Hi, and welcome back to Legal Geek. This week, we discuss a story brought to our attention by Brian Dunaway and Stephen King on Twitter, that being the revelation that Jet Li turned down a major role in the Matrix sequels to protect his creative interests in his own martial arts moves.
The role of Seraph in the Matrix sequels had an interesting history behind the scenes. Originally this iconic role was written as a woman and offered to Michelle Yeoh, most recently of Star Trek Discovery fame, but she turned it down for scheduling conflicts. The Wachowski brothers then rewrote the part as a man and offered it to Jet Li, famous martial artist. But he turned the part down as well, which led to Collin Chou taking on the role in the final films. This turn of events is interesting enough, but the reasons Li turned down the role are even more interesting.
The movie crew wanted Jet Li to film his parts in the movie over a 3-month window, and then spend 6 more months doing motion capture to make a digital library of all his martial arts moves. Li turned down the role based on this latter requirement because he did not agree to the terms offered in the contract, including that the digital library of martial arts moves would be owned by the studio as the studio's IP at the end of the filming.
So Matrix fans were denied having one of the highest artisans in the field of martial arts play in these movies over this desire to create and own a digital library of stored martial arts moves. You may be asking, what legal protection grounds was Jet Li standing on or trying to protect by this move? As always in legal world, it's fairly complicated.
Although not common based on the long history of martial arts, it would be theoretically possible to hold a copyright in Li's particular expression of martial arts moves, in other words, the artistic expression he creates when performing those moves. It is unclear whether such a copyright would be able to be successfully registered by federal governments, as a similar attempt by Eddie Van Halen to register a copyright in his guitar playing moves failed many years ago. But certainly, there's a possible claim under IP that Jet Li would be undermining if he gave these rights to the Matrix filmmakers.
Regardless of this bigger question, Jet Li could certainly contractually give up his rights to whatever moves he allowed to be captured by motion capture if he had done the 6 months of work as requested by the Wachowski brothers. In other words, the filmed or digital captured moves is a recording that certainly creates potential copyright in the recording itself, which could be contracted away. Then the question would become how limiting the grant of rights in the contract was because Jet Li would want to be able to continue to provide his skills in the martial arts and film communities, without risking breaking the contract. We don't know the specific terms of the contract, unfortunately, but Li appears to express concern that he would not be able to compete as he aged with a digital library of moves he created at a younger age. That concern seems reasonable.
So legally, Jet Li did have some valid concerns or grounds to protect in this regard, but the downside is that we end up not having a motion capture collection of his best moves to share in the public domain when any copyright or other legal rights lapse and go into the public domain. It's an understandable conclusion, even if it's a frustrating one.
The Bottom Line is, legal fields such as copyright extend much farther than people realize sometimes, and it is wise of top artisans like Jet Li to be aware of his rights before signing contracts. Despite not seeing Li in the Matrix movies, we thankfully have plenty of other films to enjoy his martial arts in, including the upcoming live action Mulan from Disney in 2020. One would guess Disney won't be asking for 6 months of motion capture in that endeavor.
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