Once and For All- Why Smallville episode are not available to view online

Op/Ed by Kate Blake

Admin OSCK 

This week the big ongoing lawsuit with the Siegel family and Warner and DC Comics was resolved- the family got back some of the rights to Superman in the late 1990s and has been in litigation since then over current use of the Superman franchise.
There is still an ongoing lawsuit regarding Superboy. This lawsuit and how royalties need to be paid to someone other than the studio and producers is why that Smallville is not available to view online on the CW website even though many of their other shows are. If the Superboy suit were decided tomorrow- we would probably see Smallville episodes showing up online next season. It is doubtful this will be resolved that quickly.

International rights are not affected but the US is. This is also why the only place you now can find Smallville repeats is on HDNet which is a Warner/Universal jointly owned network the same way the CW is a CBS/Warner network.

The lawsuit that has just been settled means the Siegel family will get a big chunk of change from the profits of Superman Returns. There is an open injunction against Brian Singer producing another Superman movie by them as well- guess they didn’t like the movie.
The question about the JLA film and use of Superman in it is now in question as well.

The Superman issues even affect the syndication of Lois & Clark which had its airings overlap the legal issues.
Read the full write up HERE with all of the legal ramification and detail.

I know it is frustrating but this type of legal wrangling is not new.
Chris Carter and FOX had a legal battle over the X-Files that took over 10 years to settle- but once it was the new movie which comes out this summer wasn’t only green lighted- it was fast tracked.

Warner knows very well what a valuable commodity Smallville and the Superman franchise are- once all of these issues are settled we will see Smallville all over the web and you can bet it will be back in syndication with a bang!