in the public domain.

As a result of these rulings, RKO's licensing and merchandising rights were transferred to the Cooper estate. With De Laurentiis and Paramount Pictures having already completed their King Kong film and now guaranteed a cut of the box office profits, Universal decided to postpone filming The Legend of King Kong for 18 months. THE POSTER SHOWN IN THE LAST PICTURE ABOVE IS NOT INCLUDED, IT IS JUST BEING USED AS A VISUAL REFERENCE.

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