I'm Confused. Does anybody own the Amityville Franchise Rights? There are a ton of movies coming out from different Production Companies and they're all "Official" Sequels to the Amityville Horror. Can anyone with a Camera make an Amityville "Official" Sequel?
shareI believe it's public domain. I could have worded that wrong, but I guess anyone can use the Amityville title because it's based on true events. Kinda like how they can churn out a plethora of low-budget movies on notorious serial killers.
shareAmityville is a real town, the house is real, the DeFeo murders were real, so all those are in the public domain. The original story of the Lutz haunting is copyrighted, and the film sequel rights belonged to the real-life Lutz couple, who sued about the remake in 2005. Now that they've both passed on it's a sort of legal limbo from what I understand. Nonetheless the movies generally play it safe in that regard, avoiding direct mentions of the Lutzes and focusing either on the DeFeo murders as backstory or just shoehorning the name of the town into an otherwise unrelated film.
So anyone can make an "Amityville movie" in the sense of a movie set in the town/house, but it's unclear who if anyone can make an official sequel to the best-known part of the story. If this film ends up mentioning/following up on elements of the Lutz story it'll be interesting to see if any of the surviving family members attempt legal action.