: Re: How different does a retelling have to be in order to publish it even if the original story is not yet in the public domain? I wrote a 101 Dalmatians retelling, and as far as I know from

@Lengel543

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People retell stories all the time. The question is, are you retelling the story, or reusing the world? You generally can't reuse the world (although there are cases that have been successful, like Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone). But there's little that can stop you from retelling the story.

Note that the history of The Wind Done Gone is very relevant to you as you seem to be reusing someone else's world rather than just retelling the story. People do get finicky about that.

One of my favorite examples, though movies, is Robert Redford's The Natural, which is a retelling of Abbott and Wallop's Damn Yankees, which is itself a retelling of Faust.

And if you really want some fun, see the pedigree of modern stories like The Terminator in answers to a question of mine over at SciFi.SE.

The one thing you should have going for you is your retelling is original in that people could recognize its antecedents, but the story stands completely on its own.

The one thing really against you starts with a statement my retired attorney father was fond of saying: anyone can sue for anything at any time. You could have picked an easier antecedent. Disney is very big with a lot of laywers... and they tend to fight for what they perceive is their property.

Which would be more than hypocritical since pretty much every story/movie they've ever made was a retelling of another story. Take, for convenient example, 101 Dalmatians, which was a movie based on the book One Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith.

I wonder who actually has the copyright to the original story?

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