News must travel slowly to a small town in southeast Turkey. Either that or they caught wind of our report yesterday that “The Dark Knight” is close to passing $1 billion in world-wide ticket sales and they want a piece of the pie.
Whatever the reason, the mayor of a small oil-producing town in Turkey is suing Warner Brothers and Christopher Nolan for royalties from the hit film. Mayor Huseyin Kalkan is accusing producers of using the city’s name without permission.
“There is only one Batman in the world,” Kalkan said. “The American producers used the name of our city without informing us.”
The mayor is prepping a series of charges against Nolan and Warner Brothers, which owns the right to the Batman character, including placing the blame for a number of unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate on the psychological impact that the film’s success has had on the city’s inhabitants.
Former natives of Batman are also said to have encountered obstacles when attempting to register their businesses abroad.
The mayor is working on gathering evidence he claims will show that the city of Batman predates the 1939 debut of Bob Kane’s superhero in DC Comics.
“We are only aware of this claim via press reports and have not seen any actual legal action,” a Warner Brothers representative said in a statement.
another nation that see’s america as a sue happy nation and figures they’ll make some easy $$$
I’m thinking there’s got to be some type of statue of limitations issue here. How can you have a character out for almost 70 years and then decide you’ve been violated?
It seems that the city would have to prove this was leading to market confusion. Like people were coming to their town expecting to meet the character Batman or something similar.
I think the lawsuit would only work if they can prove that Bruce Wayne was dressing up as a small Turkish Village to fight crime in Gotham.
Wait, wasn’t that an Elseworld? I think it was an Elseworld.